Do not be Lovelorn when there are Hob Nobs, and Cyclamen in your Garden

The Lows

My house has been lovelorn this February.  Two of my lodgers plus Giant Boy, despite filling up on protein shakes with names like Napalm and BlokeStuff and working out with dumbbells, have had their marching orders from their girlfriends.  It is not enough to be hench it seems, it is not enough to be mean and moody and aiming for fabulous abs.  Something for their girlfriends was missing, and the boys were dismissed one after the other.  Being tough and able to lift heavy weights didn't work when it came to emotions.  My heart went out to these youngsters, as first one got his marching orders from the girlfriend's new boyfriend (drama), then another got a goodbye text (painful) and the third was summonsed to hear the goodbyes personally (traumatic).  There were sad, unhappy tears and I sat on my hands so as not to do any creepy stuff like hugging.  Everyone cries, I said, it's what we humans do when we are sad. They tried to say that no, it was fine and they weren't crying, but they were. It was quite a month, for breakups.  By the third breakup, the other two lads were able to help and within a few days, all three were out on the town.  It is a measure of youth, that they were able to delete their girlfriends from Facebook, pat each other on the back, buy a bottle of Vodka and move swiftly on.  And so, tonight, Giant Boy is out with friends, and the other two lodgers are wearing new hair mousse and are deciding that being footloose and fancy free is not so very bad.  However, I know that in the more sober and still moments, all those girlfriends are missed terribly.

The Highs

And in a wonderfully ironic contrast, March began with Fancy Girl getting married.

Fancy Girl and her new husband Tiny Mike (who is very very tall and big) just married.  Fancy Girl is about 6'1" here and Tiny Mike is about 6'4".  

On the 1 March, the very first day of the month, my darling daughter married the man of her dreams. Tiny Mike is a gentle, kind, sweet, funny and strong minded fellow. Yes, it was the most perfect wedding, and oh the dress was beautiful.  Oh the bride was - is - beautiful!  My part in the wedding was to say Yes all the time to everything.  It was a good thing to do, and it enabled things to get done and it stopped any difficulties (my end) from developing.  Can I collect Eileen Rafferty, photographer extraordinaire and Fancy Girl's Godmother from Heathrow at 5.45am on Friday?  Yes!  Can all the bridesmaids come and stay forever and can we make all the bunting, road signs, plans, bits, pieces and will you do the order of service? Yes!  And can we eat a lot?  Yes!  Can you go back and forth collecting and delivering over long distances?  Yes!  After the wedding on Sunday can lots of people come and stay here?  Yes!  And will you feed them?  Yes!

The morning after and Giant Boy cuddling up to Cousin Will who is by far the more seasoned party goer. Will here put himself in the recovery position under the piano for the rest of the day.  The man is an artist.

I put all things on hold for the last week of February, and had the pleasure of Fancy Girl coming to stay here with me on her own to get the final things done.  A special time with my most beautiful and amazing daughter, who had worked so hard to get the wedding as she wanted it.  Tiny Mike, clever fellow, was very unconcerned, all he wanted was to get married and have no fuss.  Up to you, my dear, he said.  It was a lovely time, having her to stay; the end of an era.  I remember Fancy Girl being a tiny wee thing, in love with all the Disney Princesses.  From an early age she wanted to wear marry dresses, and thanks to her doting father, while he was around, she had them.  She liked to sleep with me at nights too, and so from the word go, for a treat, she would get into mummy's bed and sleep next to me, with her chubby little arms flung across my face.  She loved tea in pretty cups, and jam sandwiches cut up into tiny squares on a pretty plate, and at all times she knew exactly what she wanted.  For this final week before the wedding, she slept next to me again, and we had breakfasts together in bed on pretty trays in the morning.  We spent time in the studio making lists of things, and creating, making and organising.  My little girl would be changing her name on Sunday, and in the best possible way, leaving me behind.  So our week together has been what memories are made of.  I will have that week for ever in my mind, before she changed into the most beautiful of all the Disney Princesses, and married a good and honest Prince.  Now, as Mrs Fancy Girl, she has taken on a new life, and is where she always wanted to be.

And so.  Eileen is back from Tanzania and staying with me for a couple of weeks.  She has come home to be the wedding photographer, and it is just lovely to have her here.  Slowly, this week, I have been tidying and cleaning my house and studio.  With two weeks off, one week before the wedding and one week after to recover and reclaim my house, I have forgotten what it is to work.  Part of this week's tidying and repossessing my house was to enable me to list again all the projects and painting work that I have to do. By Thursday I had remembered what I was doing and by Friday I had earned the right to buy a packet of chocolate hob nobs and eat the lot in one sitting.  That was my reward.  Eileen made me buy two packets so I could share one with visiting friends and have the second all for myself without complications.  Eileen thinks ahead, she knows her stuff.

The plan for this month's work is as follows

You are all welcome to come along.  It helps to bring hob nobs.  It will make me love you even more.

• Saturday 28 March the Dying to Know event in Bournemouth.  A Graceful Death will be there and Fr Dominic's portrait will be shown publicly for the first time.  Dying to Know is organised by my dear soul midwife friend and colleague Mandy Preece and her team.

• Friday 20 March the Conversations at the End of Life, Finding Time to Think in our Busy World will be held in St Paul's Arts Centre from 2pm to 4pm. Gill and I will host this with our usual tea and cake and gentle guided conversation about ANY aspect of death and dying that you want to address.

• Saturday 14 March "Spirit of Living and Dying" workshop at the Hamblin Trust in Bosham, Chichester - this workshop will also be held at Angelica's Health and Wellbeing, at the Windmill in Barnham on 12 April.

• Life Board workshops at the Bognor Business Hub every Monday in association with Create Bognor CiC - all are welcome.  Much chatting, expressing and creating.  See what it tells you about yourself.  This workshop is a gentle and insightful way of seeing how you are feeling.  Good too for the sheer fun of creating and expressing, and there is, as ever, cake.  Hob nobs.  

And finally

The sun has been shining these last few days, and everyone in Bognor put on teeshirts and shorts.  It is as if sunlight equals temperature raise, and despite the cold, there were happy faces in the town.  I was one of the happy faces, with my hat and coat still on.  Spring is coming, and the days are getting longer.  Giant Boy and I have decided to cycle to the swimming pool on our bikes, swim, and cycle home again, but we can't quite find corresponding times in our schedules to do it, and so it remains a jolly good idea that we will do at some point, almost certainly perhaps.  The light is brighter, and I can see in the studio much better.  I have talks and workshops and presentations to prepare over the next few months, and because the days are longer, and there are daffodils and cyclamen in my garden, I think it will all be fine, all be perfectly alright, and even if I speak rubbish, everyone will be nice about it.  I spoke at International Womens' Day yesterday in Bognor.  I spoke about soul midwifery to end the day long event, and had the pleasure of addressing some very interesting ladies.  The talk is not always easy to listen to if you are nervous about the end of life, or you are bereaved.  But the subject of end of life is so important to address - and the point of telling you this is that the talk that I had prepared was not the one I actually did, I found myself doing something completely different and surprising myself considerably.  I don't think I said anything controversial, I don't think I said anything that wasn't accurate, but I did surprise myself and probably everyone else there too.  But the point is, everyone was very nice!  Was that because the sun is shining and there are daffodils and cyclamen in my garden? 

The soul midwife talk for International Womens' Day yesterday. Do you think anyone looks surprised?  Do you think I look surprised?  

Enjoy the brightness of the light this March, and have a lovely month.  I hope my household is full of love again by April and that Giant Boy and I do manage to do some cycling and swimming.  Maybe definitely.  Perhaps.

Busy as Heck and doing The Work

Introduction. The Busy Life.

Recently I have, with great seriousness, said Yes to absolutely everything that has come my way.  I have found to my delight that I am nicely full to bursting with things to do, places to go, and people to meet.  There are four main categories of things that I am saying a resounding Yes to.  They are

1. Paintings, private commissions
2. A Graceful Death Exhibitions
3. Conversations about the End of Life, Finding Time to Think in our Busy World
4. Workshops and Talks

That's five really.

Add to that 

1. Soul Midwife outreach work
2. Housework
3. Feeding Giant Boy
4. Feeding Giant Boy's friends who have romantic bust ups
5. Hospice
6. Tidying up Giant Boy's weights
7. Tidying up the lodgers after Giant Boy's weight training sessions
8. Saying Yes to everything Fancy Girl asks for her wedding next month. I can't remember half of what I have agreed to but am sure she will remind me.  It's better this way.
9. Painting my toenails
10. Failing, spectacularly and continuously, to have an early night. 

Before Christmas I drew a huge diagram on a whiteboard with many different coloured pens to try and see where I am now, and where I want to be.  It was good to see how what was in my head looked when it was out on a whiteboard.  Much of it was ideas, hopes and plans. There were arrows linking the ideas to each other.  It was filled with possibility.  I was impressed with what I wanted to do, and what I was already doing and felt that with some help, I could rule the world.

Maybe it was the act of externalising these plans and thoughts that created a magical pathway to all manner of people who woke up after Christmas with an inexplicable passion to find amongst other things, an artist, somewhere, somehow, that has painted dying people and interviewed them. Or to find someone who could talk about this Soul Midwifery lark.  Someone else woke up longing to go to an interactive workshop that looked at facing one's mortality in order to understand the need to really live, and a whole host of other people began to long to sit down somewhere with some fabulous cake and chat amongst themselves about the end of life.  But none of them knew how!  Or where!  Or who!  All those little arrows and diagrams on my white board must have emitted a magical allure to these people who woke with mysterious and barely articulated desires for all the things I wanted to offer, and one thing led to another, and lo.  I am busy as heck doing it all.

Fabulous.  And so I have re-jigged my whiteboard and have rubbed out the question marks beside the projects that had not, at that time, materialised.  Now, there are bookings, and events, and confirmations, all underlined and with hefty full stops after them, signifying definiteness.  I have had to buckle down and write some plans.  And get my easels out and line up the paintings.  And think about deadlines and what to do first.

First.  In the Studio.

Father Dom is first.  Father Dominic is my youngest brother, and a Catholic priest.  His world was turned upside down by his stage four bowel cancer over a year ago, though he is now living with the treatment and the cancer and doing very well.  I have started and abandoned his portrait three times now.  The first time, he looked like a small Spaniard.  Nothing wrong with small Spaniards, but Dom is a tall Brit.  Second time, he looked like Dobbie from Harry Potter.  I stopped painting him then and began to think I was not going to be able to do it.  But this weekend, I decided it was time to just do it.  Yesterday, Sunday, I spent a day in the studio enjoying the painting, and it has begun to form just as it should.  Dominic, my youngest brother, is taking form and looking back at me.  Tomorrow I am having lunch with him in his home in Dorking, and we will go over the interview I have done with him.  One of the things I admire about Fr Dominic is his honesty to face his fears and the darkness when it comes.  He is articulate and open, which is one of the things I want to capture for his part in the A Graceful Death exhibition.

Second, the A Graceful Death Exhibition

will be taking part in the Dying To Know event below.

We will have the Meridian TV team with us filming Fred and the event which is a real bonus. Must remember to wear my twinkly nail varnish.

This event is organised and put together by my dear friend and colleague Mandy Preece, Soul Midwife Extraordinaire, and her team.  You are right in thinking there will be a good many Soul Midwives there.  There will. There will be a million of us. Do come, take part - meet us all, talk to us, discover new things from the many exhibitors, learn about what is available for funeral planning, end of life services, meet representatives from local hospices, and see the A Graceful Death exhibition.  I will be chairing a panel of experts in the afternoon, talking and answering questions from their professional and personal points of view.  And I believe Mandy has a band organised for the finale of the day.  I believe too that Canon John Hyde from this church, and his team, will be providing bacon sandwiches in the morning.  Why stay away?

The portrait of Father Dominic Rolls will be showing for the first time at this event.  Come and see him, and meet all the other sitters who have shared with us their image and story, in order that we may know what dying means to them.

A Graceful Death will also be showing in Maidstone during Dying Matters Awareness week this May, with the Macmillan Cancer Support West Kent.  This will be confirmed and I will let you know when the details have been agreed.  (AGD will you come?  Yes!  Agreed.)

I am also planning a big AGD in Chichester in November.  I am waiting to see if the venue I want is free.  Fingers crossed.

Third.  Painting Commissions.  Back to the Studio

And here, I have three things to complete,

• The Daisy books.  I am producing illustrations for this series of books for children, and have nine paintings for the first book to do in the next few weeks.  Bring it on. 
• Jesus on the Tube.  For a very nice couple who live abroad.  I can do it.
• A painting with the twelve months painted and decorated appropriately in twelve little sections.  Yes, let's do it.

Fourth.  Talks, Workshops and Conversations.

• Talks.  At the Sussex Dowsing Society on 10 May, I will be talking about Soul Midwifery and A Graceful Death.  This is confirmed but the publicity has yet to be done for it.  Secretly, I know how to dowse.  My dear old mother taught me, and she still uses it for such things from telling her if food is off in the fridge, to telling her I need an early night.  When we were children Mother used to dowse everything, including us.  She taught us how to do it and for a while I thought it was magic, and even used it to see which television programmes I should watch.  I may get mother to dowse the venue in Chichester where I want to hold the AGD exhibition in November.  Yes! she will say, and they will have to listen, or she will dowse all their secrets out of them. 
• Workshops. My colleague Gill Lake and I are holding workshops called the Spirit of Living and Dying.  These are interactive workshops from 10am to 4pm where we look at how facing our mortality can give us the key to living with passion and joy.  The first one is at the Hamblin Trust in Bosham on March 14 (keep an eye out for that, they will advertise it nearer the time), and the second is at Angelica Alternative and Holistic Health in Barnham on 12 April.  Here is a link to the Angelica workshop to see a bit more, and to book tickets if you would like to come. Tickets are £40 per person.

 https://www.facebook.com/events/1574909642744440/?ref_dashboard_filter=upcoming

• Conversations.  Oh these are going so well.  The next one is in Bognor and is combined with a Life Board Workshop.  I am so grateful for the help and support of my dear friend Vicky Hulatt and her Create Bognor CiC as it is her workspace that Gill and I are using to hold this day.  The poster below says it all -

After chatting about end of life matters, it will be great to spend time expressing how you feel with a Life Board workshop.  Much chatting and cutting and sticking.  And Gill's cakes, worth coming to eat Gill's cakes.  

And the next "Conversations about the End of Life, Finding Time to Think in Our Busy World" solo session is on the 20 March at St Paul's Art Centre in Worthing from 1.30 to 4.30.  Gill's bringing her cakes.  You know what to do.

Finale.  The Work.

The work that I do is all about people.  It is called, in my mind, The Work.  People are my work.  I raise awareness about end of life and I sit with the dying, and I talk to families who are in the midst of losing someone.  But it doesn't stop there.  I meet people all the time, all manner of people, all of the time and with each person comes the possibility of an awareness of the finite time we have in which to live.  And there is the key.  In which to live.  The Work is not just about talking about dying, about death, it is about choosing to live because you understand that you can.  You can live, you can see your days as yours, and precious, because they are finite and your responsibility, and the fact that you will die gives you the impetus to see this life of yours as the most important and honourable gift in the entire universe.  It is yours!  So find your joy, and live. 

There are many times when I don't do what I have planned on my precious white boards, because people come my way and The Work must be done.  It is so simple. Each time a small light is lit in someone's heart, that they have faced the idea of mortality and can see how their life is their job, their responsibility, something to be taken seriously and noticed, an angel smiles in Heaven, and death is not in vain.

Nail Varnish

This is very important.  I have just painted my toe and fingernails with twinkly nail varnish.  I have had two things to do for a while and have not done them.  One is the ironing, and the other is to paint my nails with glitter.  I will do the ironing tomorrow.

I couldn't resist the picture below.  Soul Midwives arriving to the Dying to Know event in Bournemouth.  Good night all, till March.

These are school girls from the 1920s who are probably smiling in Heaven and approve of this application of their innocent photo from so many years ago. 

Posting the Balloon and Enlightenment.

Time being a Problem

An image came to mind today when thinking about writing the January blog.  It was of trying to push a big balloon through a small letter box.  Trying to make a big, inflated, bouncy balloon into a shape small enough to fit through a letter box.  It's never going to fit, I exclaim with panic, it's not possible, it's very stressful, why even begin such a thing, why did I ever think I could?

Here is the thinking behind that image.

It has been hard to sit down this month and start to write.  I can't, I said to myself, I haven't the time.  It can take all evening and night to write a blog, it can take ages, and I haven't got ages.  I can't see how, ever, in this lifetime or the next, I can find the vast amounts of hours, minutes and seconds needed to sit down and write January's blog.  And so, I didn't do it.  I couldn't carve out of my busy life an evening and night in which to write my January blog; half the time isn't good enough.  Some of the time isn't good enough.  It has to be an enormous stretch of time, an unbroken undisturbed endless swirl of hours and minutes without end or interruption.  It is, in fact, all or nothing.  And so I chose nothing.  I have no choice, I haven't the time.  It's all over,  The end.  Can't be done.

It can't be done so I won't do it.

Then, today, I thought - I will do it.  I will sit down tonight and make the time.  And with that decision came the same kind of thinking about what I should write in the blog.  I can't!  I thought again, all of what I am doing is too big, too too big, it won't fit into the time.  And then, I thought about the different projects I am doing and this thinking about not enough time and things being too big began all over again.  Oh!  Blogging apart, my projects are too big!  There isn't enough time to even do the projects, let alone write about them!  How can I even have projects in the first place, if they are too big to start, let alone finish? Everything, I began to see, was too big, regardless of what it was, nothing was exempt, all things at all times, were simply too big to fit into a single life time and so why start.  End of story.  Go to bed.

And yet, I manage to have a great life on Facebook.  I read my book in the bath.  I cooked a load of pies and soups to finish up the ingredients in the larder, and that all took time, and none of it really needed to be done.  I did a wonderful job recently of sorting out all my jumpers in my wardrobe in colour order, and that important job took about four hours because it included throwing things away and organising the coat hangers into size order.  That part of my life had been completed without me even being aware of it. I even went out with friends and spent a day discussing other peoples lives and how they should improve them.

The business of not writing the blog because of time, of not writing about the projects because of lack of space to even start them, of seeing everything as too big to fit into any human time scale at all, ever, amen, suddenly seems ridiculous.  Thinking like that is, I thought, like trying to fit a huge thing (the blog/projects/life) into a tiny space (an evening, a letterbox) when it didn't have to be that way at all.  And that is when I had the vision of me trying to post a balloon through a letter box.

The Solution.

1. Let some of the air out of the balloon. (Make the project smaller)
2. Stop trying to post it (Stop setting oneself insane methods of dealing with the project)
3. If posting it is necessary, find a huge letter box that it will fit through (if it is going to take time, make the time)
4. Why would you post a balloon through a letter box anyway? (See a doctor)

Exciting things for this year, now that the perception of time has been normalised 

Our last Conversations poster to give you an idea.  This venue will host another Conversations on 20 March.  

• The "Conversations about the End of Life, Finding Time to Think in our Busy World" project.  I have been joined by my friend Gill Lake, a palliative care nurse and the author of an excellent book, a practical guide for both carer and cared for at the end of life.  The Conversations events are so simple.  Gill and I take a public space - a cafe, a community centre, a church hall, an arts centre - and advertise that we are there for two or three hours for people to drop in, for free, to chat about anything at all to do with death, dying and end of life.  We provide tea and cake, and let the conversations start.  Our idea is to provide a safe place to begin to think, to articulate and to chat about this big subject, with no other agenda but to talk together.  Gill and I do not teach, advise or counsel, we just keep the space and let the conversations happen.  Sometimes two people come.  Sometimes fifteen.  The last one we did in Worthing saw us moving out of a small room into a bigger one in order to fit all the visitors in. The next Conversations is to be confirmed in Chichester in February, but we definitely have a Conversations booked for March 20 in St Paul's Arts Centre in Worthing 1.30 - 3.30.   Our aim is to provide a monthly Conversation in Chichester, and Worthing, and to take them to wherever else we can.  May I just plug Gill's cakes? They are awfully good and between you and me, I'd talk about dying if I could get a piece of cake from Gill.  I understand that that is not the point, but something had to be said. 

• Spirit of Living and Dying Workshops Gill and I have begun to present these workshops with this title because it is open to many interpretations.  We combine the age old themes of facing our mortality in order to appreciate our living, and feel that the title can be adapted to suit different approaches, different audiences and different times.  Our first session is at Angelica Alternative and Holistic Health, Yapton Road, Barnham on Sunday 12 April, from 10am to 4pm, and will cost £40 per person.  Gill and I are hoping to confirm more workshops soon. The following link to the Facebook page is not quite ready yet, and hasn't gone live, but will show you a tiny bit more and enable you to book a place now if you fear there will be standing room only if you don't. 

https://www.facebook.com/events/1574909642744440/?notif_t=plan_user_invited

• A Graceful Death exhibition - will be showing at the Dying to Know event, in Bounemouth in March.  Organised by my dear friend and colleague, fellow Soul Midwife Mandy Preece, this event is inclusive, informative, fun, moving and thoughtful.  Well worth coming to spend time with Mandy (and me) and the excellent Dying to Know team. 

Opened by Fred Dinenage too, with possible interest from ITV Meridian. 

• The portrait of Father Dominic Rolls will be unveiled at the above event, Dying to Know.  Father Dominic, my youngest brother, will be the final portrait I am painting for the A Graceful Death exhibition. Dominic is living with cancer, and has a strong and inspiring way of accepting it and carrying on. I think he will be of huge comfort and inspiration, and I can't wait to have him join the exhibition.  So AGD is big enough with 54 paintings, interviews, music, poetry, essays, books and films and so my dear brother will be the final portrait.  The exhibition will still travel and be shown wherever it can, promoting awareness of end of life issues, and trying to make dying a subject that is safe to consider and safe to address by showing all those who gave their image and story to the exhibition, and all of whom have something good, caring and simple to say about their process of dying. I will however, continue to work one to one as an artist with anyone who want to be painted and recorded during their journey, though the painting and interviews will belong to the individual and no longer whisked away to be shown for the A Graceful Death exhibition.  

• A Graceful Death Exhibition during Dying Matters Awareness Week - between 18 and 24 May I will be showing AGD somewhere in West Sussex. Worthing is a possibility, more when I have it sorted.  Alongside the exhibition, there will be talks, workshops, events and music.  It is intended to move you, shake you and inspire you. The stories and the portraits, the poems and the essays, the film and the filmed interviews, the music and the books, are all formed, created and presented over the last five years from the courage and willingness of both the sitters - some who have died, some of whom have not - and the visitors to the exhibition moved to write a poem in response.  The A Graceful Death exhibition is not just an exhibition, it is an experience.  

• Radio Woking - my very old friend Sharon Galliford, mystic, healer, intellectual and psychologist, hosts a radio programme online in Woking on a Sunday morning.  It is called The View from Here and it is, actually, jolly good.  Sharon has a marvellous radio voice, and a wonderful interview manner. And so, I will be joining her this Sunday 17 January from 11am to midday in conversation about - well, knowing Sharon, about everything and anything.  Probably a lot about end of life issues, Soul Midwifery, and the like but Sharon likes to think outside the box, so I am prepared for deep and meaningful questions.  And some dreadful puns, Sharon likes dreadful puns.  A link to the programme is here 

http://www.radiowoking.co.uk/author/sharongalliford/

Other Stuff

This year has begun with a wonderful feeling of quiet energy.  I have taken up Chigong, thanks to a friend here in Bognor, and I wonder if I am swirling in chi. I know how, amongst other things, to push mountains, be a butterfly dancing in front of a flower, wave like water and to smile from the heart.  Soon I shall glide not walk and one day I shall disappear into a cloud of cosmic chi.

Two of my four lodgers are Giant Boy's friends.  They, with Giant Boy, like body building, weight lifting and being tough.  They've all got girlfriends now, which means that their approach to life is the right one. There are random dumbbell weights, cigarette papers, crisp packets, pizza boxes, body building magazines, bottles of after shave, protein drinks and old socks everywhere.  The Anxious Pole has joined them (Giant Boy offered to make him invincible like the Terminator and I think the AP saw a way out of his anxieties) and the house rattles at all hours with the clash of iron exercise weights and is filled with grunts of pain as each proves he can lift more than the other.  My fourth lodger, a German arts student with turquoise dreadlocks, doesn't do weights, but she will play chess.  Her great gift is that if she waits long enough, she can buy practically anything from Morrisons for 9p.

Conclusion

January, all eleven days of it, has been good.  I have enjoyed 2015 so far and have had the luxury of having had an enlightening revelation (balloons and letter boxes) at the beginning of only the second week of the new year.  And I have done the blog. It, the blog, has not needed to be made into a balloon, and thrust, badly, through the letter box of time.  Thanks to the inspired vision of the balloon and the letter box, I have opened the door and carried the balloon inside.  No need for a letter box.  No need to worry. Goodnight!

It is after 1am, and time for a busy enlightened chi filled Artist to go to sleep.  The blog is done.  The balloon is posted.  Om. 

A Jolly, Weary and Magic Winding Down of the Year. And Me.

Christmas thoughts

Giant Boy is in the kitchen with his girlfriend Lucy Love Hearts, and I am convinced that he is just a giant labrador puppy in the wrong body.  If Lucy Love Hearts suddenly threw him a ball I wouldn't be surprised if he dropped what he was doing and caught it in his mouth.  To show LLH how much he cares, he lets her do boxing with him, and she, bless her, refuses.  Somehow the relationship works, and both are happy enough.  They are eating bananas and custard in the kitchen right now, and the subject of boxing has been overtaken by pudding.  A lovely simple life.

And I, I am happy too.  I am sitting on my sofa, wrapped in a fleecy jacket, with a pot of tea beside me, and darkness outside.  It truly is winter and if I wasn't so busy, going to bed now for a few months would be a good idea.  This is the time of year we are all very tired, the year is ending and we feel as if we were ending too.  If only we could all stop, we say to ourselves, if only we could just sit down quietly and let the rest of the year finish itself without us.  We'd like to take part, we would say, but if it is all the same to you, we are going to sit down and wait till April.  This is precisely how I feel, and because I am generally full of empathy, I think you feel the same way too.  There is, however, Christmas to deal with.  Jolly good, I say, jolly good.  But oh, can someone else do it for me?  Well this year, someone is doing it for me, and I look forward to it hugely. My oldest brother and his girlfriend have taken a cottage near here and we are all staggering there to join forces and feed each other and make sure no one stands for more than ten minutes unaided.

When my children were younger, Christmas was hysterically exciting.  It was about glitter, tinsel, trees and shopping trips. There was huge competition as to who would lay out the presents under the tree, who would decorate the tree (my children were not team players, each was a leader in a despotic sort of way) and who would dish out the presents on the actual day.  Usually all three tasks went to one incredibly powerful child who had eliminated all competition on day one, and because I was bringing up the children on my own, trying to work and stay sane, I let them be as long as they could still speak to me in sentences and seemed to have had enough to eat.  We didn't put stockings at the end of the bed, or socks, because no one had big enough feet to satisfy my babies that enough presents would fit in to a single sock.  So we had empty pillow cases.  Dutifully, both brow beaten by my alarmingly power mad kids and half delirious with the Christmas magic myself, I managed to fill up these pillow cases with all sorts of small items in large boxes and so preserve the Christmas spirit.  

I always had a very large tree, which when I came to Bognor, I bought from a family of red haired gypsies in a lay-by each year.  The kid who sold me the first tree, a sturdy fiery haired lad with a fantastic business sense and aged only about ten, told me he was a boxer.  His mother backed this up from a van nearby and called out that he was a local champion.  Well done, I said, and he flexed his muscles and fixed me with a beady eye. I paid up and he smiled and looked pleased.  His mum looked like a boxer herself, so I assumed that when they weren't selling Christmas trees in a country lay-by every cold December, they had a nice little line in boxing as a mother son duo, fighting side by side against opponents terrified by the flaming red hair and the unlikely smell of pine needles.  This year, I got a smaller fake tree.  But the last time I saw him, my red headed boxer lad was a lot bigger with the scars of battle on his face.  I bought my tree and asked how the boxing was going.  Yeah, he said with a smile, I'm still the champion.  I wondered what his Christmases are like, and as his mum wasn't in the van I wonder what had happened to her. Gone to the great lay-by in the sky, I thought, buried beneath a pine tree somewhere with a pair of flaming red boxing gloves hanging reverently in the tree above.

So this year, I have a five foot fake tree that arrived flat packed ready for self assembly.  I self assembled it in about ten minutes.  A tasteful few baubles, some lights, and that was that.  I have only Giant Boy left at home, and he has other things to do than help his mummy put up a fake Christmas tree on a Sunday morning.  In the past, the tree looked like it had been paint bombed with baubles and glitter by drunken aliens, tinsel and lights decorating the walls, the staircase, the floors, and the bath.  Once or twice when Giant Boy was a baby he was decorated too.  We used to sit him in the laundry basket and give him saucepans and wooden spoons to play with which meant he didn't notice being wrapped in tinsel and hung with baubles.   Christmas decorations were not a well thought out design feature in our house, it was a full on creative explosion from some seriously determined kids.  This year, my tree is subtle, and precise.  It went up in the hallway quickly, and it will go down as soon as possible after Christmas, and all will be well.  My daughter, Fancy Girl has her own Christmas tree and has all that she ever wanted in her own place.  There is no one to fight for total control, she is happy and fulfilled.  I will never know if she decorates her fiancé with tinsel and fake snow, or not.  That will remain their business.  My other son who has chosen a difficult and different path, will have his Christmas somewhere and I send him all my love.  Giant Boy is too busy to get involved, training our deeply giving and anxious Polish lodger to box, and lolloping around Lucy Love Hearts waiting for her to throw a stick for him to fetch.

Studio Thoughts

The studio is looking wonderful.  It is the place to be.  I have outdoor fairy lights hung around the door, and if I put on the heating a good while before I go in there, with the fairy lights, it makes crossing the garden in the wind and rain a much more manageable affair.  I have even been wearing my old painting dungarees and a hat so that I am both warm and prepared to get dirty. That, in painting terms, means business.

I hold the teapot and wear the hot tea cosy on my head.  Thinking outside the box.  Clever Artist Extraordinaire.

 I have cut down on all my activities outside in order to spend more time in the studio painting.  There are a lot of paintings to complete by mid January, including five portraits and a new painting in the God's Life series, this time it is God's School Day.  As with God's Kitchen and God's Study, this will be a snap shot of God's day at school just as God leaves the desk and goes to get changed for games.  We sneak a look at the desk and the work on God's desk, before God comes back and we have to go.

I have Fr Dominic to complete for A Graceful Death.  Dominic's portrait has begun, and I am doing him a bit at a time.  It needs to be done for next year, as AGD will go to the Dying to Know event in Bournemouth in March, to Shrewsbury in May and I hope, oh I hope, to Worthing for the Dying Matters Awareness Week in late May.  I am waiting to discuss the venue in January, and will enjoy bringing AGD nearer to home.

The next "Conversations about the end of life, finding time to think in our busy world" is coming up at St Paul's Arts Centre in Worthing.  Hooray.  December 17, Gill Lake and I will be hosting a Conversations and we will be taking three hours instead of the normal two.  We feel that there might be more to talk about as Christmas is coming up and everything closes down.  People may feel isolated and afraid around this time, and so Gill and I want to spend more time chatting with you all.

The latest Conversations just needs you to come along and join us.

And Magic

This past year I have worked hard.  I have painted paintings, written things, organised talks and exhibitions, talked to people about stuff I can do, had meetings with interested parties, and sat with dying people.  But what is uppermost in my mind right now, is magic.  As the year drifts to an end, all that happens in my life still happens, but I am aware of something else, something invisible, lovely, uplifting and precious.  It may be just the energy between people, it may be the kindness of those around me, it may be that I am being given insights into things that I need to see more clearly.  Big things matter.  They matter a lot, and they are big enough to be seen.  Everyone notices a big thing.  I put A Graceful Death on somewhere, and it is big enough to be well and truly noticed.  Gill and I host a Conversations, people come, it's all go and everyone knows it is happening.  But there are moments of such small loveliness that my heart expands, and my mind is grateful.  These moments are tiny fragments in time, over before you can grasp them, deeply meaningful and very private.

I sat with an agitated person recently, an elderly, large and strong person in the last stages of illness.  When someone is agitated, and disconnected, and dying, who knows what they are really thinking and feeling?  I want to go home, said my friend, trying to get up and leave.  I said, you can't, you have to lie down, you are too poorly to get up.  And then I held their arms and said, very gently, Lie down my darling, lie down and find your safe space.  You are doing so well, so well, and it is not easy, but you are doing so well.  I stoked my friend's forehead and eyebrows, and held their hand.  At that moment, my friend turned and looked at me with such warmth, such connection, such intensity that I felt the gift of grace pass from my elderly, struggling friend, to me.  A gift of grace, a moment of truth, a soul to soul communication and I, in my life, can only benefit from that blessing.  My friend died a few days later, and I carry that moment as a gift.  That is what I mean by magic.

Perhaps that is how I will end December's blog. With a gift of grace, magic and connection for you.  Over this Christmas, I wish you love and kindness.  I wish, because it takes no time to do, for this moment, a blessing just for you.  And if you want to decorate any of your family in tinsel and glitter, do it now, while the power of the blessing I have sent you has rendered them incapable and you superhuman.    See  you in January.

Exhausted Angel, even Angels want to go to bed till April.

Update from Bognor, home of the A Graceful Death exhibition, the closing in of the year, and rain.

Chapter one.

Rain today is my friend.  When I am in control of it, I love it.  When I am not stuck in it and cold and wet, I love it.  The sound of rain falling outside gives me a sense of peaceful melancholia, and because I am not actually miserable, I can indulge in a little nostalgic remembering. I have the sounds of rain playing on my laptop too, ten hours of it on Youtube, to help me to focus. It is white noise, and though I know ten hours of listening to a dishwasher would be the same thing, I can't bring myself to look for that on Youtube.  There is romance in rain falling and none in dishes being washed. 

November has brought with it darkness, shorter days and a feeling of things ending.  I am ready for this year to be closing, and feel comforted that though this is the last part of the year, a new one will follow and the cycle of ending and beginning will run as it always does.  (Like a dishwasher programme).  There is something peaceful about the expansiveness of Summer drawing to a close, and the prospect of closing in and folding up over the darker and quieter months of Winter.  In the Summer, I wear colourful cotton dresses, flip flops and bright earrings; I hold my arms wide open to catch the sun and the light.  I like to breathe deeply, smile into the sunshine, and feel the warmth and heat on my skin. There is so much daylight, there is always so much to do.  I eat fruit, and scones, and think of the bigger picture in life. I imagine huge projects and plan extravaganzas with people who think like I do.  Time is slower, and space larger, everything is possible.

Today, November, it has all come to an end.  It is dark at teatime, it is dark in the morning, and the rain is falling outside buffeted by the wind.  I have to cover up to go out, and today I have chosen to wear black because it feels good and comforting.  Now, I don't consider the bigger picture.  I want details, to think things through and to make plans.  I eat hot food and wrap myself in warm soft blankets when I sit down on the sofa in my sitting room.  I wear a blanket in the studio while the heater makes my hands less cold.  I put on my fairy lights in the hallway, in my sitting room and outside the studio because in so much darkness, the lights look like magic, like stars.  Now I am curling up in my home, and feeling the need to sleep and to hide away.  As I write this, over the sea in Bognor lightening is flashing, and over my house there is thunder.  Banging in the Sky the children used to call it.  I remember once being stuck in my car outside our old house in London with one of the children aged about four, in November, with the rain falling loudly on the car around us.  In the darkness the thunder crashed and we had to wait for the deluge to stop just a little, so that we could run out of the car, up the street and into the house.  That was where the phrase banging in the sky came from.  It was magical being cocooned in the dark in a safe but tiny space in a violent thunder storm with a little child.  The rain was so loud it was hypnotic.  We held onto each other and imagined we knew who was doing the banging up there in the sky.  We went through all our neighbours, friends and family, and by the time we had finished the whole lot of them, the little one was asleep in my arms.

Chapter two

November and December will be less busy, as I have studio work to do and I am planning to get in there and paint.  This means less hoovering, less food shopping, a lot less longing to see people who live half a day's journey away, and less thinking about my next mealtime.

It is best if I give you bite sized accounts of October, which was a very good but exhausting month.

•  A Graceful Death went to Ascot at the end of September, to a weekend festival run by an environment awareness movement called Ascent.  My dear old friend Sharon Galliford and I did an adapted AGD for two hours, and very successful it was too.  In every exhibition, there is at least one person who comes away feeling awakened and lightened.  AGD has succeeded only when that person, or people, have come.  At the Ascot exhibition, a man who had to leave the next day to see his dying mother for the last time, was able to come to terms with what was happening, and to understand something of what he was going to see and experience.  My heart goes out to this lovely man, and wherever he is, I wish him peace and his mother a safe journey home.

• The Conversations Project is fully up and running. My new colleague and friend, palliative care nurse Gill Lake, and I held our fourth "Conversations about the End of Life, Finding Time to Think in Our Busy World" at the New Park Community Centre in Chichester.  As with AGD, the one person who comes without knowing anything, and leaves with a way to start thinking about what dying is about, means the session has worked.  For our last session, not many people came, but those that did come, really needed to.  Here is more about what we are doing in an article I wrote for Dying Matters - http://dyingmatters.org/blog/starting-death-conversation

• Swansea!  AGD went up to Swansea to the Elephant in the Room event run by husband and wife team Kiera Jones and Jim Fox.  Oh that was such fun.  Utterly exhausting but so worth it.  A huge event to inspire, challenge and reassure, with a new venture for an event like this, a play directed by Jim called Colder than Here by Laura Wade.  Terribly funny and terribly sad, but oh so wonderful.  Here is another article from Dying Matters about the Elephant in the Room Event  http://dyingmatters.org/blog/elephant-room .  I love Dying Matters because they always let me write about what I am doing, and anyone who keeps saying Yes to me is a life long friend.  The event was full to bursting with tea and cake, and I saw what I always knew, that Kiera Jones, alongside my dear friend and colleague Mandy Preeece, both are absolutely fabulous Soul Midwives.  Both ladies really do the job.  And Jim Fox is up there with Sarah Weller as a Sound Bath Maestro. I also met and talked with Dr Penny Sartori, who researches Near Death Experiences, Out of Body Experiences and all such astonishing and fascinating phenomena at the end of life.  Penny struck me as a deeply intelligent, experienced and dedicated researcher.  Her PhD is on these subjects and her latest book,  "The Wisdom of Near Death Experiences:  How Understanding NDE's Can Help Us to Live More Fully" is out now.  I bought a copy and made her sign it. Actually we got on really well and I didn't make her do anything.  

  
  

Kiera and I hugging after her moving and powerful talk on Soul Midwifery.  Kiera is a palliative care nurse and in her spare time, runs The Centre with Jim, offering free support and complimentary therapies to those suffering from life limiting conditions and their carers.  Me, I'm holding a hot kettle because I was so cold and wouldn't wear anything to cover up my pretty jumper and so not look nice. 

•  Reiki.  I have begun to practice Reiki from home.  I love healing, and have always done it.  Now I have a name for it, and a wonderful teacher in Mandy Preece.  I have a healing room and have begun to do an hour long session for anyone that wants to come.  I charge £30 for the hour, and am thinking of extending it to cover conversation afterwards, as it seems some clear and profound thinking comes to my clients as they sit quietly afterwards.  Here is the best picture yet of my darling friend Claire after her latest session.  Claire and I fell about laughing at this and don't be put off, if you do look like this after, it will feel lovely. 

Claire does not suffer fools gladly and would not allow Reiki if she didn't feel safe.  So when I took this of Claire and we saw it, we nearly fell off the sofa laughing.  I promise I won't laugh at you though if you come for some healing.   Unless you are very funny and then I will tell you it is part of the healing.

• Qi Gong.  I have started Qi Gong and the first time I did it I felt so sick I had to sit down.  You have a good mind, and good energy, the teacher said, but no essence.  So in the hope of finding some essence I have been practising it every morning.  I am no longer sick, and am going back tomorrow hoping he will feel sorry he ever said I lack essence.  It will be shooting out of the top of my head and that will be that.

• Paintings - I am doing another of the God's Life series.  I have done God's Study, God's Kitchen and now I am commissioned to do a third.  God's School Day.  Here is the original God's Study, I have done a good few of them now.  So far, only one God's Kitchen and God's School Day though.

The original God's Study. The God's Life series are a snapshot of the room God has just popped out of, and we get to glimpse into what is happening for the few moments God is absent, answering the door, or putting the cat out.  The ones I do now are customised to include references to the person who is commissioning it.  

• And finally.  Father Dominic.  I am painting my youngest brother as the final painting for AGD.  After this last painting, I will do no more paintings for A Graceful Death.  It will be big enough, and Dominic is a most wonderful subject for the final painting and interview in this most extraordinary of exhibitions.  Dominic is living with stage four bowel cancer, and is doing well after much surgery and chemo.  But his life and expectations are different, turned upside down, and he has shown enormous wisdom and humanity in his acceptance - and fighting the fear of -  his cancer.  I have been raising money to pay for the painting, and all the work that goes into creating the interviews and writing to accompany the portrait.  I have raised £600 so far, and am so grateful for the love and kindness shown to Dom.  Here is the Go Fund Me page.  Have a look, read what I have said, and if you wish to, make a donation.  http://www.gofundme.com/es6suc I cannot pretend I don't need the money, so please do what you can. And a million thanks to all those who have already donated.  Thank you.

Chapter 3

If this blog was a play, you would need an interval now.  So off you go, have some tea, and have a lovely quiet thoughtful November. Wrap yourself up warm, spend time listening to the dishwasher if it isn't raining, and we will meet again in December.  I look forward to it.  

I would love to say this is me doing Reiki and laughing, but it isn't.  It is taken by my son, Giant Boy after he has been telling me jokes.  See you all in December.

Mother's Final Visit to Ireland, And Me

I am sitting in a bed and breakfast in Carrick on Shannon, County Galway, in the late afternoon, while mother rests in her room next door.  I am sitting in my room on a chair with cushions watching the rain fall outside.  I got the nice room with pink pillows and space for two chairs.  Poor mother got the room with just enough space for a huge double bed with a black cover, black lampshades and no chairs.  Her room smells overpoweringly of bleach; we think either someone dropped a bottle of bleach, or it's a quick clean up after a murder before we arrived.

I am spending this week with Mother visiting her cousins in Ireland.  Like Mother, the cousins are old now, eleven of them between the ages of fifty seven and eighty, though she is the oldest at eighty four. I have been meeting people for the first time that I have heard about since I was a little girl.  I have visited the old farm where the cousins were born and grew up, where my mother stayed as a child, and it feels ridiculously familiar, as I have lived there too.  I  recognise the faces of these cousins of Mum's as if I had always known them, and they have absorbed me into their conversations with her as if I have always been sitting with them, watching them from a distance. 

Here in Galway, my mother spent her childhood visiting from England with her mother, my Irish Grandmother, in the 1930s and 1940s.  When war broke out, Mother was sent to live with her Aunt Nina in Portarlington, County Offlay, while her youngest brother and sister went to their Aunt May nearby.  Mother's time in Galway with Nina were among the happiest of her childhood.  When I was little, I loved to hear stories of her days in Ireland, the way she was met from the train in a pony and trap;  the way her Aunt Nina thought she was too pale and thin, and fed her on beef tea and made up her bed in pretty linen sheets.  The way Nina taught her how to clean silver, to feel the quality of good material and to wash and keep lace.  Probably the most important thing was that childless Aunt Nina saw in my mother a shy, sickly, skinny, nervous little child and looked after her so that she blossomed, and grew stronger with Nina's undivided attention.   

My Grandmother Louisa Fitzgerald, her two sisters and brother were born in a tiny farmhouse in Castlegar, County Galway.  When Louisa's father died suddenly, her brother Paddy took over the farm as a very young fellow indeed, giving up his education.  The farm, mother told us as children, and according to all her cousins who were born and grew up there, Paddy's children, was basic.  There were two rooms downstairs, and four upstairs and no lavatory.  No electricity or water, and no road or path leading into the house.  We came over the fields, they said.  The pony and trap would take you so far, and then you would branch off walking across the fields.  There was a well a mile or so away for the drinking water, and rain butts caught water for washing.  

Paddy later married Nell, fourteen years younger than him, and had eleven children in that little house.  My mother said Nell would cook on the hearth, with big iron pots on trivet stands, and a system set up to hang kettles and cauldrons up over the fire.  It is these eleven children that we have come over to see this week.  These are Mother's cousins, with whom she played while she grew up here in Ireland.  Not all of them are alive, some we can't see this trip, but those we have met up with again, have greeted Mother as if it were only last week she was here, talking and laughing about all the things they remember.  The oldest of the cousins is eighty and the youngest is in her mid fifties.  Mother has been back here to visit all her life, has been a part of this family for ever, but I have not met them and I have not seen the farm house, and I have only imagined how it was for them all.  And now that mother is eighty four, she is the oldest surviving member of her generation, and it is becoming more and more difficult for her to do this trip.  My grandmother had seven surviving children.  Paddy, her brother and Nell, his wife, had eleven.  May and Nina, though married, didn't have any children.  There was much coming and going between the eleven in Castlegar, and the seven in Bourneville, Birmingham.  All their faces look familiar to me, and I want to sit forever and hear them talk.

Kitty, my mother Maureen, and Teresa at Teresa's farm in Ahascragh, Gallway a few days ago.  The three oldest of the surviving cousins. Kitty has 9 children, Mother has 4 and Teresa has 6.

I see my mother's delight at being with her cousins.  A moving moment was seeing her pleasure on the drive up the road, built in the 1950s, to the old farm in Castlegar.  Her cousin Padraig came out to see her, now an old man, walking with difficulty, dressed in his fresh pressed shirt, his black shoes polished and his hair smart and brushed. The strength of his handshake was a wonderful experience.  Padraig took over the farm, and has never left it.  This is where my Grandmother was born.  I adored my Grandmother.  She died when I was twelve, in our sitting room after a long illness, and the person I loved most in the world went for ever, she would never come back.  I loved my mother of course, but grandparents can be magical in the way that parents with all the hard work of day to day living with raising children, simply have not the time for. I had always wanted to come and see where she was born, and perhaps feel that I could find a bit of her again.  Well, the shock of it all was that when we arrived at mother's cousin Kitty's house on our first day here, the lady that I met was the image of my Grandma.  It took my breath away.  I have spent this visit gazing at Kitty, watching my Grandma in her face and expressions, feeling that after all, she is still here.  It was good that Kitty was the one who took us to see Padraig at the farm, where they, all eleven cousins, and my Grandmother and her brother and sisters a generation before them, had been born.  

Mother and Padraig.  This house is like my own Grandmother's house, and I want to stay here for ever.  This is mother's visit, but I am in a whirlwind of memories and associations, and I have found the connection to my Grandma that I have missed for so long.  This was her world, and I believed as a little girl that I belonged with her in her world. It has taken me until the age of 54 to come and see it.

And so.  I am sitting in my bed and breakfast room, gazing out at the rain, feeling as if I was always here, and feeling too as if I know nothing at all. 

Mother is asleep next door, on her black bed, gaining strength for tonight, we will be visiting more cousins.  She is very old, and feels her age, but she is utterly sound of mind, and remembers everything.  We visited the house belonging to her Aunt May, her cousin Fr Joe Fitzgerald took us.  The lady living there welcomed Mother warmly.  Mother was able to show her where the chickens used to lay their eggs in the guttering high above the barn, and where she and the Fitzgerald cousins would find them.  

Mum doesn't think she will come to Ireland again, this is her final trip.  I understand, possibly she is right.  The cousins here tell us that we should visit again soon, they say I will be welcome back to see them too, and I want to take them up on it.  But without Mother, I will have to forge my own history,  have my own experiences, and be myself.  The link to these cousins of hers, their families, and the farm they grew up in, and life here, this link is my mother. I have no real way back to the past and into this life, except in her company here. This week, I have watched and listened as she met again and introduced me to these amazing people that I had been aware of for ever.  I have been welcomed, absorbed and accepted into Mother's past, into their company, and I have fallen in love again with the characters and the people I loved to hear about as a child, this time falling in love with them in real life not just in the stories. It is so good to see my mother completely at home, a part of this world, and it is so good that I have at last seen it for myself.  I will leave you with a silent snippet of Padraig leading Mum to the field where they used to cross to arrive at the farm.  The sun shone then as it does here.  Once these two would have run over this land.  I wish I had been there too.

                       

Mother and Padraig, revisiting the field they used to come over to get to the farm.  Padraig was born here, as was his 10 brothers and sisters.  He ran the farm after his father's death, and is still there now.

Sparkly Send Offs. A Best Seller.

It is very late, and getting later.  Sounds like the title of a book I may write or a film I may make, considering what I do.  End of life and stuff.  What I mean is that it is already late on Sunday night, and I have not written to you all for two weeks.  You may be sitting in the dark somewhere, crying, wondering what did you do to make me stop writing.  You may not.  You may have forgotten you ever read a blog by me, and be planning a wonderful day out with really interesting people.  It is very late tonight, nearly 10pm, and I am only just beginning to write.

I have been thinking.  This Summer has changed things in my little world.  I finally faced up to the difficulties with my son, and saw how long things have been very, very bad.  I saw wilful avoidance on my part.  I hope there is a good ending to this story, but at the moment, I have no part in it, and do not, cannot, make things better.  I am, I accept, powerless.

My brother Dominic agreed to be the last person to be painted and interviewed for the A Graceful Death exhibition, and with very mixed feelings, I have tried to start that painting.  We have had one interview, and will have another soon, and I have been avoiding having to paint him.  When I look at Dominic, I see myself.  And, funnily enough, I see our other two brothers too, and Dom's face becomes a mixture of all of us, Ralph, John, Dominic and me.  We are all there, when I look at Dom, and I am struck by my own mortality.  Dominic is living with advanced cancer, and working hard to defeat it.  He may well do so, we don't know.  But as you all know, who have had any dealings with life limiting illness, everything changes forever.  And of course, paradoxically,the same life goes on regardless, without a backward look.

It has been very difficult to know what to do recently.  My head has been both full of worry and empty of solutions.  I almost shut up the studio, put on a false moustache, changed my name to Miguel, and pretended to be someone else.  That would have been easier than being here I thought, in Bognor, with a Studio I wasn't using, a mind that was full of sawdust and nonsense, with difficulties at home, and a growing sense of sadness with the world.

What this all boils down to, my dear friends, is that one part of my work is coming to an end, and another is beginning.  I say this now, though even a week ago, it was not so clear.  This kind of thing is seldom linear, logical and efficient and so I met first with a brick wall.  In dealing with this brick wall, I found eventually, that there were ways round it, and that it wasn't as tough and final as it seemed at first.  I spent much time sitting down and gazing stupidly at it, believing that it was as big and alarming as it looked, until ways to get up and tackle it began to present themselves.  Things are much better now, and I believe I have made my decisions.  Here they are.

• I will write the blog once a month, not once a week.   This will keep you on a knife edge.  What is happening in Bognor?  you will say, and no one will know.  You will have to wait for the beginning of every month to find out.  This will be good for you.  You will learn patience.  And I will practice perseverance.  That will be good for me.  Win win.

• I will start my book.  We all have a book in us, I have one that has struggled to find form for years, and with the working title "Sparkly Send Offs" I think I am onto a winner.  It combines the end of life with being a fairy and this working title gives me immense joy.  It is completely ridiculous, and we can thank my dear friend Sarah Weller, Sound Therapist extraordinaire, for coming up with it.   Complete nonsense.  Wonderful.

• The Conversations project is the way forward.  I have been holding two hourly sessions in the community for anyone to come and talk about any part of the end of life that is on their mind.  There is, as always, tea and cake, and a gentle and open forum for discussions on end of life matters.  The last one held at the Salvation Army Community Hub this week, covered atheism, suffering, laughter, and euthanasia.  The idea is so simple.  "Finding time to think in our busy worlds" is the strap line on the posters.

• The A Graceful Death exhibition needs a permanent home.  It is now time to set it up properly and permanently somewhere where it can be accessed by those that want to come and see it, respond to it, and meet the people who have left us their images and their words about how they are doing their dying.  Or living.  Some are still with us, some are not.  The one thing they all have in common is that while we are painting and interviewing them, they are living and living with full intent.  It's time that it was set up, all 52 paintings, the films, videos, the music, poetry and essays, all of it ready made so that it could be used to help us start to think of and believe, our own mortality.  There will be no more paintings after Dom. If AGD now has a place to stay, for however long, it would work very well.  I am open to ideas.  Probably somewhere near me now, in Bognor, so that I can maintain it.  It can still travel. I love the idea of having a van with the A Graceful Death logo on it, as it travels the length and breadth of the country, full of paintings of dead and dying people, being avoided on the motorways as people would do anything rather than follow behind, overtake or have anything to do with a van full of things about dying.

• Dominic's portrait is the last painting that I will do for A Graceful Death.  I will be finishing this part of the project with a beautiful painting of my youngest brother.  There is talk of making a small film of Dom as a finale to the creative and expressive work that has been the A Graceful Death exhibition and project.  I hope that we do this, Dominic's experience and his ways of keeping himself going, are very valuable for when we may need such advice.  We all will need some preparation.  We are all one day, going to be finding ways to try to die well.

There is something else I have been made aware of.  I, we, all of us, need to express.  Creativity is a most glorious tool for us to use when we are feeling low.  It is counter intuitive, the last thing you feel like doing when you are moping into your twenty ninth pot noodle in your smelly old pyjamas and not answering your phone to anyone, under the sofa in the sitting room for the fourth day in a row, the last thing you feel like doing is to doodle.  Write.  Play the piano.  Make something.  Paint something.  Arrange some flowers.  Cook something.  The very last thing you think of, would be to express what is in you now.  But, it does something to the grip your sour, insular mood has on you.  Not expressing yourself is a sure way to remain under the sofa.  

A Graceful Death Dates

Having said I'm looking for a permanent home for the exhibition, I'm now going to tell you how it won't be around in it's new permanent home on these dates.  It will be temporarily impermanent.

Sunday 28 September AGD will be at the following from 3pm to 5pm.  Come and see me there, I'll be with a section of the exhibition in the actual Church.  

All Saints Hall, Ascot SL5 8DQ
Saturday September 27^th (10 to 5) £10 I'll be doing a pop up talk at about midday here
 & Sunday September 28^th (3 to 5) £5  I'll be in the church with AGD here.

RESILIENCE & SELF-EMPOWERMENT
in a time of TRANSITION

BOOKING & details   01344 621167 yarwodav@gmail.com
EVENTBRITE via    www.ascentascot.org

Thursday 30 October to Sunday 2 November 2014

 AGD will be a the Elephant in the Room event at the Swansea YMCA. 

The Elephant In The Room is a four-day event to be held in Swansea from 30th October through to the 2nd November. The centre-piece of which will be the hugely successful, and much talked about, art exhibition “A Graceful Death” by Antonia Rolls. 

Alongside the exhibition we will also be presenting a programme of talks and workshops, together with evening performances of the funny and moving play, “Colder Than Here”, written by award winning playwright, Laura Wade, as well as an opening musical concert on the Thursday evening.
There will also be a number of exhibition stands relating to the theme of the event.

It is our intention, through The Elephant In The Room, to bring, what is often a taboo subject, out into the open, stimulating awareness and encouraging discussion around the subject of death and dying. Through the talks and workshops we plan to cover a range of areas, including end of life care and support, funeral planning, the approach to death in different cultures and faiths, planning and writing of Advance Decisions and Wills, being prepared, the options available at the end of life and awareness of choice, and much more. We will also have question and answer sessions with a panel of experts in their own related fields.

Apart from the theatre and musical performances, entrance to the exhibition and all talks and workshops will be free. Refreshments will be available throughout the days in exchange for donations.

The programme of talks will run from 12 noon until 4.30 pm on Friday 31st October and from 11.00 am until 4.30 pm on Saturday and Sunday November 1st & 2nd. 

All the proceeds from the event are going to fund the work of The Centre in Swansea, in providing free complementary therapy treatments and support to those living with cancer and other life-limiting conditions, and also to support Antonia Rolls and her “Graceful Death” work.

We hope you are able to join us for what promises to be a wonderful event.

Saturday 28 March 2015

AGD will be at the Dying to Know event in Bournemouth

It is nearly midnight now.  Time to go to bed.  Life goes on, and tomorrow is another day.  The next blog will be in October and in the meantime, I will start Dominic's portrait, and find an opening sentence for Sparkly Send Offs. I do remember a few years ago, come to think of it, a lady in her seventies watching over her daughter in her forties who was dying of breast cancer.  As the daughter entered her final few days, the old mother hung fairy lights all around her room and turned off the lights, it was magical and wonderful.  Perhaps that is the true Sparkly Send Off.