By Meghan Muldoon

WESTPORT–It has been thirty years since her father, Michael Waldman, died tragically in a seaplane accident on Block Island, but Stacy Waldman Bass said she is still grieving the loss. 

“It became really obvious to me pretty early on that I was never getting over this,” Bass told a packed room at Westport Library’s Trefz Forum.  “At some point I realized, almost defiantly, I don’t want to get over this. This is something that happened to me and has changed everything.”

Bass also lost her mother, Jessica, in 2019 to pancreatic cancer. She found herself searching for a way to channel her immense grief.  That search ultimately became the foundation of her new memoir, “Lightkeeper: A Memoir through the Lens of Love and Loss.”

Bass, who has lived in Westport for most of her life, shared passages and insights from her book during a conversation last night with her mentor and New York Times Bestselling author Dani Shapiro. In their discussion, Bass explained the significance of her book’s title and the concept at its heart.

“It’s about the act of keeping the light, their light, and the light of family and legacy, what I call light keeping and how there can be astonishing meaning and power in doing so,” she said.

Bass, a renowned photographer, said she felt a profound responsibility to preserve her family’s narrative that went beyond the cold facts of her father’s death. When Bass first searched his name online, she found only FAA reports and news stories about the crash. She said she wanted to ensure people remember him not for his tragic ending but for the meaningful life he lived.

“I remember feeling so strongly like this is who the world will remember him as unless I do something about that. There is no other evidence of this incredible life that he has lived and the people that he’s impacted and touched,” Bass explained. “So I think that’s partly where the concept about light keeping sort of started to percolate, that it was my responsibility.”   

Bass also described her father’s death as a catalyst for personal reflection and that the tragedy gave her “permission” to make significant life changes including the ending of her first marriage.  

“Right after the accident, it was a time where I had to rediscover who I was, what I actually wanted,” Bass explained. “And realizing, wow, I understand now what it means to say that life is short and I’m not on the right path.”  

Lightkeeper includes carefully selected photographs, many taken by Bass’s father or close family friends, each serving as a portal into a memory.  Bass highlighted one of her favorites – of her mother on her honeymoon in Puerto Rico, taken by her father.  Bass said the photograph sparked her curiosity about her parents’ early married life and provided a way to connect with a moment in their lives before she existed.  

“Not only is it a beautifully composed photo and has a great mid-century modern feel, but my mother was so radiant. She was always beautiful but there was something about this picture and seeing her before I was me that really made me want to dive in more,” Bass explained.    

Bass also spoke about how her “I Love You, Mom” social media project during her mother’s illness became another form of light keeping – a public, yet intimate documentation of familial love that resonated with many experiencing similar journeys of loss and connection.  

Initially exploring grief through photography, Bass said she gradually transitioned to writing, using words to “metabolize” her emotions that photographs alone could not capture.  According to Bass, writing her memoir gave her a way to carry sorrow without losing the ability to live fully and she has come to embrace grief as a constant presence in her life.

“I want to think about my parents every day. I want to do my best to honor them with how I’m living my life,” she said. “And I think there’s a lot of freedom in allowing yourself to not get over it.”