Mama and Me Part 5-The Artist

What makes an artist a true artist? I don’t think it’s necessarily technical skill with any specific medium, but instead the ability to truly see, feel and hear the incredible beauty in the world around you and then harness that beauty and share it with others.

While perhaps never really technically trained, Mama had an artist’s soul and loved to perform with church choirs and the local theater group (a love she also instilled in her children), and she also really loved to draw and paint. My earliest memories of her artistry were the portraits she drew of her children. This memory was nearly lost until I found her drawings while helping to clean out Mom and Dad’s house when she had moved into the nursing home and Dad into a condo. Seeing these drawings brought a piece of her back to me — the devoted and adoring mother who wanted to use her gift to capture the images of her children in something more than just photographs. Seeing my portrait — done simply with colored pencils — brought back the vague memory of her drawing and showing it to me. I don’t think I was in kindergarten yet, but I remember loving it and feeling so special because I had my own portrait.

Not long after this drawing, she suffered the loss of her baby girl, and for a long time afterward, she showed no inclination toward art, at least that I remember. She battled depression for years after. Until finally, one saving grace helped to pull her out of its grips. She discovered well-known television artist Bob Ross, famous for his 20-minute oil paintings of nature scenes. His calm voice and peaceful and loving demeanor helped her to find her own inner peace and to reawaken the sleeping artist within.

She poured herself into Ross’ teachings, recording his episodes and purchasing all his supplies. Finally, Mama was excited about something again. She set up her own complete artist’s nook in the corner of our kitchen, its large windows overlooking the back yard. She laughed with Ross over how therapeutic it was to beat the paint brushes on the cleaning grate and completely agreed that “happy little clouds” were floating overhead and that sweet families of birds and squirrels were living in the trees she created.

She awoke early every morning and enjoyed a few hours of peace and quiet to herself, drinking her coffee, watching the sunrise and painting. She would model the clouds and sunrises she painted after what she saw out our kitchen windows each morning. Like Ross, she preferred mountain scenes with plenty of trees and always a sunrise or sunset in the background. Her new-found hobby brought out a pure joy in her that I had scarcely seen before. I used to love waking up in the morning to see the progress of her work: one day a blank canvas, the next a colorful sunrise was blooming, the day after the snow-capped mountains were added, and so on. Having inherited absolutely none of her ability, I marveled at how she could turn a blank stretch of white into a beautiful, living scene.

She created dozens of works during the late 1980s and through most of the ’90s. Dad, doting as always and likely thrilled she had finally found something that made her happy, had several of her favorites framed and hung around our house. The rest were given to various family members and friends and a few were donated to local organizations.

Mom stopped painting in the late ’90s as Alzheimer’s began to take hold. But after a vacation she and Dad took with my sister, Liz, and her husband, Liz urged her to paint again. Mom, who never before had a problem coming up with a scene, asked Liz what she should do. Liz suggested she recreate the lake and cabin where they had stayed on vacation, and this was Mom’s finished product:

My sister, Marie, a few years later bought Mom a sketch pad, colored pencils and a few other supplies as a birthday present, hoping to encourage continued drawing as she descended further into Alzheimer’s. One evening, while staying with her so Dad could go to church choir practice, I got out the pad and pencils and asked her to draw something for me. She looked at me blankly and asked what she should do. I thought for a few moments, trying to think of something simple that she also enjoyed. “How about a snowman?” I suggested. She loved snowmen. “OK,” she said, continuing to look blankly at me. “How do I do that?”

I placed the black pencil into her hand and told her to start by drawing a small circle near the top of the page to make his head. Still nothing more than a blank stare. I placed my finger at the top of the page and told her to place her pencil there, and then I traced my finger around in a circle and told her to do the same with the pencil. She did so, but made a much larger circle than I had traced, having it take up more than half the page. “That’s alright,” I thought, “so we’ll have a big-headed snow man.” I placed my finger at the base of the circle and had her put her pencil tip there. I traced another circle below the top and told her to do the same. She managed to draw another circle, but instead of following my trace, she drew a smaller circle upward into the large circle above. “Well, we can still work with that,” I thought. I told her she did a good job and asked her to do one more circle, but this time draw one below the other two, tracing my finger as I’d done before. She drew an even smaller circle inside the second one.

I thought it best to just give it up. She wasn’t showing any enjoyment or any emotion at all but instead was just trying to obediently follow my instructions. I told her, like every good artist, she needed to sign her work. Again, a blank stare. I asked if she needed help spelling it, and she said yes. I gave her the first letter and she proceeded to draw a couple little lines and squiggles and looked back up at me helplessly. I gave her the second letter and she did the same. It was very similar to the marks my toddler hand had made in the picture above. It was all I could do to contain my emotions and not let her see how upset I was, but the truth is, that experience was like a knife through my heart. Not being able to write her name was more jarring to me than the experience with the snowman. I had no idea that she not only couldn’t spell her own name, but also was no longer even able to form the letters. I put the sketch pad away and never attempted another drawing with her.

I wish I could share a picture of that drawing today to show the extent of her descent. But I have since gotten rid of it. I kept it for a short time, but at some point wondered why I was holding on to something that brought me so much pain and threw it away. I understand why I did it at the time, but now I am really kicking myself for it. Her last work of art while living on this planet is lost forever.

I was tasked with purchasing her burial outfit when she finally passed in 2016. We didn’t want her clothes to be somber and austere. That just wasn’t our Mama. We wanted her clothes not only to reflect the joy of the occasion — her release from the Alzheimer’s prison — but also to show her bright artist’s spirit, colorful personality and love of nature. While wandering around the department store, with help from Marie on the phone, I selected a bright pink blouse, white blazer and white capri pants with pink flowers. This was an outfit Mom would have loved and worn in life. I told the funeral director she should remain barefoot; Mama wouldn’t have had it any other way.

I arrived at the funeral home a little nervous on the day of her calling hours. Would people not like the outfit Marie and I had selected? Would they think it inappropriate? I walked into the room where her body lay in repose, and the sight of her nearly took my breath away. She was so beautiful in death, absolutely radiant, and her outfit helped her to shine. Her face was serene and even looked a little happy. Death, it seemed, had crushed the disease that had imprisoned her beautiful artist’s soul for so many years, allowing it to shine out all the brighter when finally released. I didn’t want to take my eyes off of her. Perhaps it was wishful thinking or my own imagination taking over, but her body seemed to emanate joy. The artist was finally free.

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