Hand – Work

The last time I sat and talked with my mother was December 27, 2010. She had been living in a nursing home for the last nine months after she broke her hip at my house. She was finally opening the Christmas gifts she had refused to open when I visited her on December 24, before I drove to Roseville to be with my son, Chris and his family.

She had been grumpy on my last two visits, but today she was agreeable. I showed her a card that had come in the mail from the son of one of her high school friends. I read his note to her that explained that his mother had passed away during the summer. My mother took the card and read it to me, saying “Oh, that’s too bad.” This was the last of her life-long friends to die.

As I was leaving, I noticed Mother had a bit of a cough, sounding low in her chest. Two days later, I was awakened at 7:20 a.m. by the nursing home staff telling me that my mother was being sent to the ER because her blood pressure was low, she didn’t want to get up, and she didn’t seem right to them.

By the time I got to the hospital, they had determined she had had a heart attack early that morning, and probably had pneumonia. They had her on an IV trying to stabilize her blood pressure, which was continuing to drop.

I guess she knew I was there but she didn’t say my name. I was told she was not likely to recover. I requested they provide comfort care, but not to prolong her suffering. She was becoming agitated because she wasn’t getting enough oxygen so they gave her some morphine, and after the IV was stopped she passed in about twenty minutes.

I have spent a lot of time trying to understand our relationship while writing my memoir the last few years.

Last week, I watched a YouTube of a song where a family member has died, it’s Christmas, they are grieving, but taking comfort in knowing their loved one is with the Son of God, the Prince of Peace.

I don’t have a picture in my mind of how heaven will look, and I don’t think about it much, although I realize that some day I will go there, too.

As the song went on, I thought about how I had not grieved a lot at her death because she had lived a long life and the last few years she was often confused and probably lonely. On the rare occasions when I think about seeing her again in heaven, I expect she will still be on my case for my short-comings.

But now, listening to that song, it occurs to me that if she is with the Prince of Peace she would be sanctified, and will see me as He sees me. Perhaps this is how healing begins. It’s time.

I suspect that many people have rituals – a set of procedures – they follow during the holidays and the end of the year. We see our parents doing certain things each year and find ourselves doing similar things when we have our own household.

Things like when is the right time to put up decorations, or which cookies to bake, and countless other preparations that almost take on a life of their own. And for a number of years that is the way we do the holidays in our family.

My main holiday ritual was baking cookies. I had maybe half-a-dozen cookies that I only made for Christmas: frosted and decorated sugar cookies, mint surprise cookies, almond crescents, spritz, made with a cookie press, were all recipes I had made with my mother. Over the years I added new ones and stopped making the ones that took too much time.

As we moved around the country, buying or making gifts early, wrapping them, and mailing them became another ritual of sorts.

Working at the Livermore Veterans Hospital had its own set of rituals: the Saturday when the volunteers put up decorations, the groups that visited the patients with gifts and goodies, Santa’s visit on Christmas morning. It was fun, and my part was to escort the visitors around and be sure all my vets got their handouts.

Twenty years ago, when I bought my house in Stockton, I added another December ritual to my calendar. I call it “Leaves to the Street.” Right next to my house is a huge sycamore tree. It is my summer air conditioning system. The dinner-plate size leaves shade my house all summer.

And, of course, in December they fall or blow off the tree. Sycamore leaves from my tree are like leather. They do not decompose. If I don’t remove them, they will be here next July.

San Joaquin County has a leaf removal service to keep the leaves out of the storm drains. All I have to do it get them into the street before one of the two pick-up days. I get lots of exercise getting them to the street. And I have a system. I rake a small area and put them into an old wheeled trash can which I wheel out to the street and dump on the pile.

Monday’s strong winds blew the leaves into piles here and there so they are easier to pick up without a lot of raking. With my big tree, it will be the first week in January before the leaves are all gone. It doesn’t take much thinking to get the leaves into the street.

So while I’m doing that, I’m going to be thinking about what direction I want to take in my studio. I know I need to do some cleaning up in my art space, so how can I make it better? What supplies am I wanting to work with? Are there supplies I should pass on to someone else? What size work feels comfortable to me at this time? Do I have anything started that needs to be finished? Do I want to show my work next year? Where?

What creative projects are you eager to start after your December rituals?