kintsugi
Samantha Colleran, June 2026
“kintsugi”. a lana del rey song that has come to mean so much to me, and one that will always bring tears to my eyes. when i’m deep in a hole of remembering the ones i’ve loved and lost, i turn to “kintsugi” because i haven’t heard many songs that capture the overwhelming emotions of grief like it does.
kintsugi (also known as kintsukuroi) is the japanese art of putting pottery pieces back together using lacquer typically mixed with powdered gold, sometimes silver or platinum. you can read a brief synopsis about it here, and a slightly more in depth explanation about it here. in the context of the song, lana uses the idea of kintsugi to describe how her heart has been hurt by losing people she loves, and how allowing her heart to break has given her the chance to piece herself back together in a new way.
i find it a hard but necessary listen. it brings me back to so many moments in my life, some distant memories and others more recent.
“there’s a certain point the body can’t come back from / in one year, we’ve learned the turn of the mouth / the depth that the chest cavity takes”
my family is no stranger to loss. tragic accidents, old age, health issues. of course, the ones i’ve spoken about the most here are the ones that have shaped so much of my experience being alive, how i move through the world. i didn’t see my uncle after his accident, my brother and i were way too young to be exposed to the state he was in. my parents never gave many details about what he looked like, just that it was really bad. i think i’m alright living in ignorant bliss. my heart aches for my mom, who had to see her only sibling in that state, who took him off of life support. she carries the loss of her father and brother and mother with so much strength.
granny was different. i watched her shrink. her clothes stopped fitting; they began to fall off of her, hanging loosely from what was left of her. she was forgetting a lot, not always lucid. she was scared, constantly looking for someone or something or somewhere she couldn’t quite get to. she eventually stopped showing emotion. she was bedbound. then she quietly, peacefully slipped away.
“so everyone was there, they were standin’, laughin’ / and i’m on the side with my tears streamin’ down”
i was really young when we spread my uncle’s ashes and had celebrations of his life, but i have glimpses of that time in life. i remember my uncle’s friends on surfboards paddling out with his ashes. i remember not understanding my emotions. i remember the old guest room in granny’s bungalow littered with his things; reminders that he had packed a bag with the intention of visiting for a few days, pieces of his life that would never make it back to florida and would never be touched by him again. i remember his blue and black duffel bag on the floor. now that i’m older and understand my emotions better, i catch myself in moments being hit with a ton of bricks, crumbling under the weight of the memories that flood my mind when i least expect them to. a song will come on at work and i have to remind myself to breathe because customers sitting around the bar can’t see me break down crying over “somewhere over the rainbow”. my parents or someone who knew him will tell a funny story and it hits me: i will never have one of those stories of my own. i keep the smile on my face while inside my heart cracks in two.
granny’s memorial in october 2024. one final goodbye in a sea of thousands over the final year, months, weeks, i had with her. it was the most beautiful october day, countless friends and family coming to our house to support us and celebrate granny’s memory. as someone who is prone to fainting and getting lightheaded, i almost passed out before people began arriving to the house. i spent a few minutes laying down on the cold bathroom tile to bring myself back to earth, trying to convince myself that the day was meant to be a celebration.
my mom wrote this devastatingly beautiful speech, much like her eulogy in july; it felt impossible for me to hold it together. i listened to my mom speak as we stood on the beach with our group of 30 or so people, turning away about three sentences in as the tears ran down my cheeks. i felt so sick walking down to the water and taking granny’s bag of cremains, as the funeral home so hilariously called her ashes, in my hands. this final goodbye was a lot for my heart to handle, but i let myself crack under the weight of it all, feeling my heart yet again. that’s what it’s there for, after all.
“we’ve only got hours / and i just can’t stop cryin’ ‘cause all of the ways / when you see someone dyin’ / the sea of your days flash in front of you”
granny’s last day was really strange. i’ve shared some details about it before, but it felt so heavy. it’s really weird to describe to people that you just kind of sat around waiting for It to happen. you try to move around the house normally, but the death rattle stops you in your tracks when you walk down the hall past the room, you stand in the doorway watching someone so full of life just… lay there. the minutes feel like hours, the hours feel like days, days feel like weeks. i watched her lay there and tried to cling onto every memory and detail my brain would allow me to.
being in the room where It happens is really odd. there’s a strange energy, you wait in anticipation wondering which breath will be the last. when It happens, you really have no control over how you react. we had family in the kitchen while my parents, brother, and i were in granny’s room behind closed doors. my brother’s girlfriend told me she knew it happened because i screamed. i don’t remember screaming, i just remember the feeling, like my heart was torn from my chest, painful but somehow relieving to know this woman i love was no longer in pain.
“they sang folk songs from the 40’s / even the fourteen year-old knew ‘froggie came a-courtin’”
in some of her final weeks when it was nice outside, we’d have to force granny to come sit with us and enjoy the sunshine. we’d entice her by playing music comforting and familiar to her, mostly the rat pack because she loved them so much. there were some songs i’d add to the queue she’d light up over and ask me in that particular voice that rings deep in my memory “how do you know this?” to which i’d reply something along the lines of “because i know frank/dean/nat king” and she’d sit there humming or saying her little “da da bum bum” noises. closer to the end, she was a little off beat, but the music seemed to ground her. for a few minutes, she was happy, content.
“i don’t know anyone left who knows the songs that i sing”
one christmas season, maybe in 2023, we were decorating inside, putting ornaments on the tree. i had my iconic christmas playlist playing on the house speaker and “rockin’ around the christmas tree” came on shuffle. my mom always talks about how much her dad, my grandpa jim, who i did not get the chance to know, loved the song so much. this particular day she was teasing granny trying to get her to dance and asking her “remember how much daddy loved this song?” granny, not wanting to dance, overwhelmed by the chaos of christmas surrounding her, replied that she did not remember grandpa jim enjoying the song and made it clear she did not want to dance. my mom got emotional, tears filling her eyes as she said something like “why doesn’t anyone remember these things?” my heart broke into pieces. i put the ornament in my hand on the tree and took my mom’s hands in mine, dancing around with her as she fought back tears the rest of the song and granny slipped quietly into her room.
“daddy, i miss them / i’m in the mountains / i’m probably runnin’ away from the feelings i get / when i think all the things about them / daddy, i miss them / i’m at the roadrunner café / i’m probably runnin’ away from the thoughts in the day / that have things to do with them, but they say / ‘that’s how the light gets in’”
this time of year is when i find myself getting the most overwhelmed by grief. my uncle timmy’s birthday is may 25th. his accident happened in early july. he died the day before my 5th birthday. 2026 marks 20 years since his passing. granny was in the hospital for ten days in the beginning of june 2024. she came home after ten days and was dead within three and a half weeks. four days before my 23rd birthday, two days after the 4th of july.
i didn’t have much time with my uncle timmy, but i find myself longing to know what life would be like with him around. would he think i’m cool? would we share music? what kind of talks would we have as i grew up? would i get to see him as a successful bar owner? would i get to meet cool people because of him? would he have settled down and come to his senses, or would he have still been just as wild as people say he was? how would he have handled granny’s decline? would granny have declined as rapidly as she did had she had both of her children around?
20 years is a long time to mourn someone, especially someone you did not have the pleasure of knowing for as long as others. i often cross paths with individuals who tell me how much they loved him, how he took care of them or looked out for them or helped them with something that they will never forget. he touched so many lives, i wonder how many more he could have touched. living vicariously through stories people share with me allows me to feel closer to him.
and then there’s granny. mary, mary, mary. there’s a lot i can say and have already said, none of it will ever capture how much losing her has left a mark on my life. she is always looming in the back of my brain. i will spend the rest of my life missing her.
i miss them. i miss them so much. i’ve learned that running from these feelings just makes it worse. instead, i let myself crack open whenever i need to, allowing everything to pour out and then taking the time to patch up the cracks by thinking of all the good times. it’s a reminder that as long as i am on this earth, their lives will be remembered.
there are many songs out there about grief and carrying on after losing loved ones, but none of them have been able to capture the exact emotions i’ve felt quite like “kintsugi” does. the delivery is quite simple, lana’s vocals accompanied by a piano, allowing the vulnerability of the lyrics to sink into the cracks of your heart and slowly fill them, turning grief into something beautiful. i can’t listen to “kintsugi” without crying my eyes out. it provides a few minutes of relief, knowing i’m not alone in feeling my emotions deeply.