Saying Goodbye to my Mother

Saying Goodbye to my Mother

This weekend we flew to Aspen for my mother’s “Celebration of Life.”  I forgot to take photographs at the Celebration, but I did take a couple when we arrived or I should say, barely arrived.  We were the last flight to get in. When we landed one of the guys unloading the bags said to me, “you are SO lucky!”  I thought he was referring to our bags and said, “Really?  You mean our bags almost didn’t make the flight?”

“No!  Ten more minutes and the plane would have had to turn around and go back.”

Evidently the visibility was deteriorating by the minute. So yeah.

Arriving in Aspen

Herbert Bayer Sculpture outside the Aspen Institute

Surrounded by family and good friends, the Celebration of Life was a beautiful tribute to my mother with an outpouring of love, memories, laughter and sadness. But mostly joy.  Joy that I am fortunate enough to have such a big, wonderful family, with lots of siblings, and extended family, all of whom I love and am close to.  I was able to spend time with one of my nieces that I haven’t seen in ages, and spend time with cousins, distant cousins, extended family and many, many friends.  And then, dancing around the edges of all of that was my mother.  My beautiful, smart, complicated, funny mother.

Mom in her 30’s

Prior to flying out west I was feeling a bit grumbly about the whole thing.  It’s not easy flying out, it’s expensive, I didn’t want to go, but lurking under all of that grumbling was the feeling that this was the final goodbye.  By coming out to where she lived and having this very public “ceremony” we were closing a chapter.  And that… that felt far too painful to contemplate, much less really feel and be acutely in touch with.  That we also arrived in a snow storm, with flight delays and everything else that comes with traveling with four other people, it seemed to confirm my feelings that all of this should have been done via Zoom.  And then something bizarre happened.  On the final leg of our trip getting there, I was seated next to a young man who was going through a really, really difficult, as in life transformative, time.  He kept apologizing to me for spilling his “guts” and reassured me that he never does this. He poured out his troubles during our 45 minute flight and told me what was going on with him and it made me realize how important rituals are.  How ceremonies aren’t for any one person, but more for the collective group, the family, the community and in our recognition and attendance we heal individually, but also together.

My mother dressed in a Tweety Bird Costume during one of her many costume parties that we had up at the ranch.

Mom deadpanning while wearing her polar bear hat one Christmas on the ranch.

As it turned out, one of my brothers was quarantined in Brussels with Covid and so couldn’t get out and another of my brothers was unable to come, but attended via Zoom, as did a number of other people.

We started the ceremony with a pianist playing Mozart and ended with Ragtime, one of her favorite genres.  Everyone who spoke, spoke eloquently about my mother and there was laughter and memories and sadness and connection.  The following day I fell apart.  It was as though I’d been holding things together up until that point, but then couldn’t keep it up.  I felt exhausted and completely and utterly overwhelmed with feelings: grief, sadness, love, gratitude and everything in between.  Thankfully I was with family.  Family my mother was once the matriarch of.  She is gone now and yet she resides in all of us.  I can just hear her adding, “a dubious distinction…” I’m so, so grateful to her, and to all that she left behind.

During this bizarre time of Covid any gathering has the potential to be a superspreader event and while I am keeping my fingers crossed that this was not one of those events, I have already heard that 6 people who attended have now tested positive.  My immediate family has not, at least not yet, but we will continue to monitor ourselves.

Grief Comes in Waves

Grief Comes in Waves

Grief comes in waves.  People say that, and I know what they mean.  The other day I was happily working away on a new piece, trying to get the elements to behave themselves and talk to each other nicely, when suddenly I thought of my mom.  It was a tsunami of emotions. I had to sit down and just be still while the feelings crashed over me.  And here’s the thing… this blog? It reminds me of my mom, because when I first began blogging more than a decade ago, my mother was its biggest supporter and commenter.  I think she commented on every single post or nearly every one of them.  That blog was called Emma’s Hope Book. It eventually reached a massive audience with thousands of views per post.  And then it was time for me to move on.

I started this blog: Where Art & Life Meet. I wanted a place where I could write about my work and art and life and everything in between.  And so my mother began commenting here too.  I miss her so.

During the last few years of her life she began sending videos and funny quotes to a few lucky recipients, of whom I was one.  I loved receiving them, especially because it was right when COVID hit New York City and all of us were reeling.  The city was in lockdown, I’d just started my YouTube Channel and often Mom’s videos and messages were the one thing I could count on to make me laugh, so I’d post them here for all of you to enjoy too.  I miss her so.

Whenever I see a funny video on Youtube I think of her.  Sometimes if I’m doing a couple of things at once, I’ll catch myself thinking – Oh!  I have to send this to mom!!  She’d love it. And then I remember that I can’t.

Her favorite video of mine was this one that I’ve added below. One of her caregivers told me she watched it multiple times.

 

So when I saw the video I’m posting below, I thought, Mom would have loved this. This one’s for you, Mom. It won’t let me share via this blog, so you have to click on the highlighted text instead.

This is a message I’d pay attention to!

And this is another one that she would have liked because… cute animals. She loved animals.

Cute and funny animals

I miss her so.

 

Showing up For Work

Showing up For Work

I’m not feeling great.  I should probably just end this post right here.  But, no, I’ll soldier on. Not because this post is important, it’s not, but because it represents all the things on my to do list and so much that is just life. No one needs to hear my laundry list of “woes”, we’ve all got them.  More to the point is that I’m struggling.  My mom’s death feels like an endless, bottomless pit of emotions.  I know I’ll get through it.  I know work-arounds that help me get through those days when things are really bad and “getting through the day” feels impossible.  That’s when the put-one-foot-in-front-of-the-other method of coping gets enacted.

Grieving is a luxury. Some days require putting all of that to the side so that other things can be dealt with in a timely fashion and because life moves along, it doesn’t wait for those of us who are grieving.  And I also know I can’t leap frog my way beyond the grief.  It will be there waiting for me on the other side.  It’s always there.  Some days I’m luckier than others, the grief stays on the edge, other days it moves front and center.  Those are the days when every step feels like I’m dragging a fifty pound weight.  Those are the days when showing up feels like a monumental task.  But I know from designing, from creating, from every day that I work on a piece, that even when I don’t “feel like it” showing up for the work is one of the most important things I can do.  And, counter-intuitively, it is what ends up making me feel better in the long run.

All of this reminds me of something Michael Crichton once said.  It was decades ago when I was the Director of the Aspen Writer’s Conference and had reached out to him to kick off the conference.  He was game and gave an amazing talk in the Paepcke Auditorium at the Aspen Institute.  I will have to paraphrase as there is no transcript of his presentation.  He was talking about writing. Imagine, he said, if you were a commercial airline pilot with a full schedule of flights and woke up one morning and said, You know, I don’t really feel like flying today.  I think I’ll go back to sleep for a few hours. Writing (any of the arts) is the only “profession” where people talk themselves out of getting up and putting in the hours.  Everyone in the audience was quiet.  But it doesn’t work that way, he continued.  If you’re a writer/artist then you get up and you put in your hours, whether it’s flying a commercial airline or writing a book, or in my case, working on a new piece, writing up a new workshop, filming a new Youtube video or any of the other things I’ve got on my list of things that I need to do because this is the life and profession I’ve chosen for myself.

How does grief fit into all of this?  It doesn’t.  It’s just there.  All the time.  And as a result, it is I that must make the necessary adjustments in my life to accommodate these new feelings and emotions, while continuing to show up for the work.

 

Finishing a Project is Like a Tiny Death

Finishing a Project is Like a Tiny Death

I’m just about finished with my big improvisational stitching piece that I’ve been working on for the last 7 months or so, and it’s bittersweet.  It always feels like a tiny death.  There’s sadness and a kind of grieving that happens.  Sometimes I just leave it up on my design wall and look at it from time to time, knowing that eventually it will need to be stretched and framed or mounted, floated or somehow “finished” as in ready to be hung on the wall or made into a pillow or whatever I’ve decided I’m going to do with it.  But often I just can’t and so on the design wall it stays until something else is begun and necessitates that I take it down to give room for the new piece.

Also there’s the feeling that I’ve done my best and maybe this will be the pinnacle of my creativity.  Maybe everything from now on will just be a rehashing or versions of the same thing; I won’t progress as an artist beyond this, is the thinking.  But I don’t know that to be true.  It hasn’t been so far, so why assume it will be now?  I keep growing, exploring, investigating, learning, trying new things, new ideas, why invite trouble? as a friend of mine used to say.

The stoics are big on living today as though it were your last, being kind and recognizing that every action we take is a choice.  So today I’m choosing to just keep going.  I know I’m nearing the end, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less joyful working on it.  In fact, savoring each stitch, knowing that I’m almost finished makes it all the more wonderful and magical. Taking joy in the process is always the answer and boy, have I loved working on this piece!

Yesterday I had my monthly, scheduled livestream for my Patrons.  We had such fun!  I was talking to them about some ideas I had for this piece and everyone was chatting and I had a moment when I just stopped and savored the joy of stitching, of this piece, of all that’s happened since I began it.  And that’s the thing, each piece carries with it so many memories as life continues going along.  This piece came with me to Africa. It was with me when I learned of my mother’s death. I took it to Egypt and Jordan. I carried it in my backpack through countless airports and airport security.  It’s been put up on my design wall hundreds of times, only to be taken down again to be stitched, added, stretched, pulled, manipulated, torn, cut into, bound, sewn and even stuffed.  It has my tears soaked into its very fibers, I’ve painted, stenciled, appliquéd and stitched and stitched and stitched, culminating in this piece.

Now it’s almost done.

A tiny death.  What’s that cliche about one door closing and another opens?  This piece will give way to the next one and the fun and joy and magic will begin all over again.

And there’s beauty in that.

Dreaming of My Mother

Dreaming of My Mother

Laughing with Mom – Photo by John Kelly

“Have you dreamt about her?”

This was a question a number of people asked after my mother died.  But I wasn’t.  I hadn’t.  In fact I couldn’t remember dreaming about anything or anyone, until this past week.  Maybe it was because it was the first Thanksgiving since she died.  Maybe it’s because her birthday fell on Thanksgiving every 7 years and so Thanksgiving always reminds me of her or because this was her first birthday that went uncelebrated.  This past Saturday she would have been 93 years old.

When we were in Jordan, just a few weeks ago, (it seems like months already) our guide told us that the life expectancy there was mid seventies.  He then asked if I was considered old in the US. “It depends upon who you ask,” I joked.  “How about you?” I asked.

“I don’t feel old, until I look in the mirror,” he replied.  Which was just the sort of thing my mother would have said.  We laughed about that.

“Aging isn’t for the faint of heart,” my mother used to say.  She also was known to say, “Aging sucks.”

But in my dreams she isn’t old.  She can still speak.  She has shoulder length hair and in my dream last night she was wearing an emerald green bikini, of all things, with a cream colored, open lacey top that I’d crocheted for her.  Did I mention that I’m teaching myself to crochet?  I’m no where near good enough to make such a thing for anyone, let alone as a gift for someone I love, but in my dream, she looked amazing and youthful and the crocheted top looked pretty fabulous as well!

I remember thinking, “I want to look like her when I’m her age,” but in the dream I said nothing and instead just told her how much I loved her.  She gave me one of her magnificent smiles and then began talking to someone else in the room. I almost said something about how happy I was that she was wearing the top I’d crocheted her, but didn’t want to interrupt her conversation with this other person.  Secretly, I was thrilled.  After all I only just began trying to crochet in the last few weeks.  Wearing that crocheted top that I’d made for her was so typical of my mother.  She was a huge supporter of all my various passions, particularly when it came to making things.

It was my mother who taught me to knit and as she was right handed, (I’m left handed) I learned to knit right handed as well.  I’ve often wondered if I should try to reteach myself to knit left handed, but then I think, “Why?”  Besides I’m closer to the end than I am to the beginning of life, why jostle the waters? And I knit pretty quickly right handed, so there doesn’t seem to be much point.  And, added plus, any instructions and videos are always written for right handers.

My mother would have approved of my dream, though I don’t think she cared for the color emerald green, but even so, it would have made her laugh.  She loved to laugh.  So today, I will remember her laughing and am grateful to have my dreams of her when she was still able to speak, when she was still able to move about easily and painlessly, when she was happy.