Grief

Winter.

by frogpondsrock on June 29, 2011

in cancer,Grief,Love and Loss

It is winter and my hands are cold.

I am sad and tired.

I miss my Mother more than I could ever have imagined and I am fighting off a bout of self pity.

I don’t ask the question

Who is going to comfort me

Because I know the answer.

I am tired

Tired of the cold.

Tired of never being asked how I am

Tired of people.

Tired of shallowness.

I am tired of being nice and tired of being polite

I think I should just go out and get smashed and run amok

And I would,

Except I don’t want the hangover and the sore head and the blackness of spirit that comes from all that negative energy.

But

At the end of the day I am truly an optimist,

And even in my bleakest moments I can go outside and see something that lifts my spirit.

A tiny abandoned nest in the raspberry canes made me smile.

The thought that small birds had been nesting so close to the house makes me inordinately happy.

Some days it is the smallest things that keep me going.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

When the stones whisper their secrets to you.

by frogpondsrock on May 12, 2011

in Grief,headfuck,Sadness,thinking out loud

Your friends either suggest lithium or nod their heads and smile.

This is The Mountain that is the backdrop to the city of Hobart. I grew up under the shadow of The Mountain and one of the hardest things about moving inland was not being able to see the changing moods of The Mountain every day.

I haven’t been up the mountain by myself for a long time. As a young teenager I used to ride my horse all over the mountain, from Lenah Valley to Fern tree and back again. As an older teenager we used to drive up the mountain and light cooking fires with the wood provided in the huts. We would drink cheap wine and try to count the lights of the city below, before turning our attentions to more serious teenage concerns.

I have been feeling restless lately with a wistful yearning in my soul for something. The practical side of my nature ignores the fanciful and mockingly whispers that a midlife crisis isn’t a good look. Whilst a small part of me feels like crying out, “Can you see me? Can you tell me that I am not invisible?” I push the thought of any sort of crisis away and ponder instead what it means to be 45 and overweight in a society that worships at the altar of anorexic youth.

I am teetering here on the precipice of my next great adventure and as I spread my wings ready to leap, I am filled with an unbearable sadness that my mother isn’t here to help me on my way.

Mum would tell me that it is normal to feel like this at 45. That it is normal to have quiet moments where you feel old and ugly, withered and useless. That the drumming I hear in my ears is my biological clock banging away erratically and that I need to get my shit together and just ride it out and to remember that I am only invisible if I choose to be.

My grief has settled into a cycle, in tune with my own lunar cycle. The grumpy irritability of PMS has been mostly replaced by a week of tears and longing and introspection,which is annoying as I would much rather slam a door in anger and be done with the shitty mood, than reach for a box of tissues and cry like a child for my mother.

On a whim I drove up the mountain and had a good talk with the stones. I let their ancient energy wash over me and I opened my mind to who I am and what I do.

The stones told me that it is okay to feel old as long as I don’t act old. To remember who I am and where I come from and to not lose sight of where I am going. To remember the ley lines and to feel the power of the earth through my bare toes. I think that is half the problem, I have been wearing shoes for too much of this year and I am losing touch with that energy that only comes from walking barefoot in the garden.

I bought a small stone down from the mountain with me and I think it will make nice marks in the clay. I met a twitter friend the other day who gave me some bones to use as tools, in return I am going to make her a ceramic altar to hold her offerings from the sea.

This feels good.

When I just do what I am supposed to do without thinking too deeply, when I let the clay guide me and I rest in that sweet spot, that silent intuitive space, the work just flows and I feel complete.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

A place to declutter my mind

by frogpondsrock on April 14, 2011

in Arty stuff..,ceramics,Grief,Hope

As a visual artist I do my thinking in public. I am comfortable with that. A nest of ceramic eggs in a public space is the realisation of a series of thoughts as well as an invitation to you the public to join in the discourse, to participate in the public thought processes with me.

This blog is where I start the public thinking process.

A conversation that starts here on the blog as nothing more than a wisp of an idea often coalesces into something much more tangible than an abstract concept.

The simple processes of examination of my ideas and feedback from you is an invaluable tool.

I use this blog to de-clutter my mind, I take ideas out and examine them publicly and see what happens.

I also use this blog to poke at old wounds and see if they still hurt.

My father does not hurt me anymore.

The spiritual wounds received through the loss of my mother though are still incredibly painful and raw and will be for a long time.

In my life there is no one to comfort me in the same way that I was comforted by my mother. I feel as vulnerable and as lost as a child and by writing out these words on the blog I am seeking comfort.

I am also writing the words to lessen their hurt.

To publicly examine that loss and to acknowledge to myself that I am not alone.

I think I need to make something large, something to help me work through these feelings of loss and loneliness.

I think I need to make an angel.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Asking for a bit of feedback mixed in with some emotional crap.

by frogpondsrock on April 12, 2011

in addiction,Arty stuff..,blogging,Grief,headfuck

This week has been hard, with the lead up to my Mum’s birthday and Isaac’s diagnosis of autism combining to make me maudlin and teary.

My research project for my drawing class is causing me some angst as well. Not much. But enough to contribute to this weeks tears.

I am researching myself. As a visual artist ultimately all my work comes from within myself. I chose myself as my subject because I wanted to examine why I do the things that I do. Why I am drawn to certain things and most importantly why I am happy to just skim over the surface and not really delve too deeply into anything that might require a bit of emotional effort.

Part of the research project is to collect historical data on the subject. Some of my historical data is in a suitcase that I can not bring myself to open.

During the lead up to my mothers funeral, my brother had all our child hood photos in his possession. They were in a blue suitcase that mum had kept in her wardrobe. After the funeral my brother returned the suitcase to mum’s house. I did not see or speak to my brother. All the photos of my father were gone,all the decent photos were missing, there were pages ripped out of albums, and the remaining jumble was just thrown back into the case. It was heart breaking.

I have been staring at this case for a fortnight now trying to bring myself to open it again but I don’t think I can.

I have been skimming over the surface of who I am, and what influences contributed to make me the person I am today. I examined my relationship with the nuns and my early childhood memories of going to church and being thwacked with a cane every time I fainted and I have discarded those influences as not that important.

I have been trying to pry apart my own mythology and to see where the lines of myth and truth blur and every single thing leads me back to my father.

My father was an alcoholic who passed his love of a drink on to me. I do not drink. I have finished drinking.

My father liked to promise us the world and then on the day of the promise we would sit for hours in the car outside the pub.

My father lit his cigarettes with a match and would ask me if I had ever seen a match burn twice and put the still hot match onto the soft flesh of my arm.

My father tried to teach me to swim by carrying me, screaming in terror, out into the waves and throwing me into the water.

All the kids in the neighbourhood were frightened of my father as he liked to dispense summary justice with his boots and his fists and all the local hoons drove quietly past our house.

My father was killed in a car accident when I was fourteen and I battled with his ghost for a very long time.

When his ghost is strong, I still think that I am stupid and useless and really what is the point of anything anyway?

But my spirit is stronger. My spirit was always stronger. My father couldn’t break me.

I would not give in. I refused to let him win.

As a grown woman, I will not be told what to do. I will ask no mans permission to do anything or be anyone I damn well like.

Maybe pressing publish here will be the first step in really picking some emotional scabs and going down some paths I don’t want to travel.

Either that, or I will just take photographs of churches and pretend it was the nun’s fault.

Now onto the feedback.

I would like to thank my daughter Veronica from SleeplessNights who re did my blog for me. I am pleased with how the blog looks. The reason Veronica had to do a whole new blog design was because I wanted to be able to reply to people directly in the comments section and with my previous template that just wasn’t possible.

Previously I had been replying by email, though not to every comment every time, and I was starting to feel a bit guilty if I didn’t reply personally.

I am after some feedback, how do you think the new comment system is working?

Do you actually get the email notification when I reply to your comment?

Do you like it this way or would you prefer a private reply via email?

Or do you simply not care?

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

The missing doesnt stop.

by frogpondsrock on April 7, 2011

in Autism,Family,Grief,Mona

Some days I miss my mother so much that even writing down the words make my eyes prickle and fill with tears.

There is a heap of stuff I am trying to deal with. On their own, these things don’t have much weight but tie them all together and it feels like I am swimming through mud.

My grand son was officially diagnosed with Autism yesterday. Systems will be put into place for Isaac, autistic specific playgroups will be found and the experts will step in and try to help as best they can.

This is good. This also breaks my heart.

I am trying to write an email to a physiotherapist to tell him that “The Spouse doesn’t want to continue with his appointment because it is obvious the Physio knows nothing about Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and in The Spouse’s words is “completely fucking useless” How do I say that? How do I say “Listen son, you need to bloody well do a bit of research on EDS before we go any further”.

I worry that he will break my husband or my daughter with inappropriate exercises designed for non-bendy people and I also wonder if I can be bothered dealing with his air of professional superiority because he is a trained medical professional you know. ( insert sarcasm font)

I worry that my grand daughter who has an unofficial diagnosis of Aspergers as well as EDS will fall through the cracks. I worry that the paediatrician in charge of her care is another one who knows absolutely nothing about EDS and is more than happy to think about his golf handicap instead of my grand daughters care.

My son is living in town with his friend and I worry that he will decide to sleep all day, rather than go to his classes. My mantra when the children were growing up was, “your choices, your consequences”.

It is hard not to want to live their lives for them.

I want to shake my son and say look, look at all the mistakes I made, don’t do it, don’t make my mistakes. All I can do now is watch and hope and wish that mum was here to gently laugh at me.

I am watching a very clever liar, weave a complicated web of deceit and I am in two minds whether to call them out and wear the fall out or just wait and see what happens.

I went to Mona yesterday and once again I was drawn to this fabulous sculpture PXIII by Belgian artist Berlinde de Bruyckere

This sculpture makes my soul sing. The artist says this work is about loneliness and I can relate to that.

I think that I am becoming invisible, the older that I get.

I interacted with Australian artist Greg Taylor’s art work titled My Beautiful Chair, featuring a couch, a lamp, a rug and Philip Nitschke’s suicide machine. As I watched the prompts on the computer I thought about my Mum and how peaceful her death was. I remembered what it felt like to stroke my mother’s dead hands and the beautiful ivory colour of her skin.