Seattle Met

Derek Dizon built @arestingplace.sea for the community to grapple with loss 🥀

When terrible things happen, what kind of space do we create for them? It’s a question Derek Dizon has wrestled with for most of his life; when he was four years old, his mother was murdered.

Today, Phoebe Dizon is at the heart of her son’s work as founder of A Resting Place, a cultural resource center in the Chinatown–International District focused on Asian, Black, Brown, and queer/trans grief and loss. Her face beams out from the center of the community altar there, housed in a curio cabinet. In a family snapshot perched amid dried flowers, she wears a pin-striped blazer, her eyes sparkling.

Visitors have left photos, keepsakes, and handwritten notes remembering loved ones. Art, poems, and remembrances dot the walls. In the grief resource library toward the back, people can recline on mats and pillows to write letters to their departed. “In our society, we don’t have an everyday ritual or everyday space to really acknowledge
loss,” Dizon says.

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Words: @besslovejoy
Images: @meron_photo