Random Thoughts

No Altered Books — No Art at All

Karen


Fear

How does one continue to create art when a big part of your life is unraveling? I know some people find that art helps them work through their grief, but I can’t seem to make it work that way for me.

As many of you who read my blog know, my mother has Alzheimer’s. Two weeks ago, she took a dramatic turn for the worse, refusing to eat or drink for four days, until my father was finally forced to admit her into the hospital. I spent five days in the hospital with her, holding her hand, talking to her, talking to doctors, nurses, dieticians, physical therapists, coaxing her to eat and drink. It was exhausting. In the middle of three art projects, I have been unable to pick up where I left off since I returned home. My mind constantly goes back to her, weak and wasting away with no desire to eat or drink. Sleeping most of the day. Falling asleep as I try to get her to eat another bite of vanilla pudding. Everytime she reluctantly takes a bite, she makes a terrible face, as though I had just fed her the most horrible tasting medicine in the world. And then she closes her mouth and shakes her head no; I try again later and the process repeats.

The doctor says that this is a normal progression of her disease. Her brain apparently is not receiving hunger signals from her body and her tastebuds no longer recognize even the foods she once loved. I sit next to her while she’s sleeping, holding her fragile hand. She wakes up and looks at me; I wonder whom she sees. She smiles and says hello and tells me that she loves me. When the nurses come in to take her blood pressure, she accepts their good-natured prodding, then looks at me and winks. She’s humoring them, afterall. That spark of life and wit — I cling to it until it disappears.

Then they discharge her, saying there is nothing more they can do for her in the hospital. As they remove the IV and the foley bag, I feel like I am watching them remove her life blood, and I suddenly long for the soothing beeping and light from the LCD screen.

At home, she spends most of her time sitting in her lounge chair by the window, sleeping, while we flutter around her trying to do useful things. I stay at my father’s house for as long as I can, but soon I have to return to my job and my family and my life at home. I kiss her on the forehead and tell her I love her and wonder if I will see her again. I’m glad to be leaving, thinking it will bring some relief from the sadness, and then immediately regret the feeling. When I’m away, I feel as though I’m abandoning her; when I’m there, I feel helpless.

It’s hard to get into a routine at home. My brain is fragmented. I have to be “on” in front of 145 seventh graders each day. I have to grade essays. I have to plant bulbs. I have to wash dishes and pay bills and make sure my son does his homework. There is no time and no inclination to pick up a paintbrush or open a book. Those projects have to wait.

Spirit of Cat

Karen

Almost exactly a year ago, my cat died. Here’s what I wrote about it at the time:

1/11/05
We buried our cat today. She was fifteen years old and had been ill for a while– frail and fragile and not eating very well. I knew she was dying. I thought I was ready for the day, but when she didn’t come home yesterday, and then last night, with the rain coming down in torrents, my heart prepared for the worst.

I thought about her all day at work. Maybe she had squeezed into an open cupboard in the garage. Maybe she was stuck in a closet somewhere. But surely I would have heard her delicate mew like I always did when I called her.

After work, I walked around the house, called her name, which was Cat because nothing else really seemed to fit. She had adopted us and had been a perfect fit for our young family– aloof in that wonderfully cat-like way, but also eager for a lap and a snuggle now and then. I looked for her under favorite bushes and trees where she would cool herself on warm summer days. Then I opened the back gate to look into the field, and that’s where I saw her, half way down the hill, a raggedy white heap of fur. I called her name, still clinging to the hope that she was alive. But she didn’t move, and I knew that she was gone.

I hated the idea of leaving her there until my husband got home from work, but I didn’t have the courage to go through the deep green grass and bury her alone.

It took too long for him to come back from work. I kept going outside and looking down at her there, drowning in that impossibly green grass. I was worried about the crows or turkey vultures or- whatever- getting to her before we could. I watched over her from a distance until I was so cold I couldnt’ anymore. I tried to occupy myself with chores around the house, like putting the dishes away– there were the treats we were trying to get her to eat. Putting stuff away in the garage– there was her litter box. You know how it is. Everything becomes a sudden reminder when the day before those same things were practically invisible in their mundane normalcy.

Yes, I know she was just a cat, but no one who has ever lost a pet would ever put the “just a” in front of their pet’s name with any real conviction.

Finally, Michael came home. Lucky for us, the soil was soft. We wrapped her body in an old red towel. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t, as Michael lifted her already frozen body from the deep grass and into the hole. I didn’t want to see her face, but I couldn’t look away, one last time. But it wasn’t her I saw; not any more. And so now, I have to force that last second image out of my brain and replace it with all the ones I have from the years when she shared our house and our lives. Blue-eyes, apricot nose and ears, long soft fluffy white fur and tail.

Good-bye sweet Cat. You had us longer than any other pet of mine. And I am going to miss you.

What made me think about this is that yesterday I was working out in my backyard. Saturday’s rains had washed the sky into a luminescent blue and the fields are once again a glowing green. I dumped some leaves into the field and looked down to the place where we had buried Cat and thought about her, and how she had died just one year ago.

I went back to my work, returned to dump some more leaves, and as I looked down into the field again, saw with amazement a white cat sitting in almost the expect spot where we had found our own cat’s lifeless body. This cat bore an eery resemblance to our own, with the signature apricot ears and nose and piercing blue eyes. I spoke to her, and she meowed at me and quickly ran away. I had never seen this particular cat in our neighborhood before. Maybe by remembering Cat, I had conjured up her sweet spirit. At any rate, it was a very strange coincidence that made me think of the journal entry I had written the day she died.

Mom Doesn’t Know Me Today

Karen


Mom and I at Christmas

From my journal dated 7/3/05

Mom doesn’t know me at all today. She’s tolerating me like a house guest . . . barely. When she got dressed this morning, she put on long johns and underwear. When I suggested that she put on some pants or shorts, she asked me, “Why? What difference does it make?”

“We don’t wear long johns in the summer,” I replied.

“Why do you care?” she asks.

“I just don’t want you to be too hot. It’s so hot outside.”

“I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about it.”

“Okay,” I say.

Dad comes in to talk to her. I walk away but linger in the other room to listen to their conversation. Mom says, “Leave me alone. Don’t bother me, and tell that girl to stop telling me what to do. She deeps coming in here and checking on me every five minutes. I’m going to leave if she doesn’t stop it.”

“That girl is your daughter, and she’s just trying to help,” says Dad.

“No she’s not. And I don’t need her help.”

I bite my lip and walk away. I hurts so much inside to hear her talk this way. My dad says not to take it personally. It’s just mom’s illness. I know that intellectually, but it’s too soon for me not to care, not to feel sad and hurt and emotional about being the stranger that Mom doesn’t want in her home.

From my journal dated 7/14/05

Mom is sitting next to me at the table on the porch. She’s sorting flower heads and seed pods into beautiful little rows and clusters. We sit a while. I’m reading. She looks at me and says, “Do you know Karen?”

“Why, yes I do. I’m Karen.”

“You are?” she asks, amazed. “No, I mean the other one.”

“You mean your daughter, Karen?” I ask.

“Yes. Do you know her?”

“Yes, I know her. I am her. I am Karen. Don’t we look alike?”

“Well, yes, you do,” she says smiling.

“You’re my mother. And I’m your daugher, Karen.”

“Oh, I am so sorry. I’m so embarrassed. How can I not know my own daughter?” she wonders.

This is what I’ve discovered since that day. Bad days come and go; she’ll know who I am one moment and not know me the next. It’s hard to believe, but the pain of her not remembering me lessens with time. I just try to enjoy each of those precious moments when I’m her daughter again and don’t dwell on the times when I’m not.

I don’t try to convince her who I am any more because it’s not productive. If she thinks that I’m someone else, I just talk to her as though I really am that person. If she thinks I’m her sister or a different daughter, I just go along with it because I don’t want her to feel bad about not knowing. If she thinks that her sister Louise is still alive and talks about her as though she is, I swim with her memory.

And I don’t tell my dad how it hurts anymore. I write about it, and I talk to my sisters and husband instead. My dad is dealing with it too, and it just adds to his stress and heartache when he knows how this whole thing is affecting me. Can you imagine . . . for a time Mom slept in the recliner in the living room because she said it was wrong to sleep with “that strange man.”

They’ll be celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary in March.

New Year’s Day – No Resolutions for Me!

Karen

I finished a new altered book yesterday. It’s a little darker than my usual style. I’m not ready to photograph and post it just yet . . . maybe tomorrow.

I am doing my best not to make any new year’s resolutions. What’s the point? I never keep them. If I were to make one resolution (which I am NOT going to do), I would set a goal to make myself more organized. Is that even possible? I think I have a bad gene, which I fear I’m passing on to at least one of my sons.

My studio / office is a tiny bedroom that is filled wall-to-wall with so much stuff that I can barely walk through the door. I have a little path between a box of canvases and a pile of old printers and scanners that I swear I’m going to donate to someone someday. Occasionally, I try to cull through the debris, but it just reappears, as if by dark magic. I shift piles around so I can get to my books, and then shift another pile to get to my papers, and so on and so forth.

I have some plastic boxes and drawers labeled with where things go– this would be almost impressive if I put things right back into the proper place when I’m finished with them. But no . . .

The other day, while working on this altered book, I was looking for a little spool of red wire. I must have spent 45 minutes wasting my time and energy looking for that wire. (And in my head, I’m still looking!) Now, I have some outer forces that conspire against me: a son who likes “my stuff” and picks things up to use occasionally, and a husband who loves to tidy up and puts things back in the wrong place, God bless his soul. But really, those are just excuses. This is all on me.

Back to the wire . . . I had to think back . . . when did I last use it? Oh yes, I made a wire heart. I was working in the kitchen because I was burning the wire by the sink. But it’s not there. And I was using my orange handled wire cutters. Maybe if I find the wire cutters, the wire will be lying next to it. Miracle of miracles, I find the wire cutters, but the wire is not there. Maybe it fell into a drawer, so I go through a few drawers. Nothing. God help me if it fell on the floor somewhere, between the crevices of one of my piles of junk.

Soon my energy is depleted and I’m pissed off at myself for not putting that spool of wire back in in the little “Wire” drawer. Yes, I actually have a drawer for wire. I feel angry and stupid at myself. So I end up using red thread for the book. I doesn’t look bad . . . in fact I kind of like it.

Later, when the book’s all done, I call in my son for a critique. John is brutally honest and I trust his judgement. He says it’s “okay” but he thinks I should have used a thicker red thread because he can barely see it. Of course . . . I should have used the damn red wire!!