Created for Those Who Suffer

The post title is from Tad Mosel's play All The Way Home and continues "especially those who cannot endure."

In 2004 my sister's best friend was diagnosed with stage not gonna make it breast cancer. I didn't know until I was diagnosed that the younger you are, the less chance of survival you have.

Stacy was 28. Stacy was going to die. Soon.

When Stacy was diagnosed I worked at the American Cancer Society.

I was going through my 7th surgery about the cancer I was fighting. I had a whole bunch of useless fucking statistics to hoist.

What I knew once more: I was going to live. Stacy was going to die.

I had no idea how to be there for her. Or my sister. How to be real. How to cope with the bizarreness of who lives and who dies.

My sister was suffering. Stacy was not. There is a difference between pain and suffering that the Buddhists can teach us and I am still learning. But Stacy already knew that and my sister soon would.

 My sister asked her what can I do? Stacy told her.

Help me tell my family I will die. Help me arrange my funeral the way I want it. The family were in shock and denial. Stacy and my sister melded their love with pragmatism.

My sister spoke to her parents. This is what I know. This is what Stacy wants. I will do her make-up for her casket. This is the outfit she wants to wear.

Stacy. 28 years old. Dying. The strongest person I had met until then. Until I knew my sister.

I wanted to honor Stacy's journey.

I'm an artist. I wanted to send her a card that expressed her strength. I looked and shopped.

And found nothing.

Get well. God will save you. Crosses, which are crap art. No. No.

I rescued Barbie dolls and used them to reimagine a world in which women mattered, but antithetically, fell in love with some high end fashion dolls.

I repurposed those dolls.

I spent one entire day photographing the dolls I had, those I knew enough about to resell at a profit, and those I would keep and make outfits for. Out of clothes I'd owned and loved. To express empathy for the journey.

This is the card I sent to Stacy. AND I WILL REMEMBER YOUR STRENGTH.

I will.

Another card was inspired by Barbara*  a woman I knew and, who in presentation I attended told her story about the doctor telling her she had 3 months to live. When she asked why would you tell me that, he said because I won't offer false hope.

She found another doctor in Texas who gave her enough hope to live to see her last Christmas with her children. 

There is an intense focus in specificity, a terminal diagnosis that cannot be understood and won't be felt until you or someone you love has that in their kit. It's a sense of your place in the universe. Small yet mighty.

The card art has Barbies. Collectible fashion dolls. Irrevalent in this context. But I love them, certainly the ones I kept. I didn't have dolls as a child, so I see the yearning in collecting as an adult.

The day I did the photography in the local park, I was frightened by a guy who popped out of the bushes. We stared at each other. He held up a cardboard image of Flat Stanley, the current GPS around the world photography image. Share an image.

Flat Stanley, I said.

Thank God you know that, he said. My niece made me do this.

That day I also crashed a mountain biker barrreling through my shoot. He was laughing too hard to stay astride.

I have these beautiful words I have honored all these years.

I made these images. Dressed this shoot. But it's iffy now. Doll collectors. Pffft.

Here I am. The writer. The artist. I want this out in the world. I think it matters.

I also photographed my great-gramdnother's and grandmother's teacups. And my grandmothers's and mother's gloves. And their pearls. And their handkerchiefs. Three generations.

 

Which art matches the words?

 I'm going to offer both. The art is subjective.

 The words are what matters most.

Addendum: Stacy was buried in the pink suit she told my sister she wanted to be buried in and the suit my sister told her parents to dress her in.

Keys to Nothing

I signed up for an editing workshop. We are to bring an excerpt for something we're working on. We are to state two techniques that we're good at. We are to submit questions for the person conducting the workshop.

I can't figure out where to upload that stuff either. I hate my homework being late still.

I'm contemplating the word irrelevant, in a social media realm of OK, boomer.

And contemplating the word control. I know in my brainpan somewhere that control is an illusion, that we control nothing, including what our brain decides to save into long term memory. My friend and I talk about this a lot. If we have no control, even of how our brain functions, then who or what does?

Irrelevant. We also discuss the difference between mind and brain. There's an analogy we came up with that both of us wrote down, but I don't remember it, and I'm not sure we are equipped to handle unanswerable questions. Examine how much life is left to you. Contemplate infinity. See how that works for you.

But the workshop signup started a chain of events that feels exciting.

I've been writing the story I will learn about editing for 15 years. It's memoir, so it's personal. Friends who have read the blog posts over the years love the stories about the wild ride caregiving is. There are about 60 million people in the USA who are caregiving right now, so maybe there's an interested audience, too.

So there's that to finish. Complete. Settle.

I bought a couch. One I picked out for myself. It's too much in the packed living room. What needs to go? My mother's secretary, which is a lovely piece of really large furniture. Her buffet that she bought for her trousseau in 1948? My great- and grandmother's desk that I had brought here when we sold her house? Most furnniture in the house is not mine, not pieces I chose. I don't like antiques. I keep them because? I keep them because of stories. I know the stories of all this furniture. Story provenance.

I told the friend who agreed to take the buffet that there wasn't anything in it. Then I dumped out the drawers. What's in it are all the things I did not want to throw away or hand out over the years.

It's a week later and most of the stuff is on the floor. Because in order to put it in one of the 2 remaining desks, I have to empty those, too.

Each day I choose something to put in the garbage bag sitting next to the pile on the floor. My father kept keys to things he no longer owned, including car keys. There are stories to those keys. But the stories are not mine. I threw them all out, inspired by Stu in The Stand (which I just reread) who–broke legged and dying in the wilderness–goes through his pockets and finds a keyring with keys that will open nothing. He throws them into the gulch. I did likewise.

Editing. The work and the psyche. Can't fill a vessel that's already full. This furniture offload is the equivalent of emptying the Junk Drawer of Life. Time to broom survival techniques that no longer serve, and have only been accumulating more stuff I can't use but don't want to look at too closely.

Stories are wonderful. Stories are how humans explain the universe to themselves. Edited stories are even more wonderful.

Time for my stories.

Lyydia

Lyydia crouched on the icepack alone, eyes closed, her weapon arm hanging limp at her side, and asked the earth to speak of others on her path. The River sang beneath the ice far to her left, and Lyydia spoke softly once — a word of command — to quiet the ice water music so that the ears of her mind could hear the distance.

She thanked Bear for the warmth of his skin on her bones, and for its sight. She visioned her children and grandchildren home in her Saariselkä village, swathed in Bear’s sister skins, safe and fed. She rocked, calling the vision, seeing Bear when it gave its life to her family. Lyydia was Noaidi, and as shaman, she had returned the bones to the den, singing the Bear joik, asking for the skill to use Bear eyes.

With Bear wisdom, Lyydia touched her damaged arm with her other furred hand, sending healing breath from her mind through her blood to the injury. The pain eased. Lyydia let go of her children grandchildren vision from Bear eyes and retuned her mind and sight to her surroundings.

Her eyes walked the dark blue horizon, unbroken waves of snow and ice reflecting the northern lights that wavered overhead. Beyond the great frost-rimed lake, the forest huddled in the distance to her right. Past the forest, another half day’s journey away, her people slept, ate, sewed, hunted and waited.

The reindeer herd snapped attentive. The many hoof sounds ceased, the frozen lake sending tiny drum rim cracks into the dancing light of the night sky.

Something was quietly approaching. Something she could not yet see on the land.

No Bear or Wolf spirit showed itself to her inner sight. The deer would be stamping, snorting, anxious to be away and prone to flight if a big animal was nearby. The animal coming toward them and her was alone and smaller.

Lyydia should not be here. She was a grandmother and her tribe’s shaman, and she had broken the thread of the village garment by following the desire of her selfish heart to journey afar and ask the underworld spirits to send Ringed Seal meat for her people. The crevasse had almost eaten her life, but she had stopped her fall and clambered out with only an injured arm. She had been a fool twice on this quest. A three-time fool seldom returned home.

Now she was a wounded and tired fool. There were many stanzas of her lifesong already told, and she was weary with shame and age. Perhaps Beivve, the sun goddess, was angry with her for being absent on Beivve’s festival night.

“Ah,” Lyydia said aloud. Her mind sight revealed the other animal that followed her trail. Lyydia fingered the tooth on the leather thong attached to the drum on her back. It was hot to her touch. It was one of the molars special to Wolverine. At the back of its upper jaw, on either side, these teeth were turned 90 degrees. The molars allowed the predatory carnivore to tear frozen carrion and to crush bones to extract the marrow.

The reindeer were not in calving season, so there were no young deer. The herd was healthy and no frail old ones would hamper retreat. A wolverine could take down an unprotected adult reindeer that did not run fast enough.

On this night Lyydia was the slowest of the animals on the tundra.

Holding the tooth in one hand over her head, she prayed to the tooth that, if the underworld required another toll for this journey, she alone would make the offering, and that her village would remain healthy and strong; that her children’s lifesongs would be sung long and with joy. Her grandson was a man now; a good hunter. He would take a wife in the spring, and this is what had sent her on the quest to ask for Ringed Seal to come to the people. His wedding cloak might be made from seal skins, bringing seal hunter magic to their home fire.

Her granddaughter had learned much of Noaidi ways from Lyydia, who had witnessed her gifts as a baby. Anu would be a gifted shaman for her village. Whether she would be a mother, Lyydia did not know. She had not found reason to look into that future. The next Noaidi revealed herself to her teacher. That was the way. Lyydia had lost herself in self enough for this day, perhaps enough to end a lifetime.

Face raised to the sky, the old shaman sang her joik and felt her spirit mingle with herd spirit and dance on the breast of the earth. Deer dancing, she rose into the stringed light of the sky, bringing northern light strength into her body until she could move her hurt weapon arm high.

Lyydia unstrung the wolverine tooth from its leather tie and placed it on her drum. She sat flat on the earth, holding the antler drumstick, visualizing her lifesong, and began to chant. She struck the rim of the drum once with the other side of the antler. The tooth would leap on the drum skin among the runes of Lyydia’s life drawn there; revealing her fate when it stopped dancing on the skin.

The club she used to hunt had fallen into the crevasse, along with one of her snowshoes. Slowly she unstrapped the remaining shoe from her foot. Using her teeth to save her arm further hurt, she untied the bindings, separating the long curved edge from the weave in the center. She set the bindings on the earth and the drum on her back. The hot tooth she put into her own mouth. She gripped the antler drummer in her weapon hand and the splintered snowshoe bow in the other.

Lyydia stood. She waited for the wolverine to come.

Back to the Drawing Board

We may think we're not being physically impacted by the global pandemic, but we are mentally. I had a progress phone call with an author today, and I wished him a happy Friday. He thanked me in advance, and assured me he is starting by having a good Thursday.

I looked up how to clean an eraser today. I know how to clean an eraser. My brain just cannot access that information now.

Getting my brother his breakfast, I changed up the order of prep, and poured milk into his already poured orange juice glass instead of his cereal.

On hold for 40 minutes to handle a banking transaction yesterday, I forgot what I called to do by the time I got to the person who could help me.

We have been semi-isolated in our house for 15 years. A Three Story Life chronicles this journey. Our father died in 2017, and, while we have adjusted best able, it limits how often I leave the house. When I go on my version of abroad - grocery shopping, lunch with a friend, the rare and wonderful whole day outing - I have to have someone here to be with my brother.

For most of those years, I made money illustrating from the Artist Dungeon. I did not meet the people who hired me. I could work 24 hours a day in my pajamas as long as we had toilet paper and coffee.

That is a lot of experience that should hold me in place well.

It don't.

There is a difference between being homebound and being housebound. We are finding how prepared we are, our institutions are, our government is. When we are back to business as usual, I hope it isn't business as usual. Back to the drawing board.

Happy Birthday to Me

This is the original art for A Three Story Life. We were in a townhouse then. Scott on the top floor, Dad in the middle, and me in the Artist's Dungeon. We had to move in 2014 because neither of the menfolk could make use of the stairs any more. Dad died in 2017 so the art (when I blog which is seldom) has a black band in the midfloor. I'm still in the Artist's Dungeon.

My friend Geri says the only thing good about birthdays after a certain age is the cake. She chooses a special one for herself each year. And now I do, too. It's all about the cake!












 

Celebrating my birthday and 10 years of A Three Story Life Writing.