a way of life--my mother's eulogy

When impressionist painter, Claude Monet, was 80, he received a visit from a Parisian photographer who was interested in talking with him about his life.  Monet finally said to him, “Look, if you really want to know me, go into my garden and look at my water lilies. They are more me than my paintings . They are more me than the me you see standing in front of you.”

I wish I could have asked my mother before she died what thing, what object or landscape or idea, like Monet’s water lilies, captures her true essence. 

She might have said: her lilac bush,  a raspberry, a gorgeous sunset, Yosemite’s half dome, a glass of orange juice, an ice cream cone, the robin’s nest on her front porch, the faces of her grandchildren, a good hearty joke, or maybe even Robert Redford’s blue eyes.  Like Monet, my mother might have chosen something outside herself that strangely reveals  and reflects her true spirit.

But instead of a thing, I want to offer a simple action that I think speaks of my mother’s true essence.  It was Rita Ann’s way of life.  This simple action: STOP. LOOK. AND LISTEN.

STOP. Don’t hurry. Don’t rush.  Steady and slow, make sure you pause. Practice patience. Practice pausing.

LOOK. Look at the flower, at the bird, at the child learning how to walk, at the neighbor or friend.  Look at the way the setting sun hits the tops of the trees and captures true beauty.  Look.  Look at the full moon rising. Look.  Really look. If you don’t stop you can’t really see, you will miss the small details that make life so meaningful.  

Watch a child, they get right down on the ground to observe an ant, a bee, or a snail leaving a slimey trail.  They are not concerned with time but rather with wonder. 

My mom, at 72, still had these eyes of wonder, this way of looking at the world.  Even though she was unable to bend down to see the small details of an ant or a bird outside her window, she was still looking, still looking full of wonder at the next face that would walk through the door.  

Her way of looking was emotionally and spiritually rich.  In her face, in her looking, I could see the amazement in her eyes at restored relationships.  I could see peace wash over her in the way she looked at the woman who would come to bathe her each day.  Her way of looking said, “I know you. You’re a healer. You are holy.”

Look at the world around you. It is full of magic and light and beauty. It is full of grace and forgiveness and love and healing.

My mother said to me recently, “you must tell others that dying does not have to be sad, it can be joyful.”  I am pretty sure she said this because she practiced a life of “wonder looking”. This “wonder looking” is a mindful looking--a looking that is entirely whole and complete.

STOP. LOOK. AND LISTEN. Listen. Listen closely to the birds, listen to the cold front that brings strong breezes, listen carefully to each other. 

 My mother would stop and talk and listen to anyone. She loved conversation and she loved people. Sometimes this would drive me crazy. I would want to move along because we would have to be somewhere at a certain time and she would stop and listen to a stranger, an 8 year old neighbor, or the grocery clerk. 

She would know things about people that shocked me.  But I get it now. People would tell her things because she had a look about her that said, “go on, you can trust me, I am interested in you. I want to hear you. I want to listen.”  Her listening invited people to open up and share. Her listening was healing.

STOP. LOOK. AND LISTEN.  My mother’s true essence. Yes.  A small but significant gift to the world. Definitely.

more haiku

A small collection of haiku I've written since returning to America to take care of my dying mother.



my toddler's blue shoes
just outside her bedroom door
wait for a walk


only after the storm
do fallen tree trunks reach for
the bog iron pond


love never ends
between two red cardinals dancing
in the dead leaves of Spring


with the sea and sky
and the rugged Scottish scree
i say goodbye, goodbye

snowstorm haiku

A small series of haiku from this week's walk.

........................................

I see it coming--
the grey snow cloud
rising out of the North Sea


all land, sea, and sky disappear
beneath the greyness of a
Spring storm


my knitted scarf
catches the fresh white snow
as it falls


the tail of the snow cloud
kisses field and hill
moving west

..........................................

Walking this week to welcome Spring, I found a snowstorm.  I watched it rise, I caught its snow, and by the time I turned down the path to head for home, I saw it leave.  From my position, I can see the land and the hills, the vast sky, and the open sea, and now I know that I can watch a storm come and go.
I

finding home

In my mother's overgrown creativity space, underneath bags and bags of fabric, spools of thread, needles, and patterns, I found eight photographs with quotes printed on fabric.  And this is what I did with them.

While I made this quilt to cherish all that I love about my mother--someone who is in love with nature and wise words and the way fabric looks together--it surprisingly captures a part of me. 

It is good to find home again.  

not in ideas, but in things

I have a red knitted blanket my mother made for me as her mother was dying.  I remember sitting at my grandmother's bedside as her sleeps became longer, hearing the clicking of my mother's knitting needles.  The wool spread out over my mother's legs reached down to pull in more life.  As the circulation of blood slowed in my grandmother's body, this blanket, row by row, knit by knit, came to life.  My mother's hands knitted sorrow and grief with love and hope and blessing.  This blanket, now 25 years old, has been all over the world and now rests on my 13 year old son's bed.  Someday I will tell him the beginning of its story and when it became part of his own.

Simple, handmade things hold stories. That's there power.

As my own mother's life slows down, I find myself making many blankets.  I can't help myself.  I make one small quilt for my mother.  And I make another.  Time is running out for her, for us, but I sew and sew and sew.  I embroider a tree in its centre because we love trees.  

I know the story this blanket holds. It is more clear than all the other blankets I make. It's my mother's story told in the images I have sewn on the blanket--the birds, the trees, the waterfalls, the autumnal leaves--these things will always tell her story better than words can.  It is not in ideas where we find ourselves, but in things. Simple things. Beautiful, soft things.

And then I knit a baby blanket for my new nephew.

I think of him as I knit. I wonder what his life will be like.  I weave in blessings of hope and love for him and his parents, but I mostly want him to feel comforted and safe and warm. The story of his blanket only begins with me and my hands.  When I pass it to him, it will become part of his story.

It becomes obvious what is happening to me.  I have become my mother and for the first time in my 44 years, I am comforted by this idea. I am like my mother and I like it.

As I sit and knit and wait for my mother to awake, her sleeps are longer now, I make another blanket.  This one is for my 7 year old son made with purple, black, red, and white wool, colours he has chosen.  Row by row, the blanket is writing a story.  Someday I will tell him when and where I made this blanket, and I may even remember to tell him what I was thinking about--that he was seven years old, that his mama was watching her mother die, and while she knitted she remembered the power of her mother's hands--to comfort, to tell, to create, to love.  

But I am not sure words will ever fully tell the story.  I'll leave it mostly for the colours to speak.  They have  their own beautiful language.

before cameras there were only words

For the past week I've been up before dawn and out the door to catch a good view of the sea and sky.  My normal behaviour for walking is to practice mindfulness. Sometimes I stop to record a haiku that is swirling in my mind, but mostly I delight in the moment by just showing up. I have this theory, that if I can start my day this way, then I might have a better chance carrying this mindfulness throughout the day.

But yesterday was different. I took my camera with me. I set out to photograph what I've cherished so much about this week--to witness the rising of the sun over the North Sea and the moon setting over the western hills.  A quick turn of my head meant I could see and experience both of these morning moments at the same time.

Yet, having the camera with me change the way I walked, looked, and thought.  Instead of being fully present, I was desperately trying to capture how the beauty of dawn was making me feel.  And after taking photo after photo, I was feeling more disappointed with my ability to capture the moment with my camera. I just about convinced myself if only I had a new camera, a longer lens, a sturdier tripod, if only I could learn the art of photography, maybe even take a class, well, then I could capture this moment better.  I could capture it the way I really see it.  My frustration led to insecurity which led to disappointment which led me to question the way I was seeing.

By the time I turned on the path headed for home, I realized that before cameras, there were only words.  And sometimes even words can't capture what you feel inside. Sometimes capturing beauty calls for an admiring silence, a small act of stillness. Sometimes just showing up is enough.

why are we creative?

I have been thinking a lot lately about the creative life.  Each day as I watch my children participate in creativity--writing stories, creating songs, making movies--and I think of all the projects I have going just now, I wonder why we have such a strong urge to create?  I am pretty sure we don't stand alone in this great creative urge.

As my mother slowly dies, I have taken on completing quilts she has started but is unable to finish. The funny thing is that I am not much of a quilter, but something in me wants to see these projects completed.  In the process of cutting and sewing, I am aware that my creative practice is about celebrating life, particularly my mother's life. It is a way for me to cherish her.  I also see the bigger picture of who we are as mother and daughter and who we are as individuals part of humanity.  Practicing creativity is then about making meaning of one's own life--a chance to understand and a chance to heal.  

But creativity is also about beauty.  Whether in design, in texture, in light, in the way words come together on a page, or in the way colours reveal beauty, the creative life allows us to catch beauty and participate in the great universal dance of creation.  Often this dance is silent, but it powerfully reveals who we truly are.  This revealing need not be so public. In fact, it is quite private, I think.  There is a great peace in knowing who we are and the purpose we serve in this life.  Once we've found that, we can just carry on, living life fully and without fuss.

Being creative is also a spiritual practice.  The more I watch the creative process unfold in me and in my children, I am aware that it is indeed a mystical process.  As I watch beauty take shape around me, words fail and it is the unspoken rush of emotions that make it mystical and outside what we know to be normal life.   And yet, practicing creativity seems to be such a normal need.  We need to eat, to move our bodies, and to sleep, but to live a fully balanced life, we need to create too.

Wondering what being creative means to you?