Digression: In memory of an artist.

My mom passed away last year right after Mother’s Day, at a hospice house.  The pain had escalated so much I could not keep up with the meds at home, after three sleepless nights, I finally got a nurse that facilitated our transition there.  And it all sounds so clinical now.

When we got there she did say my dad’s name and: “Oh good you are here.” Stayed with her sleeping on the sofa; during the first night she called out for me and I kept buzzing for the nurse.  Some family members did come to say good bye, I warned them she was no longer responsive even to me, but they still came.   It was weird how restless she was and fighting to breathe even when our rabbi came to give her the final prayers — that was on Mother’s Day.

Overnight, I sat up with her and prayed to my dad, my grandma and everyone she lost and passed on, to stop her struggling but my mum apparently was not letting go.

The next day, Holly came, daughter of my mum’s dear friend Sybil.  We grew up as sort of unofficial cousins and friends.  Told me funny stories about picking up her rescue cat from Maine and driving home with it in the car, the cat was going wild in its crate and she was calling her husband on the phone — it was just a good distraction.

Then one of the hospice volunteers came by to offer us cookies and we were sitting there talking about being little girls and eating cookies at Christmas under the tree and my mom she stopped struggling.  Think with Holly there, Sybil and my dad convinced her it was okay to let go.

We buzzed staff and then walked around the garden of the building to give them the time they needed to do their work.  In the lobby there was a lady with two comfort dogs, both labs one a cream-tan color the other a black lab.  The black lab broke away and came over to kiss me.  We had a black dog for many years so thinking back on it and when I told folks I said maybe it was a good sign my mum was out of pain.

I’d like to think so.  Time goes on, I have struggled with my job and trying to keep the house in order which is a challenge, I feel like I tackle a few things and more just happen. This week I found a large hole in the back yard by the corner of the rebuilt seawalls. And my engineer insists that is not structural and I am waiting to hear back about a repair — he said he would reach out to my contractor, but no word yet.

The Winthrop Art Association (WAA) is having its Annual Spring Arts Festival, my mom was the founder and she gifted me a life membership.  So,  I regrouped our awards into one family/memorial award for the festival for abstract/modern only, and gave a donation to a scholarship for a Winthrop high student graduating and studying art in my mom’s name — separate from the WAA’s own scholarship.

The WAA president Dawn and I had a conversation about the memorial and dedication of the festival. She wanted a blurb about her which I wrote, printed out, edited and sent to her. Did not want to rehash her obit but my mum loved art and always encouraged everyone she met who said they were artists to join the WAA.  She did this for years up until she passed.

My time now is difficult I just pulled the paintings for this memorial display.  And I made a conscious decision not to pull anything realistic but only her most abstract work.  For many years, running around the festival as a kid I have memories of people standing in front of her work saying: “What the heck is that?”

Kind of what I was going for this exhibit.

Many of her oil paintings from the 1960’s and 1970’s were very abstracted and also the pigment in some of the paint colors that she used probably has faded, so I am pulling more recent work from the last 10-20 years, my mom had a major retrospective show at the Clocktower Gallery run by the arts council back in 2011. We hung the show, she had surgery and we had the reception near the end but it was nice, many friends and family came including a lot of her Mass. Art friends.

For me, this is a slow start though, something that I must tackle it is just difficult though — I have her paintings and also paintings of artists and friends to sort through and find homes for and I’m only at the beginning.