Grappling with Overdose Death Through the Art of Divination: A Tribute to Mikey

This essay reads the overdose of "Mikey" through a death tarot card I created to honor his life. In doing so, I explore the possibility of using art to tell a broader story of community care and emotional healing. The death tarot card represents not only material death, but the potential for profound transformation. Mikey was a "street dad" to many living in an encampment whose early death is a tragedy, but whose life story reclaims community where people often see none. Can the intuitive process of creating art from ethnographic data offer medical anthropologists new analytical insights toward healing?