2 years later...3
3/9
3 years ago on February 12 my mother shattered her elbow; the necessary surgery along with the resulting 6 week recovery period seemed like a difficult hurdle to overcome for an 83 year young woman living alone in the country.
5 weeks later she was diagnosed with stage IV ovarian cancer and all of a sudden the elbow was a non issue.
A year later, after chemo and surgery which had carried with it the promise of possibly years, we were stunned to see her in a steady and rapid decline and on March 9, 2015, 2 years ago, she died.
For the past month I have simultaneously relived both the beginnings of this ordeal 3 years ago and the end of it a year later. Inhabiting the events of 2014, 2015 and 2017 at the same time has me feeling as if I am in a time warp.
About 6 months into my mother's illness I realized that some of the random thoughts paintings that I was making had to do with her and me and my brother and our relationships and her sickness and eventually, her dying.
Over the past 2 1/2 years I've continued to make these paintings but have found that I don't always know that I am making them in the moment. It is only later, when in a certain frame of mind that I can look at the work I've completed (or am about to complete) and see which panels I have made for her and this project.
There are currently about 20 paintings in the series. I don't know how many there will be in the end, I don't know which of the ones I consider part of the series now will stay part of the series later and I don't know how long I will keep making them, maybe forever.
This is one of the most recently completed. It references that moment when the awfulness of the elbow situation became obliterated by the horror of the cancer, and in hindsight it is about how the cancer, already so advanced was sabotaging her recovery from the elbow. At the time it made no sense that this normally self sufficient woman seemed unable to master her recovery. It has taken 3 years for me to fully comprehend that the fall and the subsequent feelings of vulnerability had broken through my mother's natural resilience to illness catapulting her to a place where she had succumbed to the full effects of the cancer without knowing why she was suddenly so incapacitatingly ill.
I miss my mother, her love of nature especially as we head into spring, her fierce activist nature especially during these troubled times and her friendship that was a constant in my life. I miss being able to share this work with her.
3 years ago on February 12 my mother shattered her elbow; the necessary surgery along with the resulting 6 week recovery period seemed like a difficult hurdle to overcome for an 83 year young woman living alone in the country.
5 weeks later she was diagnosed with stage IV ovarian cancer and all of a sudden the elbow was a non issue.
A year later, after chemo and surgery which had carried with it the promise of possibly years, we were stunned to see her in a steady and rapid decline and on March 9, 2015, 2 years ago, she died.
For the past month I have simultaneously relived both the beginnings of this ordeal 3 years ago and the end of it a year later. Inhabiting the events of 2014, 2015 and 2017 at the same time has me feeling as if I am in a time warp.
About 6 months into my mother's illness I realized that some of the random thoughts paintings that I was making had to do with her and me and my brother and our relationships and her sickness and eventually, her dying.
Over the past 2 1/2 years I've continued to make these paintings but have found that I don't always know that I am making them in the moment. It is only later, when in a certain frame of mind that I can look at the work I've completed (or am about to complete) and see which panels I have made for her and this project.
There are currently about 20 paintings in the series. I don't know how many there will be in the end, I don't know which of the ones I consider part of the series now will stay part of the series later and I don't know how long I will keep making them, maybe forever.
This is one of the most recently completed. It references that moment when the awfulness of the elbow situation became obliterated by the horror of the cancer, and in hindsight it is about how the cancer, already so advanced was sabotaging her recovery from the elbow. At the time it made no sense that this normally self sufficient woman seemed unable to master her recovery. It has taken 3 years for me to fully comprehend that the fall and the subsequent feelings of vulnerability had broken through my mother's natural resilience to illness catapulting her to a place where she had succumbed to the full effects of the cancer without knowing why she was suddenly so incapacitatingly ill.
I miss my mother, her love of nature especially as we head into spring, her fierce activist nature especially during these troubled times and her friendship that was a constant in my life. I miss being able to share this work with her.
