Grief

How do you measure success?

by frogpondsrock on June 15, 2010

Last week Brenda asked on her blog, Mummytime, “where do you hope your blog will take you?”

This morning I followed a twitter link to a blog post that asked why do most artists blogs fail?

I commented with Interesting point but it all depends on how you measure success. I am an artist and I have a successful blog as well.

So this morning the ideas have meshed and I need to ask the question,

“How do you measure success?”

This time last year I measured my success by my ability to keep those I loved, alive and safe from harm.

I failed to keep my mother alive. The cancer that consumed her was too strong and the strength of my love was not enough to save her.

My love was strong enough to let her go peacefully though and Veronica writes about it beautifully here.

I failed to protect my daughter from my brother and in his pain he lashed out bitterly at my girl and wounded her deeply.

I am an only child.

I am an orphan.

I am motherless.

I am successful.

We have survived the first year and my son is alive.

I kept my son alive in those dark months following the death of his Grandmother. It was touch and go there for a while and I watched him like a hawk.

I didn’t restrain him when he punched the walls.

I screamed back at him when he screamed his anguish at me. I held him as he cried like a baby and my tears mingled with his, I fed him pizza and let him sleep and protected him as best I could.

How do you tell a 15 year old that grief will pass when you are so immersed in the same grief and the tunnel is too long for even the tiniest glimmer of light?

I managed to get through this last year because of my blog. I could write out my grief here. When there was a deathly silence after the funeral and only my closest friend rang me, I came to my blog for solace. When my head was going to explode with all the words I needed to say I came to my blog.

And you listened. You sent me chocolate and clippies, classical music and cards. You commissioned my art work and made me think of renewal. You posted photos on your blogs for me and You held me close and let me cry. You filled my inbox with emails and when there werent any words You hugged me and now we are here together.

My blog is successful and that is down to You.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

The first sentence is the hardest…

by frogpondsrock on November 10, 2009

in cancer,Sadness,Veronica

The first sentence of the opening paragraph sets the tone for the whole piece of writing that follows. This is even more true for a blog post where lots of people don’t actually read the whole post. The opening and closing sentences give the skimmers a point of reference to frame their questions or comments.

Sometimes I will sit here and the words just spill out onto the page faster than I can type them. The piece of writing takes on a small life of its own and all the words fit together nicely.

Other times I will be interrupted and lose my train of thought so many times that, I either just give up and save the piece to my drafts folder or I struggle along clumsily, placing all the wrong words in a crooked line.

Often I will read something my daughter has written and the powerful beauty of her words will take my breath away. I will start to cry as I nod yes to her words, and then with her pain ringing in my ears I end up here trying to articulate my own.

Veronica will be 21 on Thursday. Veronica’s 21st birthday was the milestone that Mum was aiming for. I am struggling to contain my bitterness that we lost Mum to a cancer she should never have had. I am so sad for Veronica that her birthday will be such a difficult day without Mum.

Normally we would have planned a celebration. There would have been lots of food and music, laughter and joy. Now there is only sadness and ashes.I am bitter that the joy has been stolen from my child.

Veronica and I are going out for lunch to our favourite Japanese restaurant tomorrow, just us two together.

Tomorrow is Remembrance Day (11 November) marks the anniversary of the armistice which ended the First World War (1914–18). Each year Australians observe one minute silence at 11 am on 11 November, in memory of those who died or suffered in all wars and armed conflicts.

I wonder what we will be remembering?

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

The sky is blue today

by frogpondsrock on October 27, 2009

in ceramics,David,Ehlers Danlos Syndrome,Love and Loss

I have this photo of Mum and Amy as my screensaver.

Mum and Amy, a few months before Mum died

I look at this photo every day but I cant bring myself to really have a proper look. If I look properly at this photo and look into my Mother’s eyes I feel myself begin to get all teary. So I quickly look away or I focus on my grand daughter’s face instead.

The enormity of the hole that Mum has left in our lives is only just now starting to become apparent.

Thankfully I have stopped crying every time I think of Mum,though I am crying a little bit as I write this because trying to articulate the depth of my loss makes me examine it in more detail than I want to.

Veronica now has two horses and she reminds me so much of Mum, in that she never does things by halves. Mum was an accomplished and knowledgeable horsewoman and watching my daughter with her two horses I am confident that it wont be long before Veronica is the same.

Mum on Prince

I don’t know where I am going with this post at all. I only know that today the sky is blue and it promises to be a lovely day and for that I am thankful.

David has been formally diagnosed by the geneticist as having Classical EDS with a score of 7 on the Beighton scale. ( a non bendy person might score a 1 if they could touch the floor with the flat of their hands) I am not very flexible at all so my score would be a zero.

The cardiologist has decided that a non-interventionist approach is best for David. Yay. I am all for non intervention. We go back to see the cardiologist in late January 2010. The irregularities with Dave’s heart mean that he will have to take extra care of himself and always be aware of the “heart healthy options” which is a big call for a fifteen year old boy who, like his peers thinks that he is ten foot tall and bullet proof.

My mouth is all healed up as is my self esteem. I can wear my teeth all day now without any major discomfort. I have plonked my teeth into the same category that shoes and bras belong, annoyances that must be worn outside the home for the sake of vanity. The first thing I do when I walk in the door when I get home is kick off my shoes, take off my bra and rip out my falsies. aaah.

I have been in touch with the trustees of a local nature reserve and they were quite excited about my idea of a sculpture trail. I was so nervous before I rang them,that I had to wander around the house psyching myself up to make the call. All the angst was for nothing and I was incredibly relieved and excited by the end of the phone call. I am meeting up with the trustees early next February on site. All I need to do is submit a written proposal to the committee and once that is approved I can begin working towards a major interactive exhibition in a lovely bush setting in February 2011. YAY.

I am also excited about our upcoming exhibition Perspectives of Fire and as soon as the invitations have been printed I will publish one here and then invite you all to the show.

I am working on some different bowls at the moment and Chris Jordan’s photos of the dead albatross chicks have really touched me. I am going to make a dead albatross bowl later on today and I will publish photos of it as a work in progress early next week.

Here are some bowls I made last week. These bowls are the sort of thing that I am thinking of making for the outdoor exhibition. If you mouse over the photos you can read the descriptions of what I have done.

I am off outside now to enjoy the sunshine.

I rolled the clay over some gum leaves.

This is what it looked like when I peeled the leaves away. I should have let the leaves burn away in the kiln, because by removing them I weakened the bowl.

It broke when I picked it up. but I am still going to fire it and use it in Mum's garden.

I have been experimenting with layering thin pieces of clay over each other.I am trying to get a landscapey effect.

the two bowls side by side so you get an idea of the size of the larger bowl.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

I have stopped cooking.

by frogpondsrock on September 24, 2009

in cancer,Family,Grief,Hope

I can’t remember the last time I cooked two proper evening meals in a row. By proper I mean healthy and balanced.

In the last few months of Mum’s illness I was stretched really, really thinly as Mum had become less able to do all the stuff healthy people take for granted. Simple things like changing the sheets on her bed had become akin to climbing Everest.

Everything fell by the wayside, as the physical demands of caring for my Mum didn’t leave any time left over for secondary shit like my own housework or cooking. I am an indifferent housekeeper at the best of times and indifferent quickly turned to non-existent.

After Mum died everything became a major effort and for a couple of weeks I suffered a massive case of the couldn’t be bothereds.Cooking? Bleh. Housework? Who gives a fuck, shut the door. I just could not be bothered doing much of anything.

And then it started to rain and it rained and rained and rained. The dreadful grey wetness of winter nearly did my head in. Please remind me of that, when I have to buy water this summer and I am stressing out about bushfire.

Last week The Spouse was splitting wood and he developed a painful tightness in his chest. To cut a long story short, it wasn’t a heart attack as there wasn’t any of the hormone blah blah blah in his blood which indicates damage to the heart muscle,phew.

The Spouse is off to the cardiologists tomorrow for a stress test which will give us a clearer picture of what exactly is going on. His cholesterol levels were high at 7.8, which is enough to statistically give him the chances of 1 in 50 of suffering a fatal heart attack.

So now my control freak tendencies can really be let loose up on my family. The Spouse needs to lower his cholesterol and all the food choices he makes from now on will be supervised by yours truly.It is well past time that I dusted off the pots and pans and started cooking again. As soon as I hit publish I am going to make a large pot of fish soup for tea.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Toothless and teary in Tasmania

by frogpondsrock on September 20, 2009

in Grief,headfuck

If the tooth be told having multiple extractions wasn’t too bad.Dentists today are much nicer than the evil butchers that were about when I was a child. We stopped for a bit of a rest halfway through and I only needed stitches in a couple of spots.

My shiny plastic choppers were placed in my mouth and after about 15 minutes of face washing, deep breathing and generally getting my shit together,I was able to drive myself home.The Spouse rode shotgun though, just in case.

We made it safely home and I have been getting a little bit better every day.The false teeth are incredibly painful to wear for long but I was able to keep them in for two and a half hours yesterday and I keep on thinking small steps Kimmy. Small steps.

The first time I looked in the mirror at my toothless reflection I began to cry. I looked so different.Old and ugly and alien.I wanted to ring my mother and have Mum make it all better.*sigh*

I have been feeling as vulnerable and grief stricken as I was in the first few days following the funeral and I don’t like it. I don’t like crying, I don’t like feeling vulnerable and I certainly don’t like the bathroom mirror at the moment.

Small steps Kimmy. Small steps.

Mum’s house is definitely on the market now, it was advertised in Thursday’s paper. The real estate agent has been showing people through the house all week and it is impossible to pretend that it isn’t happening any more. All I can do is hope that a nice young couple buy it and are happy there.

So this week has been a huge week emotionally for me and I am desperately seeking positives to cling to so that my head doesn’t explode, because that just wouldn’t be pretty.

symphonic harmony