LAST ONE STANDING

I have lived through three familial deaths. Each experience of mourning has been profoundly different and I find that confusing.

 

Dad died first in late June 1991. He was an upbeat guy with an easy smile who told groan-worthy jokes and sang a lot. Deeply devoted to my mother, he somehow managed to stay positive while living for decades with her clinical depression. In retrospect, I think he felt indebted to her. She had a tough time of it early in their marriage. Soon after my sister was born, dad left for a tuberculosis cure at a mountain sanatorium in Saranac Lake, New York. He was gone for two years. During that time, Mom had to abandon their apartment in town and move with her baby to her father’s home in rural Lac-à-la-Tortue.

Dad was terribly ill with vascular dementia in the last years of his life. He wasted away both physically and mentally. I will never forget his moans of discomfort and his emaciated broom handle legs. I took him for little excursions by wheeling him around the hallway on his hospital floor. A huge poster of Einstein hung in one area of the circular hallway. Every time we rolled past it, Dad grunted, since he could no longer speak, and pointed enthusiastically at the wild portrait of the famous physicist. That memory is branded in my psyche forever.

 

After a cryptic phone call from the hospital telling me he was not well, I nervously drove the two hours to my hometown to see him one last time. He lay dead on his bed in his Johnny shirt with no blanket. My first thought was to find one to keep him warm, but the longer I looked at him, the more I realized this was not my father. It was only the shell that had housed him. His personality and the fire in his eyes were gone.

 

I internalized this momentary insight, still I was unable to paint for a long while after seeing him on his deathbed. I had a serious meltdown once my children returned to school in the fall. When I eventually felt ready to honour my father, I did so by painting knights in disintegrating armour. I created these two paintings after his death.

Léopold 1

 

 

 

Moon Goddess

 

Mom died years later in 2017 aged 103, two weeks after a stroke. Finally happy after moving into a senior's residence at 99, she required little assistance. Attendants merely helped her shower and dress. She no longer had to cook or do dishes. I took care of her finances and visited every couple of days with fresh berries and cookies. Paradise!

 

How I felt after Mom died was unlike what I experienced with dad. My mother lived to be very old and remained in decent physical shape almost to the end. She never deteriorated the way dad did. Compassion for her years of depression and her difficult childhood filled my thoughts, but I was also relieved that she finally knew happiness in those last years. She was gentle, with a good but very sad heart. I created this charcoal self-portrait after she died.

 

Et après (And after)

 

My sister who died last October had a tough time of it because, like my father, she wasted away to skin and bones, in her case from Parkinson's disease. I moved her four times in six years as she lost mobility. She was a fighter, and while her strength of character helped her achieve important milestones throughout her life, it also made caring for her very challenging. She was determined to live life on her terms and struggled to adapt to her physical limitations. She fell far too often and was bruised and battered like a prize fighter. As with Dad, she spent her last days in a wheelchair and could barely speak. This was especially cruel for a former English teacher.

 

There is now a new reality I'm slowly coming to terms with. I no longer have a family. We were a unit of four. Those who knew me as a child are gone. I'm the last one standing and next in line to die.   

 

After years of informal caregiving for my mother and my sister, my distress is finally surfacing, although in unexpected ways. I'm exhausted and having trouble pulling myself together. I clench my teeth during the day and frequently wake up with a racing heart. My symptoms are mostly physical. I seem unable to relax. The first thing I see when I get out of bed in the morning are my legs. I immediately think of my sister's and dad's skeletal legs. It's not how I want to start the day! 

 

One of my artist friends told me to draw, draw, draw as I navigate the blues of death. I've managed two oil pastel drawings so far:

Last one standing - 20"x16"

 

 

Brain Fog - 20"x16"

I assume more artwork will materialize once I overcome days where I merely exist as a blob on the recliner. I have an art residency for the next three months in tandem with Monica Brinkman. Working side by side may be the best way to move through all of this.