Love, Death, Painting & Other Metaphors
March 10, 2011 | Filed Under Cast of Characters | Leave a Comment
Over the years I have painted away most of my emotions. I use canvas and painting as a way of traversing my subconscious mind. I am more of a geologist than an archeologist. I look at the strata of earth and try to find meaning.
Oil and Water
I have never painted about death because death never really touched me until my friend in Finland died from breast cancer. She was the most beautiful woman in the world. Her physical beauty, which was unmatched, could not hold a candle to her spirit. When she died the sea opened up and ten thousand of the best souls from the entire universe rose into the sky. I cried for a year. To this day, I am not over it. I buy red roses and put them into the Alvar Aalto vase she gave me. I say a prayer for her family—one prayer for each of her beautiful daughters. This is a pain that can’t be mined. It is always on the surface. It never loses its intensity.
Bandon Oregon
On January 10, 2011 another part of me died.
Angels on earth have a rough life. They are tasked with lifting us up and making us all feel special. Tom was no exception. In fact, he was so good at making people feel special, those of us who were actually in his inner circle often felt slighted. When we were in Salzburg, Austria, as I slipped down a snow-covered, cobbled-stone road, Tom dropped me in the snow so he could help an old woman go up a flight of stairs. We were so predictable his international law classmates took bets that he would do it. As I struggled in labor for 48 hours, waiting for our son to be born, Tom chatted with the nurse because he felt her need was greater than ours. If I press my memory, I can come up with hundreds of these stories. They always start and end the same way.
Tom and I always laughed at our foibles. He was so much better at remembering details. I was much better at remembering emotions. He had compassion and I have empathy.
Eventually, we divorced and both married other people and, in his case, divorced again and had other relationships with other people. He called the women in his life his “tribe”. I now realize, in 40 years, to the date of the beginning of our love story, Tom never let more than three hours pass without returning my phone call or email. He was always there for me. He may have dropped me in the snow but he never let me down.
The digital world is a house of mirrors. It erases time and space. Google a dead person and there are shards everywhere. Yesterday, I allowed myself to read email correspondence from the past year. There were pictures of his house in Guatemala, airplane and walks into the mountains with our foster son. Tom was always on the go. He was also always trying to divest himself of all material things so there was an email chain about his living in one of our two houses when we were not living there. My husband said, “you do realize you were married to this man don’t you?!” We all laughed at that one.
Pain
When my brother died on August 26, 2010, I suddenly noticed two-thirds of my immediate family had vanished from the earth. Tom was there—with my parents, calling my nieces, telling me what I should do next. He emailed their telephone numbers, told me about the funeral service: when it was going to happen, who was attending and what I should send. I pushed back and told him I handle grief differently than other people. He was disappointed but he accepted my decision. He said I was on my perfect path.
Life and Death (1)
Do you ever wonder about the differences between Abstract Expressionist painters? I have spent my career looking at the differences in the way Richard Diebenkorn and Willem de Kooning painted. One had clinical certainty; the other wild abandon. When I am sorting things out, painting is the only place I can put all the passion so my brush strokes go wild. Then, I come back another day and analyze everything and introduce order.
Love and Death (2)
January 10, 2011 was not an ordinary day. It started with a trip to the hospital. I had to get my cast x-rayed to make certain my bone was healing correctly. I joked with the doctors, technicians and other patients. They had given me enough pain medication to kill Anna Nicole Smith but I had not taken any. I took one ibuprofen on the first day and that was it. My pride was hurt when I fell and I was not about to show anyone I was in pain. On the way home, we stopped to buy water. As I sat in the car, the sky filled with huge powerful black birds. I have a strong relationship with ravens. Our house in Taos is called Raven’s Nest. We have Raven sculptures. But this was the most extraordinary show of my life. I could see between the wings and it filled me with the same energy as a great painting. I wanted to stay in that one place forever.
When I arrived home, I got a call from my foster son Eric. He said, “I have bad news”. He stopped and cried. I knew what he was going to say. “Tom is dead. His plane crashed in Guatemala today. “
I heard myself saying, “Don’t you be sad for Tom. He lived the life he wanted”. I then read an email I received a few days earlier. Tom described flying over an erupting volcano. He wrote it was “unforgettable”. It was a healing moment. I loved thought of him flying through unchartered territory like the protagonist in Out of Africa. He actually looked a lot like Robert Redford.
I wrote an epitaph on Facebook:
“Today I lost a great love. The world has never known a brighter star or a gentler soul.”
The days passed and the full extent of the silence filled my heart. My husband flew to Germany to celebrate his father’s birthday and I was left alone with my pink cast, blue wheel chair—a broken leg and a broken heart. Eventually, the cast came off, I learned to walk again and, then, finally, I was able to paint.
Birch Painting (detail)
As I build up the layers on a birch painting I started when I divorced Tom in 1982, things come in and out of focus. I put things into rows. I try to remember to whom I have written and whom I have forgotten. Tom always called me and told me when people we shared died. I want to do the same thing for other people. I am grateful for Facebook because it allows me to reach people who cared without talking to anyone.
The brush moves more furiously and there is nothing between me and the canvas.
On September 11, 2001, Tom woke me in the morning to tell me about the World Trade Center. He said the world was ending. Some years later, I dreamed we both died when an earthquake struck San Francisco. We were driving to the airport and a concrete overpass fell on us. It was as intense as the day I dreamed he would marry his second wife. That dream happened seven years before they actually married–even before we were divorced. Both dreams left me shaking and in tears.
Tom’s second marriage was a recurring theme for us. I blamed his second wife for anxiety our son experienced, for cutting off our funds, and for breaking his heart for a second time in the most brutal way. He would always say: “you did tell me to marry her”. I always responded, “I was young and stupid and I had no idea how much damage she could do.” We said these same words over and over again.
When people die families do awful things. One person grabs this; another grabs that. We all know stories about people saying mean things and doing even worse. Useless people, who couldn’t keep a feral cat alive if they tried, mess everything up for everyone. I am told it happens all the time.
After Tom died, I was dedicated to taking the high road. He lived a good life and brought many people joy. He was my son’s father. He deserved to live and die the way he wanted. No one had a larger community of admires than Tom. I wanted everyone to have their day and to say goodbye in the way that made sense but I also wanted everyone to respect Tom’s wishes. I could hear Tom’s voice everywhere and saw him in everything. I could hear him saying: “What does it matter, really?!” He was not in a material body. Our relationship was private so I mourned in private. He was now the star that twinkled outside my window at night.
One thing did matter, however. Something so profound, it would never be healed or fixed. The great thing about painting is it is never finished. You can always go back and change things—even thirty years later. Death is another story.
On the day Tom died his second wife was called and asked to tell our son. The woman who had caused so much damage was given the keys to our empty house. The interloper. The impostor was allowed to pretend to be me for one last time. I was in a blue wheel chair bound by the very impossibility of the moment. There was nothing I could do. It was not a dream. It was not a nightmare. It was not a work of art. I was trapped in a coffin. If you have ever seen the Edvard Munch painting called The Scream, you will know how I felt. Even if I had screamed, no one would have heard me.
What is a metaphor? Why do they matter to our lives? In Interface Design, we use metaphors to help people navigate difficult computer landscapes. In painting, we use metaphors to open the mind to new dimensions—to define new depth. Poets use metaphors to muddy the water. Metaphors have no rules. Everyone reads and looks at a metaphor and thinks something else. They want us to imagine things that do not exist.
Today, I look to metaphors to fill the silence. I paint to mine the pain. There are no questions and no answers. Blue. Red. Green. My love is like a rose. My love is a rose. My two roses are dead.
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