"Raphaela Willington died on January 6, 2004, of ovarian cancer. Death became her muse in her last years." So writes John Briggs in the foreword to Elegy. At Briggs' suggestion, Willington compiled a manuscript of her poems and sketches. Those poems, Briggs writes, "present the strangely joyous flavors of that brooding nothingness that makes our life so full."