My Mother and My Art

My mother died March 14, at age 99.  The past few weeks have been hectic, with little time for creative work.  She had a remarkable life; her obituary is here.

In recent years, as I started working with drawings and collages, my mother would recall a grade school classmate who once said, “Rand draws things nobody else draws.” She was proud of encouraging my childhood creativity.

My mother’s creative influence was more obvious in music.  She began teaching me piano when I was just four and I made up my own music even before she started my formal lessons.

But I also remember the drawings my classmate talked about. During class I often doodled geometric designs, lines crossing in triangular patterns as I tried to find the right balance between line and space, the point when something was done, before it became overdone. I would bring my drawings home to show my mother, and she taped them to our refrigerator. She was proud of whatever I did.

In recent years I reverted to childhood form. I again delighted in showing her new pieces and works in progress. That was easy, as we lived in the same building but on different floors. I framed some big pieces from 2019 and 2020, and hung them like a gallery in her apartment.

Those of you who read my February blog know about the challenging, enmeshed emotional connection I had with my mother.  I felt compelled to be her emotional support as a child and was solely responsible for ensuring her care the past 17 years, as she lived into her 100th year.

And although in many ways a weight is now lifted, I miss her enormously. I still have the impulse to pop in to see her as I come and go from my building, to FaceTime when I travel. It’s strange not having to keep the phone on, to always be ready to respond. There’s a hole there, which will perhaps fill slowly, but never entirely. I hope there is also space now in which I can breathe and create things that weren’t possible before.

My mother took two group art lessons in middle age, and created two paintings.  She was going to throw them out, but I preserved them.  Here is one. I think it’s pretty good.

Collage Art Representation of Family Relationships

I’ve only used my parents once in my adult art.  Here is Family Study 1, using two solo pictures of my parents with one each of them holding me as an infant.

I intended to do more, but hesitated as other projects bubbled up. Perhaps I’ll return to this before long.

The Farmer’s Daughter

My mother would often say she was a “farmer’s daughter,” and indeed she loved to plant seeds and watch things grow.

Until she died she cultivated amaryllis. Her attachment to those beautiful lilies went back to early childhood, when she and her mother collected bulbs from a field her father was renting to grow vegetables. The previous farmer had grown amaryllis and they collected left-over bulbs to plant in the yard of the log house my grandfather had just built, after their first home burned.

The plants went with her, dug up and placed in planters; first to a retirement home in Bradenton, then up to another in St. Petersburg, and finally to her balcony in our condo building.

I took pictures of the flowers and used them in several works.  Here is one I recently sold, Solace, from 2020.

Saying Goodbye

On March 29, we said a final goodbye to my mother.

There was much love and many good memories as a small group of caregivers, family, church and community friends, children of friends, and grandchildren of friends shared pictures and recollections of her life. She had a full 99 years, two months, and two weeks to the day.

I also showed some videos of her playing the piano over the past few years. The last was from February 4.

I told about her playing and singing Life is Like a Mountain Railroad for the funeral of an elderly church friend decades ago, and read some of the lyrics; a granddaughter of that wonderful woman came up afterwards to thank me for the story and the memories it brought her. The granddaughter had sung in my mother’s children’s choir at the Gillette First Baptist Church.

I also read some of the lyrics from the first hymns she taught me, What a Friend We Have in Jesus and Come Thy Fount of Every Blessing; and two she sang as church solos in my childhood, His Eye is on the Sparrow and It is Well with my Soul.

Several caregivers talked about the piano lessons she gave them even in recent days. And the cooking lessons, and the stories, and the wisdom.

At graveside I quoted her favorite Bible verse, Psalm 118:24: “This is the day that the Lord has made; Let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

I said a final prayer.

Cousin Jim pulled out his harmonica and started playing Amazing Grace; we all joined in.

A former caregiver, Delphine, started singing This is the Day; we all joined in.

Music rang out over the cemetery I first walked with my mother and grandmother as a small child. Circles were closed.

It felt good. The journey was over.