Another Face of Grief

When DH officially retired in September, 2001, he said he wanted to get a dog. He called me at school one day and said that there was a dog at the humane society that he thought would be suitable for us (he'd heard about the dog on the radio). I told him to go by and see the dog, and find out if she was the right dog for us. He said he'd already been by and filled out the paperwork; he was just calling to see if it was all right to get the money out of the bank since the humane society wouldn't take a check!

They took her to the vet the next morning to be spayed, and we picked her up later that afternoon. I had not met her, but she came to us already house-broken, and that spoke well for her life with us. She was a little sluggish the first few days, but after getting over her surgery, she took over the household. She explained--in her puppy dog way--that she would be sleeping with us in our bed, and would be sitting with whoever happened to be sitting in the recliner. She also assigned me the job of rubbing her tummy every night before she went to sleep, and she told DH that he should never go outside without asking her if she'd like to go, too. For the first few weeks DH was afraid that she would be a little more than he could manage, but after they settled into a routine, they were seldom apart. If you knew my husband, you knew about his dog.

She also charmed both sets of her human grandparents. My mother and father lived next door to us, so they were our "babysitters" when we had to be away from home. DH and I had to make a three-day trip to our state capital for him to testify in a federal trial, so she stayed with my mother and father, and expected them to follow her rules. She also trained my father to put down whatever he happened to be doing when she came into their house and pick up the dog brush. When my father passed away in 2005, she continued to look for him for several months. She also taught us the signal she used when she wanted to go to visit her human grandmother; if we opened the back door and she went directly out, she was going out for "business purposes". However, if she went out then stopped and waited for one of us, that meant she wanted to go next door and see Gran.

My mother came to live with us about eighteen months after my father passed away. Because of various health problems, she could no longer live alone, and that suited the dog just fine. She spent most of her time "guarding" my mother; she sensed that things were not right, and did her best to protect one of her best friends. Mother passed away about three months later, so Jill (the dog) had to adjust to another loss in her life.

About six weeks after my mother died, my husband was hospitalized for almost a month. The dog looked for him every time I came home, and my husband kept trying to think of a way for me to bring the dog to see him in the hospital. When my husband came home, she sensed that he was not strong, and treated him differently than she ever had. He was home for almost a month before he had a stroke and passed away.

She loved all the company that was at the house during the days leading up to and just after DH's funeral, but she was confused several times by his brothers and his son. She would hear their voice from another room, and run looking for her Pop. Several months later, she and I were watching television and an Elvis Presley song began to play in the background. She had been dozing, but as soon as she heard the voice, she sat straight up and began looking around. I began to cry, and tried to explain to her that it was not her Pop singing...DH was a baritone who sang ALL the time, and the Elvis song was one he'd sung many times.

The picture above was taken years before DH passed away, but it makes me think of how she probably feels. At the time this picture was taken, DH was standing on the front porch, probably talking with our neighbors. She could see him, and she wanted him to come on in or let her out.

When I wrote DH's obituary, I announced to those who mattered to DH and me that I would be including Jill in the obituary, and I did. I just listed as the final survivor "his beloved Jill" with no other explanation because, as I said earlier, anyone who knew my husband knew about his dog.

Roses and Bananas

One of our elderly neighbors had died, and the wife was being moved into a nursing home. My husband had made friends with the son-in-law, and when the house was being closed up, he went over to see if he could help. The son-in-law knew about my husband's interest in flowers, so he told him to move anything he wanted to our yard. My husband dug up a rose bush that was probably almost five feet tall, and the roots had grown through a brick. He brought the bush (with the brick still attached) across the street, and set it out in the upper corner of our yard.

The bush was blooming when he moved it, and the blooms were huge. He cut them for my mother and me, and we enjoyed them for several days. The bush seemed all right for a while, but then DH became afraid that it was going to die. He did everything he could think of for the bush, but nothing seemed to help. During this time, we were at a family gathering, and he told his youngest brother about the plight of the rose bush.

My husband and his youngest brother shared a great many personality traits (and were similar in physical appearance, too), and one of them is a strong sense of humor, coupled with the ability to, shall we say, spin a yarn (there's a more graphic description, but we want to keep this relatively PG). Youngest brother told DH that he thought that the rose bush was suffering from a lack of potassium, and DH should put very ripe (almost ruined, actually) bananas into the dirt around the bush. DH was skeptical (see reference to yarn spinning), but decided that he had nothing to lose. He begged bananas from my mother for a while, and buried them around the bush.

The bush soon took a turn for the better, and ended up blooming for the second time during the season. DH was never sure if it was the bananas or one of the other treatments he'd already tried, but I think he wanted to believe that it was the bananas, and maybe it was. He couldn't wait to call his brother and share the news...their telephone conversations were always full of laughter, and that's something I miss about DH...the sound of his booming baritone laugh.

Cleaning Out the Cabinets

I was off from school yesterday. My friend who cleans my house came over, and we emptied ALL my kitchen cabinets, threw out some things, and reorganized what was left into a more logical setup. She and my husband did most of the moving; I just took off a few days from work to do the finishing touches. We were in a hurry to get moved and settled, and sometimes I had trouble locating items because I wasn't involved in their placement (not that I'm complaining...she's a wonder, and I don't know what we'd have done without her; helping with my mother and again with my husband).

The cabinets are now in better shape, and I'm going to try to break myself of some of my bad habits. I'm going to try to keep all the plastic lids in one place so that I'm not searching madly as I fix my lunch at 6:30 a.m. I'm going to keep the counter cleared off so I can use it for other purposes, including the art project that is drying there right now.

I'm also going to keep cleaning out my mental cabinets. DH is not coming back; no matter how much I miss him, and wish that I could see him just one more time. My darling mother is not coming back, but my minister once told me that as long as I lived, she'd never really be gone--we share a STRONG resemblance, and I've always said that I wanted to grow up and be just like her (DH said I had; that was a compliment, because he adored my mother...as did everyone who ever met her). I miss both of them with every breath I take, but I think they are both enjoying the time I'm able to spend on my artistic and creative pursuits. I vacillate between enjoying the time, and feeling guilty because I am enjoying the time. My time in late 2006 and early 2007 was spent traveling between school, the nursing home, our house, the hospital, doctors' offices...you get the picture. Now I'm able to spend the time writing in my journal, working on my version of an art journal, and enjoying digesting all my Somerset Studio publications. Mother was an artist, and if she were here, she would be a voice of encouragement at every step of my journey. DH was creative in his work in his yard; he grew beautiful flowers, and enjoyed my photographs of his work.

I'm also looking forward to introducing my great-niece to the pleasures of paper and markers. She's twenty-one months old, and has already expressed interest in pens and paper. After her last visit, I bought a stash of those markers that only mark on the "special" paper, and they're safely stored in my art desk until she's here again. What fun we'll have...her Grammy (my sister) will introduce her to dolls, and I'll be the one with books and paper and markers. What a lucky girl!

Some of My Pictures

Working Up My Nerve

There's a set of Prismacolor markers that I REALLY want. There are 256 markers in the set, and the best price is from Dick Blick. My income tax refund will be here next Friday (online filing, direct deposit), and after I pay the plumbing bill on my "other" house (the one I still own and need to sell), I'll have a little "mad" money to spend on art supplies. My mother taught us that money spent on art supplies is never wasted, and that we must have things to nourish our souls on a regular basis.

Last Saturday night, I went to the Prismacolor site to check out the names of the colors that I'm going to have in my hot little hands in about two weeks, and while there, I clicked on a button that encouraged me to enter some of my art work in a contest sponsored by Prismacolor. I thought about it for a little while, and then got my camera and photographed about thirty or forty of my drawings. I started drawing and "coloring" while DH was in the hospital last January and February; I carried my Marvy Uchida, Zig, and American Crafts markers with me to the hospital every day, and I had picked up a blank book with heavy paper at the dollar store. The process occupied my mind, and I could stop when a doctor or nurse came in to talk to us or do a procedure. I have always been a voracious reader, but I didn't seem to be able to concentrate on a book.

The drawing, coloring, and addition of pen and ink detail continued all through DH's hospitalization, and after his death, it became my lifeline during last summer. I couldn't afford to leave the house every day to shop, and I needed to make peace with being alone in the house during the summer (DH was retired, so we had spent our summers together for the past six years). I could afford to buy good art markers (Faber Castell Pitt pens and the Primacolor markers are my favorites) and watercolor paper, and I drew for several hours every day. My projects were also portable, so I could carry them with me when I made short trips to visit friends and relatives in a neighboring state.

I discovered wonderful frames at Hobby Lobby that just suited my pictures, and when they were on sale for half price, I stocked up. I framed about fifteen of my pictures and hung them throughout my house, and have gotten a great deal of pleasure from looking at them, and knowing that my mother the artist would be proud of me for displaying my artwork (even though she'd probably be a little bemused by my abstract geometric work). My sister picked out several to hang at her house, and my niece has also expressed interest.

The point to all of this is that I decided to enter the Prismacolor contest. I have no illusions about my work compared to other things that I've seen, but I'm proud of coming through last summer's time of grief with the help of my artwork. I once read a quote in Legacy Magazine (published by Somerset Studio, now called Somerset Memories) in which an author says that she's an artist because she says so. I like that approach; I am an artist because I say I am.

I ordered a copy of Somerset Studio's photography magazine (Life Images). After going through the magazine the first time (I go through all of my Somerset Studio publications NUMEROUS times!), I have begun to play with the idea of submitting some of my photographs to this magazine. I had a photograph published a couple of years ago (and ran into someone today who remembered the photo and asked about the accompanying story). I've already been going through my digital files and thinking about what I want to submit. My mother and husband would be so proud...and I am proud of myself for being so brave!