Goodbye Mike with all your Outrageous Lies, with huge Respect

Mike Hardy.  Thank you Mike.

A few weeks ago, on the 29 April Mike, pictured above, died.  His family and his wife Michele were with him and I think it was the end of a long, long journey for all of them. His death was not a surprise as Mike had suffered from Motor Neurone Disease for many years, but it is very very sad,  and I cannot imagine how much his family must be missing him.  At Mike's funeral, there was standing room only, he was such a memorable man and so many people cared for and about him.  Mike's portrait above was painted for the A Graceful Death exhibition a couple of years ago, when Mike could still speak a little and could type on his computer keyboard.  He was articulate and clever, speaking of his illness and how his life had changed without a shred of self pity.  As an assistant head teacher it seemed his gift was to educate, and I have been taught much about life with MND by Mike and his wife Michele.

Michele was his main carer.  They were supported greatly by specialist nurses, carers and the MND society, but even so I only glimpsed the amount she did for him, and I was, and am, filled with deep admiration for her practical, articulate, consistent and loving approach to the life they both were faced with after the diagnosis of Motor Neurone Disease.  Michele made no secret of how hard it was to look after Mike, and how frustrating the illness was for them all - an illness which must have take about thirteen years from the diagnosis to his death on Wednesday 29 April last month.

I was first introduced to Mike through soul midwife and dear friend Mandy Preece, a volunteer on the Macmillan Unit in Christchurch, where for many years Mike attended the day centre.   For his final few days, Mike was admitted into the ward at the unit, and was cared for by the staff who had been with him since the beginning, where Mandy too was able to say goodbye to him.

A few years ago, Mandy had arranged for me to meet Mike in the day centre, to talk about him being painted and interviewed as part of the A Graceful Death exhibition. She had spoken to him about it, and he seemed keen to be involved, and so Mandy called me and made a date for us to meet.  I went along with no idea of what to expect - I knew Mike communicated through a computer keyboard, and could speak with difficulty, that he was wheelchair bound and that I had never met anyone with MND before.  I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to communicate with him, and I was nervous.  As I approached to say hello, Mike giggled and started to tap out a greeting.  Instead of saying, "Hello Antonia, I'm Mike and nice to meet you, don't be nervous" he tapped out the text that I have painted onto his portrait - "I had a dry sense of humour and told outrageous lies but now I am a gibbering wreck."  Everyone started to laugh, I was instantly at ease, and I was aware that no matter what I thought, Mike was in control, and was fully, totally, all there.  One of the first things he taught me was that MND takes away your physical abilities, but doesn't take away your mind.  He couldn't take part in conversations by speaking, but in his head he was replying, giving his opinions and being just the same as he always was, only no one could hear him.  He also showed me that if you are going to speak with someone who uses a keyboard, and cannot speak, you need to take your time.  We are so used to communicating quickly and moving on, we never think about long silences and how it must feel to take five minutes to say one thing.  Mike showed me that I needed patience if he was saying something, to wait and to let him say it or write it, and not to interrupt needlessly.  I really enjoyed meeting with and working with Mike and Michele, and I am grateful to them both for their wonderful contribution to the exhibition.

A few weeks before he died, Michele brought Mike to see A Graceful Death at Mandy Preece's event Dying to Know in Bounemouth.  He took a long, long time to  tap out on his keyboard "I've gone downhill a lot since I saw you".  Michele is standing behind his portrait holding it up.  

I have been thinking recently, about what I do.  There is something about working with the end of life that means that I work with life itself.  When I am asked to talk on A Graceful Death and soul midwifery, I am clear that I don't work with the dead and I don't work with after death.  That is not my gift, I have friends who are fantastic in the work they do after death, my thing is working with the living.  Until the moment of death, if required, but always with life.  Because of this working with life, I have begun to listen and be aware that many of us who are not actively dying need soul midwifery just as much as those who are known to be palliatively ill.

Let me think about what I mean by soul midwifery.  My friend and colleague Mandy Preece defined it for me thus

 "A soul midwife is a holistic therapeutic companion to the dying offering sound, colour therapies etc. to ease the dying journey. What we do is provide emotional support by sitting alongside and being with someone without agenda and being willing to listen to their fears"

I am some of that, but I don't offer sound, colour or therapy of any sort.  I do the sitting alongside without agenda listening, and I do the being present and holding the space.  Listening to what is not being said as much as what is being said, and giving all my attention and love to the moment, for however long that moment lasts.  It used to confuse me that the most profound and best moments were just those, moments.  I had imagined that to make any difference, I had to be with someone for hours.  It didn't feel right otherwise, as if in order to be real, any breakthrough had to take ages and to be really difficult, or it didn't count.  Sometimes that is the case, but mostly, the most enlightening moments are random, fleeting, and if you blink, you may miss them.  They are moments of grace, and are sometimes deeply moving, sometimes painful, sometimes blissful.  Sometimes they are all of those things.  

Yesterday, I accompanied a lady to visit her friend in hospital, who was slipping very gently away.  The friend, according to his family, was not talking about what was happening, was not saying what he wanted, was not addressing this terrible situation.  The person who I was to accompany, felt unable to help, and wanted support.  But what I found when I entered the hospital room, was that this man did know what was happening, he was telling us in his own way, it was just that it was not in the way his distraught family could hear.  He was speaking, but quietly, with half finished sentences, with insights and gentle regrets, about getting ready to go, about acceptance and about the sadness of not seeing his grandchildren grow up.  What he was not doing was answering questions, or discussing his funeral, or helping his family feel better.  We sat down with her friend, and once we had provided the space and the silence to hear him, and to give him the attention he needed, and to acknowledge what he was saying, he began to tell us about how he was coming to terms with his dying.  Between us, we held his hands and listened to all that he was saying, and all that he was not saying and between us, we let him know we understood.  

This being understood, being given the space and the attention, is what we need in life, not just at the end of it.  I have been considering, that being a soul midwife is a necessary thing for everyone, not just the dying.  Being aware of our own mortality, really accepting that time will pass whatever we do, and this one life we have is ours to use and create and live, is so simple.  It interests me that if someone focuses on us when we are talking, gives us the respectful attention we need when we are communicating, we feel valued, heard, supported and affirmed.  Don't wait until someone is dying to offer this, do it now to whoever is with you.  I think I will be a soul midwife to the well and living too.  

What's On

Conversations about the End of Life, Finding Time to Think in our Busy World is coming back to St Paul's Art Centre in Worthing next month, June.  Free, and very interesting to see who comes along, and what we all talk about.

Spirit of Living and Dying Workshop also at St Pauls Art Centre in Worthing - an interactive, creative loving and challenging workshop where Gill Lake and I suggest that we recognise that facing the fact that we will all die gives us the impetus to live, really live. The date on this poster is wrong - it is now Wednesday 10 June so please do come, but on Wednesday 10 June.  

Wednesday 10 June.  Not Tuesday 2 June. Still a very good workshop despite messing the dates up.

A Graceful Death exhibition

Next showing in Maidstone in Kent for Macmillan Voluntary Services, as part of Dying Matters Awareness Week.  I am really proud to be associated with such a wonderful organisation, and have deep admiration for the work they do.  Jane Pantony from Voluntary Action Maidstone for Macmillan, is hosting this exhibition, and is also a trained soul midwife.  

Soul midwife and friend Melissa Grassel White will be there for the exhibition to help, and is hosting a Cake and Death event, similar to a Death Cafe on the Friday afternoon. And my dear cousin Maddy is not only letting us stay with her (she lives nearby), but is coming to help too.  Maddy is an experienced AGD helper, and is a very dedicated pain relief specialist and physiotherapist.  The exhibition is free, and runs from Thursday 10 am to 10 pm, and Friday 10am to 6pm.  As you can see there are workshops and talks, please come along and take part.


And In Between

My work as a commission artist has been ongoing, and when I am not doing other things, I still paint pictures that are not to do with end of life.  I have painted a whole series of God's Life pictures which show rooms in God's house, just as God has left them for a moment.  We get a glimpse into the room, and the clues around the room tell us what God has just been doing, and what surrounds God at leisure.  Here are two latest paintings.  Acrylic on canvas, and about 10" x 10".  It may be difficult to see all the detail, as I still need to get a professional photograph taken of them.  See what you make of God's Garden (note the dove cote and the lamb and the tree of knowledge) and God's Bathroom (note the bath towel, the laundry baskets and the mirror).  The paintings carry on around the edges of the canvas, which is not visible here.  I have added little quips and images around the sides which are only visible when you stand in front of it.

God's Garden

God's Garden, with an apple from the tree of knowledge half eaten on the deck chair.

God's Bathroom

Note the crown on the loo paper.

And finally in honour of Mike and Michele

This was filmed in September 2013, for the A Graceful Death exhibition, and is a witty, insightful and truthful account of life with Motor Neurone Disease, for both the carer and the patient. 

                 

RIP Mike and thank you.

Who are you, and what do you want to say?

Julia Wilson, mother, MND sufferer, says that all she has left is time.

When I work on a portrait and interview for the A Graceful Death exhibition I ask two questions of my sitters.

• Who are you, and 
• What do you want to say.  

It is important to know who we are, and it is difficult to know what we want to say.  It is difficult to know who we are too, come to think of it.  When we are facing the end of life, when time is limited, when all the plans for a future stretching out before you are not going to happen, knowing who we are and what we want to say must be very hard.  Working with someone in this way we are very much in the present.  Who someone has been, what they did and how they lived their life has brought them to this moment, and to who they are right now.  The person in front of me is the person I paint, the person in this moment at this time, however they look, however their illness is making them different to when they were well.  It is important to know that now is all that matters.

But what about you?  It is likely that you are not facing the end of your life, and the question is just as important for you.  Who are you, and what do you want to say?  If I was to sit with you and ask you, what would you say?  Who would I see when I start to paint? Who would you want me to see?

I asked myself these questions.  Who am I and what do I want to say?  I have no idea, was the answer.  I ask the questions of other people, I don't answer them for myself.  But I have been feeling a little at sea over the last week and a little uncertain about what I doing, and so it was a light bulb moment on waking one morning that I need to ask myself the very questions I ask of my sitters.  Who are you, and what do you want to say?

I began the year by saying yes to everything.  Oh what fun that was, the most surprising things came my way, and I rushed hither and thither doing all the things I had agreed to do.   For a while that is a good idea, until the time comes to focus.  If I say yes to everything, I can do lots of things quite well, but nothing very well.  There isn't time, I have to skim the surface.  After a while, that becomes a challenge, I don't want to skim the surface.  I want to concentrate on what I am doing, linger longer over it, and go much deeper.  So the question of who I am and what I want to say becomes exactly the right thing to ask.  It requires focus and it requires some thought.

We don't know who we are until we experience who we are not.  I am not good away from my painting.  My painting is where I focus, become quiet, experience myself with no distractions, get real.   I am not good as a teacher, I need to do, not teach. I need teachers for myself, and I don't have the patience or application to be the teacher.  I am not good with restrictions unless they are sensible and enhance the quality of what I am doing.  And most of all, I am not someone else.  It is no good feeling I can't do things as well as someone else, whoever they may be, because I am not required to do their thing, they are doing that and I need to do my thing. Simple.  So what is my thing?  And who am I and what do I want to say?

It strikes me that we are all changing and adapting throughout our lives.  Who I am and what I want to say today may be different to another time in my life.  I have noticed that as soon as I think I know what I am doing, everything changes, and I am back in the place where I don't know any more.  Perhaps this is a good thing.  We are all so complex, and at the same time so simple.  The meaning of life could be any number of things, at any time, to any one.  When I was a young mother, the meaning of my life was my children.  Who am I?  A mother.  What do I want to say?  My children are amazing and all absorbing.  Now I am older and my children are all adult.  I am still a mother, but there have been many different identities between the young mother that I was, and now.  Ask me today and I am not the same - who am I?  An artist, an individual, a soul midwife, a vulnerable adult, a nut case - and what do I want to say?  Oh - I want to say be kind.  Practice loving yourself.  Listen to each other.  Give me lots of free holidays.  Do my housework for me.  I can say so much but it doesn't yet feel as if I know what I really mean.  A few months ago I had my identity sorted.  I was a soul midwife artist and I wanted to say that this is fun.  Life has moved me on from that description, and now, it does not answer for me.  It is still much of who I am and what I want to say, but I have shifted and I need a new description.

Sometimes I fear that if I don't have a name for who I am and what I want to say, I will have no identity.  That is rubbish of course.  But I have to remember it is rubbish.  I am still all the things that I do not name that make me who I am, I am still the sum total of all my experiences so far, and I do not disappear into nothingness simply because I do not name what I am.  But not naming who and what I am is uncomfortable, and confusing, and I am not wise and strong enough to simply exist without needing to describe myself.  I thought of the word identity when I sat with a lady who had nothing much to say with her dementia and her illness, and no photos or reminders of who she had been in her room.  I had no clues at all as to who she was, I had to sit with who she is. As it happens, she was beautiful inside and out, and I would not dare ask her who she was and what she wanted to say.  Her identity seemed to have been safely locked away inside her, and she did not give the impression that she needed to question it and probably, would not have been able to.  But who she was when I sat with her, was simply herself.  It was lovely, and simple, and good.

Father Dominic Rolls.  The finished article.

Dominic, for those who may not know, is my youngest brother.  He is living with stage four bowel cancer that has spread to his liver.  Dominic, a Catholic priest, is doing very well with his treatment, and is now choosing to live a healthier, more self aware life than he has been able to do while running his huge parish in Dorking.  While he is coping with the treatments, Dominic has the help of another priest who has taken on the parish, and Dominic does what he can.

The portrait of Father Dominic for the A Graceful Death exhibition is finished, and has had its first showing at the Dying to Know event last month in Bournemouth.  The painting and the interview - which I hope you will read, because it is a wonderful insight into the hard work a religious man has to put in to maintain and keep his faith when something so terrifying as a terminal illness affects the man - is on the A Graceful Death blog here  http://agracefuldeath.blogspot.co.uk/.  I will show the painting here too, the full interview is on the A Graceful Death link above.

Fr Dom.  Holding his intravenous chemotherapy bag attached to a pic line directly into his body.  After the chemo at the hospital, he had a slow release extra dose he carried around with him, day and night in his pocket.  He is pointing to it with characteristic good humour and  a sense of fun.

While we are working out who we are and what we want to say ...

Both my sons are staying here at the moment.  Giant Boy is discovering that although he loves his mum, he loves the high life and the low life even more.  I can generally count on him to appear normal if I need him to be so, but it is often a very close shave.  I believe his brain is still plastic at 18 and it hasn't got much of an off button, so I have to work out which dreadful thing has been moulding it at any given time before I address him with things I want done in the house.  My other son has an alternative take on life, is clever, funny, and living way off the radar. Time and space for him exist in a whole different universe, and life for him should one day be made into a film.  He will, however, do anything for chocolate.  This is good over Easter.  And so,  Easter Sunday lunch with my boys and Alan and me went very well.  We discussed the tax implications of prostitution and whether it was an option in a general kind of way, if your benefits didn't cover your living costs.  Because we all smiled and ate and were very nice to each other, I consider my Easter Sunday lunch a rip roaring success.

Today, another lunch.  My mother joined us, and the potential for unusualness was once again there.  The food was excellent, Mother was appreciative, Alan carved and one son joined us with a black eye, and the other could not be roused from a mattress in the sitting room.  Everything OK?  I asked a very polite, nice but rather tired young man who seemed to have stayed over on the sofa.  Yeah, you know...he said, and shrugged, before gathering his coat and disappearing off home.

Still, we all had fun and later on when the son who could not be roused did appear, he seemed surprised that we had had our lunch and that much of the day had disappeared.  Never mind.  Mother, Alan and I left for a walk by the sea, through a garden full of the celebrating family of my Anxious Pole having a barbecue, and the day continues.

And so.

What I have come up with, having written this blog and thought about it, is that who I am is Antonia, and what I want to say, is that it is all fine.  It is going to have to cover all the sub identities, and sub what I want to say stuff.

All the talk about how one can be anything at all, anything that one wishes, is of no help right now because what the question asks is who are you now and what do you want to say now?

So now - who are you, and what do you want to say?

Dancing with my daughter at her wedding.   I am here artist, soul midwife, mother, nut case, floozy, all things making up Antonia.

This is who I am at the moment, and what I want to say is, for the moment, it is, absolutely, all taken care of.  It is all, fine.

See you, whoever you are, next month.  With love.

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.