Chapter 18: Summer 2006

In July of 2006 Mom went on two trips. One was with my wife Ela and me to San Francisco and Stinson Beach (a little north of S.F.) to see her brother and nieces. It was her brother Jack’s 92nd birthday. Everyone there really rolled out the red carpet. Mom had a great time (21a):



Before we left, she had been having trouble breathing, by her account, and the doctor had prescribed another inhaler. But she only had trouble one time, and as soon as we got to the beach, the problem was gone and she was ready to put on her dancing shoes (Slide 21a). In San Francisco we took in the “Monet in Normandy” show that was at the Legion of Honor. We pushed Mom around in a wheelchair so she wouldn’t get too tired. She insisted on seeing the whole museum. We were the ones who got tired! We kept her too busy seeing things for her to have time to sketch.

Then in the second half of July John and Louise took her to Cathy and Karl’s beach house outside of Waldport, Oregon. There she did two absolutely fantastic series of sketches. One is of the sand and the waves. To get you in the mood, let me first show you one from around 1999. It's not in great shape, but you get the idea (21b):



The second one (21c) is from July of 2005, the summer after her second stroke, when Ela and I took her to Waldport for a few days. It’s the same general idea but simplified. The problem is that she doesn’t have a lot to say.



Now look at July 2006. I am not sure what order these were done in, but I will start with the easiest of the three (Slide 21d):



Two bodies of water, one darker than the other, are separated by a thin spit and then an island. The darker one could also be the sky. Between the two there is a small opening, and the dark color spills into the lighter one just a little. I think the opening is the point of death, when we pass on to what is beyond. The dark blue tells us that the dying can feel the other side when they are in the vicinity. I will leave the space to the left of the island to you. For me, all it does is add a nice sense of mystery.

Mom was worried that she was dying at this time. There are notes in amongst the sketches where she writes her desire to get checked at the hospital in Tillamook. Johnny, like the rest of us, believed the doctor’s diagnosis of non-life-threatening asthma, and his assurance that she would not die of cancer. “It spreads very slowly in older people,” I remember him telling me. Yes, I have some anger in my grieving process.

Now let us turn to a second one (21e). I apologize for the poor reproduction. I discovered these sketches after she was already on life-support, and I was in not very good shape. There was dust on the scannner, and it got to the paper itself.



This one shows sand going out to a point, as it often does on a beach (and in fact does do at that beach near Waldport, forming a tiny little bay of sand. Then there is a yellow-sided path coming down from a yellow sky. It is late in the day, when the sun makes such a path in the water and the sky, if there are high clouds, frequently turns some shade of yellow or orange. Right above the path the sky is white. That is just below where the sun is. It is as though the land were reaching out toward a path to the sun. If the sun is the Transcendent, then the little protrusion into the ocean is a reaching toward death.

Now for the last one (21f):



This one is the same as before, except there is no yellow—-no sun, just a dull white, overcast sky. The waves are strong near the shore and slowly fade away into the distance. Another thing strikes me. The lines of the shore and the ocean are the same. And Both go up and down like a person’s chest while breathing.

We must bear in mind that Mom had the feeling that she couldn’t breathe properly at this time. And as time went on, she breathed more and more shallowly, taking in less and less air until she was too weak to stand. That’s when my brother Ken took her to the hospital. She stopped breathing on her own an hour after she was admitted.. There the lines on the monitor above her bed in the hospital made wavy lines like hers, the breathing apparatus pushed air in and out of her lungs. Mom’s drawings look in the face of her own death.

Mom’s pine trees have a different feel. They suggest a response to the awareness of one’s own imminent death that does not depend on any faith, awareness, or even hope of a Transcendent. But first let us get in the mood by looking at some of her earlier trees, from 2005. My first example is a monumental sketch entitled “Winter.” The bare limbs form harmonious patterns, as though dancing slowly in the wind (21g):



My next example is the same, except now there is a hint of spring foliage (21h):



In the autumn Mom did a sketch of a pine tree. The cones are a graceful evanescence dancing around the tree (21i).



At the coast in 2006 she sketched pine trees again, but she added something. She did a sequence of four, and if you look at them one right after the other, they seem to be dancing. First there is a tree by itself, like someone on the sidelines waiting to be asked to dance (21j):



Then a partner comes, and they dance with their arms waving (21k):



They come close together in the next one (21l), breasts touching chest:



In the fourth, they are apart but reaching for each other the way dancers do in performance, while a person sits obliviously on the bench that separates them (21m):



John took a picture of Mom sketching at that spot (21n). The trees are there dancing in the wind, but it takes Mom’s artistry to make us see them that way.