Life goes on. And a new AGD Event with Sound and Art.

Life goes on.  I left you last week with an account of Julia's death, and the sadness in her house at her loss.  I took a couple of days off to be slow and to be reflective, and then, because life really does go on, I went back into the studio and took up where I had left off.  It has been a gentle week, meeting with people that do not tax me, and with painting work that means that I spend time alone.  And now, a week later, I have events to plan, things to tell you about, and a painting to do.

I have started to paint Claire for AGD.  I met Claire in the hospice, where she was terribly ill with cancer.  When I first saw her, Claire had no hair, her body was ravaged and too thin, and she could not say much.  She did not look as if she had the strength to live.  On arriving at the hospice one day, Claire was no longer there.  She had gone home, and I expected that she had done so to die. Imagine my surprise, months later, to find someone tap me on the shoulder at Tescos last Christmas, and tell me that they just wanted to say hello.  I saw a slender, beautifully dressed and elegant woman with soft wavy hair, and masses of it.  I thought to myself, I know those eyes, who is this?  It was Claire.  "From the hospice!" she said and I was stunned.  Claire!  From the hospice!  Alive and well and shopping in Tescos.  Claire did not die, not at all, and with the devoted help of the staff there, and of her close friend Jackie, Claire is well and is living each day now, a day at a time, with all the power and understanding of what living for the moment means.  Claire is my last portrait this year for AGD.  I will have painted four people when she is completed - Mike, with MND, Julia with MND (who died last Friday), Kate Granger with cancer and Claire, who has no cancer today. Her cancer is gone, and day by day, it stays away.

I shall make her as enigmatic and as beautiful as she is. The most important thing is that she is alive against the odds, and is filled with an understanding of what it means to live.  She has stood with one foot in death and one foot in life.  Claire has gone further than most of us into death, and has a way of articulating her thoughts and experiences that makes me think I understand the paradoxes and strangeness of being in those places.  The painting will show a beautiful lady, but a vulnerable one.  Having said that, whenever I think I know what I am going to paint, and how, whatever forces that help me to paint at all, do their own thing, and something else entirely happens.

I have also prepared a large piece of wood for a painting that I have thought about for a long time.  It will be called The True Fairy, and will be a painting of me.  From the moment that I could form a thought in my head, I believed that I was a fairy.  As a little girl, I was terribly set upon by other girls in the playground at school, who told me that I was not a fairy at all.  And that they were.  "All girls," they said, "born in 1958 or 1959 were fairies."  Any other years, no. "Except perhaps, for 1961." It was well known that I was born in 1960, as I was the youngest in the year.

After a dreadful time trying to talk to the Fairy Queen, called Esmerelda, who lived in a tree outside the games shed, and ask her to make me a fairy, I had a moment of insight.  "I am," I realised one long, long lunch break after a week of long, long lunch breaks, where I had tried to lure a response from Esmerelda with a bit of bubble gum and was continuing to get absolute silence from her, "I am the true fairy!"  And that was that. Esmerelda could take a running jump.  As a Fairy Queen she needed to retake all her exams and suffer a drastic drop in salary.  And as for the other girls, the only reason they thought that they were fairies was because they believed in Esmerelda.  I knew for a fact that blinking Esmerelda spent most of her time ignoring people from up that tree outside the games shed, because she was useless, fat and spotty and probably scared of me because my fairyness was so dazzling that it had given her a heart attack.  "Ha!" I said to the other girls. "Esmerelda says I am the Fairy Queen now and you are to give me all your bubble gum."  That, I thought, will show them.  And it did.  They were rather stunned, and left me alone and I carried on trying to fly and do magic quite happily without any distractions.

The True Fairy.  Aged  12 months and meaning business.

 And now, aged 53, I think it is time to make something of this.  "I am," I will say to anyone who asks, "still the true fairy"  and I will take all reactions and any, to be those of approval and joy.

Time to introduce the next AGD event.  Time to get the diaries out and to scrabble excitedly for a pen.  This event is in conjunction with Sarah Weller of Sounding for the Soul sound therapies.  Some of you have been at our last workshop together, and the feedback was excellent.  It promises to be a fabulous afternoon, and Sarah is becoming very well known for her amazing sound work and sound baths.  Please come to this event and support the work that we do with those at the end of life, and with promoting awareness of end of life matters.  

****************************************

Goodbye Michael Goodbye Old Friend. 

A Graceful Death and Sounding for the Soul present

An afternoon of awareness of end of life issues through the media of art and sound.  

This event is dedicated to the memory of Julia Wilson, who died of Motor Neurone Disease last Friday. Julia has given her story and painting to the AGD exhibition, to help others facing the end of life

1pm to 5.30pm Saturday 14 September 2013

The Roland Rank Centre, Aldwick Road, Bognor Regis, PO21 3QG

 A Graceful Death, by Antonia Rolls, is an exhibition of portraits of those who are facing the end of life. In working with someone who faces their own death, Antonia asks her sitters, “Who are you?  And what do you want to say?”  Antonia’s work is very much with the living; until we are dead, we are very much alive and it is this life that the exhibition addresses as people come to terms with death.  The A Graceful Death exhibition tours the country promoting discussions and conversations on what it means to face the end of life.

Antonia will be talking about her work and the people behind the portraits, what dying means to them, and how we all have to face death.   Many of the paintings will be on show. 

Kate Granger

Sounding for the Soul is run by Sound Therapist Sarah Weller.  Sarah uses the energy of sound and vibration to heal and sooth, and works with those who are in need of the powerful and timeless magic of crystal and Tibetan bowls, drums and with gongs. 

A recent Sounding for the Soul workshop

 Sarah has worked with Alzheimer’s and with Multiple Sclerosis patients, as well as all her regular clients who benefit from the healing effects of her work.  Sarah is developing sound work for those at the end of life, and joins Antonia to offer end of life awareness events.

Sarah Weller with an MS patient at a Sounding for the Soul workshop

Sarah will be giving an explanation of her work, followed by a Sound Bath Meditation.

1 pm Doors open, see the paintings, see the sound equipment, meet Antonia and Sarah.

2 pm Introduction to A Graceful Death, the portraits and what do they say?  By Antonia Rolls

3.15 Introduction to Sounding for the Soul and an extensive Sound Bath experience by Sarah Weller

4.30 – 5.30 tea, cakes, discussions and chats.

Tickets on the door £15.00.  All proceeds to the A Graceful Death project.

Julia Wilson, with thanks and love.

The first day of eternity for Julia and the look of true love.

Today is the first full day of eternity for Julia with Motor Neurone Disease, who I painted and interviewed for the A Graceful Death project just a few months ago.  Julia died yesterday at 6pm, and just as she died, she opened her eyes and looked at her husband.  It seems to me that if ever Julia gave a gift, it was at that moment, to open her eyes and look directly at her distraught husband.

When I spoke to Julia's husband, Barry, on the Thursday, he told me that there was very little time left.  "I thought she had gone last night," he said, his voice breaking. The MND had rapidly become worse and Julia had become unconscious and unresponsive within days, and no longer left her bed.  Barry spoke of how he was watching over her day and night, with the help of carers and Macmillan nurses, he did not want to leave her, he did not want to let her down, and he did not want to lose her.  When we finished talking, I was terribly agitated, I couldn't settle to anything, I felt that I needed to go now, right now, and be there.  But I couldn't, I had made plans for Friday, and Julia was well taken care of.  I had promised to come back and see her in August, and now, unless I left right now, I felt, I would be too late. 

In the studio, I had been refreshing Julia's portrait (with so much showing, the paintings get scuffed, and need to be touched up and renewed every now and then) and so I went to speak to it.  "Julia," I said, "please hold on until tomorrow.  Please wait until I can see you.  Please let me say thank you and let me tell you how important you have been, and are, for me and for AGD."  And I had to leave it at that.  But I was very moved by the news, and found myself tearful and distracted. I had formed such a liking for Julia, she moved me deeply.  She was the most normal person you could hope to meet, she had no huge ambitions, she did not need lots of fuss and attention.  She was a mother, a wife and a friend.  She wanted love, friendship, a happy and contented family.  Julia had beautiful skin, huge expressive eyes and a wonderful ready smile.  Somehow, she had been chosen by life to get Motor Neurone Disease.  Somehow, Julia who was married to a modest, kind and loving husband, had two very loved children, who didn't ask for much, somehow this Julia was selected by fate, to contract MND and to become imprisoned within her body as it shut down, and within a year and a half, to die upstairs in her bedroom, leaving an utterly distraught family for whom she was everything. 

Julia was intelligent and honest.  I asked her questions for the AGD portrait, so that people would know who she was and what was happening, and Julia was utterly straight forward.  Mandy, my dear friend and Soul Midwife who worked with Julia and introduced us, asked Julia what advice she would give.  "Do not do the housework," said Julia with huge difficulty, this was before her speech completely left her, "when you can play with your children."  Sometimes when we spoke for the AGD project, Julia would break down and cry terribly loudly, because she could not hold her husband in her arms, and could not physically gather her children to her any more.  But she told us that she needed to cry like that, not to be alarmed.  She needed to let it out.  Oh Julia was so strong and so wise.  When she cried like that, I needed to be reassured that I had not crossed a boundary from which I could not come back.  She was very firm, "No," she said, struggling with her words and her breath, "it is the truth.  I need people to know this."  I wished that I had known her in another time and place, I thought, we could have been friends.  I think I know what she is saying, and I think I understand what she means when she tries to articulate how things are for her as she waits for her body to pack up and bit by bit, stop working.  Oh I thought she was a lady far beyond me, and I was moved and grateful to have had her attention.  She was, and Mandy thought so too, a profound teacher.  

So I left Bognor yesterday afternoon, driving the one and a half hours to Julia and Barry's house, hoping that I was not too late.  At the door, Barry told me that she had only hours left.  "Come up and see her," he said, "she does not respond any more at all, and her colour is going.  Her breathing is erratic, and she is not expected to last long."  I followed Barry upstairs to the special bed next to their double bed and saw a pale, still and unconscious Julia, breathing very irregularly and erratically. 

I was moved so much by her stillness.  I was moved utterly by the bed next to hers that Barry had slept in when he could, when someone was able to wake him if he was needed.  But I was more moved by Barry himself than anything else.  He is a private, practical man, a family man, quiet and thoughtful.  He has held his family together for over a year now with this enemy that has taken over his wife, watching over Julia, loving her, caring for her, waiting with her until now, and now, here was the end, the moment that they knew would come.  Today, Julia would leave him forever, and the next phase of his life would begin, the next phase without her.  It was so hard not to cry, seeing how brave he was, helplessly watching his wife of many years, on the very last bit of a journey that no one could stop nor help with.

I stroked Julia's hair, and gently stroked her cheek.  I told her how important she was and is, and thanked her for all her patience and time with me.  Julia has nothing to learn from me, I have everything to learn from her.  I thanked her for teaching me about strength, communication, dying, the pain of leaving a family, and the pain of not being able to tell them that she understood everything, that she knew exactly how badly her family were feeling.  And that she missed them so much, sitting in her chair unable to move and then unable to talk, and then unable to respond at all.  I thanked her for allowing me into this time in her life, and for making my understanding just that fraction better.  I called her darling, and held her hand.  It was very, very hard to do this, I just wanted to cry.  But there was no time, if I cried and could not talk, there was not time to tell her these things, and so I made myself concentrate on talking.  

Barry came upstairs and I went downstairs, leaving them alone together, and I sat in Julia's chair in the sitting room, watching Top Gear on the TV with the sound off.  "This house is waiting," I thought.  "This house is waiting for Julia to die, and everything is normal but it is also far from normal.  This is such a sad time and what is to be done?  Waiting is to be done.  That is all.  Wait and watch."  And I continued to watch Top Gear and wonder what they were all laughing and talking about in the silent programme on the telly.

Barry came running downstairs.  "I think she has gone", he said. I followed him and his son upstairs.  Julia was lying completely still, her face relaxed, and with no sound of the strange breathing. And Barry said in tears, "she looked at me.  She opened her eyes and looked at me."  

We held Julia's hands, one each side of her, and between his tears and his pain, Barry talked of her, and asked if she really was dead.  It is hard to know, sometimes someone newly dead really does look as if they are asleep.  Sometimes, they look as if they will take another breath, and sometimes, you think you see their chest move.  But Julia had that waxen look of death, and her face had relaxed into the most peaceful expression that was not possible when she was trying to breathe a few minutes earlier. When Barry called the doctor after a little while, he was brave, courteous, he said that he thought his wife had just passed away.  What a call to make.  This was the first official admission that it was all over.  We waited by the bedside holding Julia's hands until the doctor came.  I held Barry too, which I would not have done in any other circumstance.  I wanted to help him hold himself together.  I wanted to let him know that another human was there, and that he was grounded and safe, and even while he was watching Julia in pain and disbelief, I wanted to give him some connection to love and warmth where words simply would not do.  I was worried that if I didn't hold him, he would burst into a million atoms and be lost in the room forever.  When the doctor eventually arrived, I went downstairs to make some tea.

I decided then to stay next to Barry and watch over him until someone came to support him.  And so I did, until some family arrived, and then I slipped away.

My head was so sore on that journey home. I was exhausted when I arrived in Bognor, and upset, and unsettled.  I did not sleep last night, and I have been tearful today.  Julia's portrait is in the studio where I left it, and she looks out at me with her lovely smile. On the 3rd of October I will be talking about AGD and the work I do, mentioning the Motor Neurone patients in particular, for the Performance in Ethics series at Brighton University Medical School.  She will be a most important part of this talk, and I will make her journey worthwhile.  Now, as a treasured and honourable member of the exhibition, I will make sure everyone that comes knows of her amazing inner strength and of her absolute ordinariness, which makes her one of the most profound teachers I have met.

Julia, with the names of her husband Barry, her son Adam and her daughter Elizabeth on the paper by her elbow.  Next to them is a forget me not flower.  Julia died last night at 6pm, and as she died, she opened her eyes and looked at Barry.  God bless you Julia.  

I will leave this account with the following thought.  

Last night, I spent time in a house where housework had gone by the by in recent months.  The players in this house were a lady in her forties, no make up, no frills, in a coma, dribbling and unable to draw breath.  And a man in his sixties, unassuming, exhausted with a year and a half of constant care and in pain with the knowledge of losing his wife.  So not, as we may say, at his best.  The myth that our world perpetuates that in order to be loved, you need to be thin, smart, sassy, young and rich, is blown to pieces by the love in that house last night.  Here was a man who loved this lady in the coma with all his soul, and could not bear to think that he may let her down in any way.  And the lady in the coma, was part of this dance.  Her love for this man caused her to cry with feeling, a few months ago, that she could not hold him as she wanted to.  It was to him that she looked as she died, it was this man who she, too, loved with all her soul, that she wanted to see at her very last moment.  Love is a very powerful and deep thing.  It is not superficial and external.  It is built with shared experience, with history and knowing and it is accepting, enabling, empowering and I have seen how real, true love, looks.

  

I am not hiding any more!  I have, as they say, hidden.  I am back home now, feeling so much better and telling myself to remember that these times come upon us, but they do not always last.  Running away was, in this case, essential.  I had planned this retreat a long time ago, in order to be very silent and to begin writing a book, but by the time I was due to leave, it had become a full scale retreat with all guns blazing from my life in Bognor Regis.

I went to Hawkchurch in Devon.  I went to Lizzie's cottage; Lizzie who composes the music for the A Graceful Death exhibition.  Lizzie has gone on tour in the US and we arranged ages ago, that I would spend a few days there enjoying the peace and quiet, and even at the time we discussed this visit, my life was fairly stressful.  By the time I was packing my bags to leave, my life here felt as if it was bludgeoning me with a mallet.

It will be a small blog this week, as I am now very laid back.  I have photographer extraordinaire Eileen with me, and we are working on our Bridport A Graceful Death venture in November, and then we are going to a fair here in Bognor.  In the spirit of being extremely healed and smiling a lot with not only my mouth but my eyes too, from the panic of the last few weeks, in the spirit of having come back from Devon with my feathers well and truly smoothed, I shall fit this account into my plans to go to a fair, instead of fitting the fair around my plans to blog.

I must thank all of you for your wonderful support and kindness around casting my wonderful and sad son into his own life without me.  So many of you gave me wise and loving advice, and so many of you reassured me that we would all survive. I want to reproduce an email that my friend Stuart sent from Scotland, that helped me so much.  Stuart has suffered greatly.  He has lost his beautiful wife to suicide (and today, 4 August 2008, is the anniversary of last day he saw Sue before she went ahead with her plan to end her life) and as a result tumbled deeper and deeper himself into depression and alcohol. Stuart ended up going to Alcoholics Anonymous, and has turned (and is still turning) his life around, and Stuart knows a great deal about making choices and taking responsibility for your own life.  Perhaps I should add that Stuart is, too, a deeply sensitive, intelligent, kind and modest man.  And so, the following email means so much to me.

" Hi Antonia

I've just read your blog and at the risk of being patronising I feel I need to say something (patronising because probably you know it already).

 

You have NOT taken a risk with  his life - he is the one taking all the risks with his life and there is, ultimately, nothing you can do about that.  It must be extremely scary for you, but you have not abandoned him.  As you have said previously, you are where you always have been - a loving mother who will be there still if/when he decides to see it.  Like me, however, you are not God and his life is not in your hands.

 

I have heard so many people in AA talk about how sometimes the best thing a close one did was cut them adrift a bit because that let them hit the rock bottom they needed to reach in order to begin recovery.  Without that, their loving one was helping to keep them on their destructive and selfish path.  The hard thing for others is that everyone's rock bottom varies.  For some it is marriage break up, for others it is years of destitution and pain, and the harsh reality is that some people don't seem to ever hit that bottom and end up killing themselves one way or another.

 

I'm not telling you what to do Antonia - I am just trying to speak from my own experience - whatever happens to your son now, it is NOT your fault.  Easy for me to say because he's not my son - but that doesn't stop it being true.

 

As they keep saying in AA, the only person in this whole world that you CAN control, with God's help, is yourself.  So, here I am telling you what to do - you look after and nurture yourself.  And if/when the time comes that your son recognises and is able to accept your love, you won't be a complete wreck.

 

Lots of love, Antonia.  Take good care - of you.

 

Stuart "

 

Thank you Stuart, and thank you all of you.  For the record, Stuart and Sue feature in A Graceful Death, and Stuart features in the AGD film that Neill Blume made.

Stuart and Sue look over at each other, and between them is an extract from Sue's diary, her suicide note, and a letter full of love for Stuart from their wedding day many years before.

And now for something completely different.

I arrived at Lizzie's on the Sunday, and did not speak a word until going into Bridport on the Wednesday to meet a friend.  In order for you to know properly how wonderful this cottage was for me, I am going to upload 3 small minute long videos.  It is much more informative for you than just words, I show you where I am and tell you what I am doing. Number one video, if you please ...

And now, video number two ...

And finally, video number three.

And now.  Off to the fair.  There is much to look forward to.  I have decided to take the whole of August off, seeing myself in my mind's eye pottering bare foot from the house into the studio and back, putting more gloss on parts of the house that may need it (you may remember that I bought a job lot of brilliant white gloss paint because it was on offer, and have now quite a lot of gloss paint).  I saw myself telling myself that if I wanted to stop everything and go and read a light and uncomplicated detective novel in my sitting room while the sun was shining through the window, then I was to do that.  And bit by bit, I have been realising that this is not about taking just August off, it is about taking the rest of my life off.  August was about removing stress and anxiety from my thinking, it was about not feeling hopeless pressure while never allowing myself time to stop and smile at the hollyhocks.  And so, I am taking the whole of August off as a prelude for taking the rest of my life off.  I am very excited to see how much better the work I do is, by removing the ferocious anxiety that goes with thinking that you never quite do enough, and it is never quite right, and that at any minute, someone will notice and point it out to you in a crowded place.  

And so, off to the fair!  But first, I must have a word with the hollyhocks on the way out...

I am hiding.

There is no doubt about it, I am hiding.

I have filled my house with foreigners, I have made some hefty changes in my life and now, I want everyone to go away.  Not the foreigners, they are paying my mortgage and are no trouble.  In fact, no one is any trouble, I just don't want to talk to anyone.  Ever.  I have reached my cut off point, and that is that.

Let us recap and let us make sense of this outburst.  I have friends coming tomorrow, and I am looking forward to seeing them.  I have Fancy Girl, her boyfriend and his parents coming for a large breakfast on Sunday, and so, unless we all talk this thing through, no one will have any fun, and I may find that being grumpy costs me my social life.  And so.  Some gentle probing.

There comes a time when one realises that the steady climb up the mountain of success, physical, mental, financial, spiritual, emotional and professional success, is not a simple matter of getting from A to B.  Some of us have huge mountains with many peaks, some of us have a singular mountain that soars into the air with a distant peak and no visible footholds.  Some of us have a series of smaller craggy mountains with many paths, and some of us are content with the odd hillock.  Progress is not just a matter of making a decision to do something, doing it, and moving on to the next thing.  Achieving even one thing is often quite enough to be going on with, thank you very much, for the time being, especially if it is a big thing.  No, there are stages in between these achievements, and those stages in between are often quite exhausting.  Those in between stages are like being in a holding bay, where we sit down, frazzled and emotional, for a rest with a cup of tea and a currant bun, before plunging onwards and upwards, to our next mountain/hillock/molehill.

I am most definitely in a holding bay.  I am hiding in a holding bay and I don't want to come out.  My holding bay has big comfy sofas in it and I am on one, looking for a paper bag to put over my head so that no one sees me.  There is a hint of bad temper here, and that needs to be addressed.  It is not you, dear friend, that has put me into a bad temper. I am simply reacting to events.  I am resting at last on my holding bay sofa, allowing the pent up emotions of the past few weeks to catch up with me.  Here is what I have done. Here are a small selection of mountains and hillocks and molehills that I have been scaling with varying success.

1. I have filled every spare room and cupboard with a rent paying foreigner.  I did not seek foreigners, they just happened to turn up and were splendidly able to pay rent and move in within ten minutes.  My foreigners are excellent people, and because English is not so easy for them, there is not much chat.  Excellent.  I like this.  This is most certainly a mountain, I have done well on this mountain, I have not wanted to fill up my house but now that I have, all is well; it is the Bognor Tower of Babel.
2. I have been very tough with my son and it has been dreadful to be so tough.  I am not tough, I am nice and jolly and when I play Monopoly, I like to cooperate and am happy to waive rents and consider lending my money on a nought percent rate of interest so that my opponent feels good about themselves.  I have taken a risk with my son's life, and have wanted to go back to when he was a little boy, and do it all over again to try and prevent the mess that we have got into.  I am told by those who have seen him, that he is doing OK.  I hold on to this as if everything is going to be fine. This too is a mountain, a difficult one, with few footholds, the summit still hidden high above the clouds, too far away for me to see it. 
3. I have taken on a job, which I do not want.  It is a smelly job and I am cross because it always has been a smelly job, but I didn't want to see it.  It will never get me beyond the holding bay, it will just prolong my stay there and I want to cut my losses and flounce out. This is a hillock.  A silly one.
4. I have no idea at all, any more, what I want to do in my studio.  Or life. This is not really a mountain or a hillock or a mole hill.  It does not really exist, so I shall say that it is a temporary pile of rubble, which will be moved on in the near future.
5. I do have an idea.  I want to lie on the sofa and read books and watch Traffic Cops on the laptop. And nothing else. Forever. This too is not a mountain, it is a hissy fit.
6. I have joined a slimming club and after a good start have unaccountably put weight on this week.  This has made me angry because it is not fair, and I don't want to be a fatty boom boom.  I am angry because the scales must be wrong, the lady must be wrong, the whole system must be wrong, and everyone is out to get me.  I am not wrong.  However, instead of being on my way to being fascinatingly elegant and just like Ursula Andress in the James Bond film, I remain not quite there yet.  Ah.  A mountain.  I have climbed this one before and know the way, so this mountain is high, but familiar.  I still wish I was further up it.  On a chair lift.

Weight Watchers Angel.  Acrylic on canvas.  She is the colour of Cadbury's Dairy Milk.. 

 The over view of all of this, is that I am out of my comfort zone. These are only some of the things that have made me want to hide and not talk to anyone.  There are others, but I am being noble and not telling you about them, in case you start to feel that you, too, want to sit on a sofa in a holding bay with a paper bag over your head.  Being tough with my son (I remember when he was about seven, he asked for a little hideaway to sleep in, so I made him a tent over his bed and fixed it with fairy lights inside so that there was magic for him to connect to) - being tough with my son has made possible, finally, the reordering of the house and influx of the foreigners.    

I have had to address my gentle and sustained weight gain.  I can't fit into my Summer clothes. They are hanging up in a spare wardrobe in Giant Boy's room. In my room, I have a selection of nice elasticated clothes in bright colours, that do not make me look wow and sizzling, but do make me look deeply appropriate, as if I always take my library books back on time and am nice to kittens.  

And I took on the job thinking it would give me extra experience in the work I am doing with A Graceful Death, but it doesn't.  So here in the holding bay, I have to decide what I am going to do about it all.  

Here is what I am doing in the short term!  I am running away!  It is one step further than hiding away!  I am going to stay in Dorset in a friend's remote little cottage while she is away, and I am going to sort myself out.  I am going to have long furious chats to the horses in her fields, and I am going to make flip charts to plot my next moves.  I am going to lie around so effectively on her hammock that I will forget mealtimes, and become like Sporty Spice in no time at all. I won't talk to anyone for a whole week, at all, and will either go mad or come back so laid back that I won't mind what I do or how I do it or who with.

Because of the above, my life as an Artist has simply evaporated.  The studio sits silent and uninhabited in my garden, like Scott and Shackleton's hut.  Abandoned and sad and magnificent.  I cannot go in there until I have sorted out my home, family and waistline.  And now, after a week or so of standing forlornly in the garden, (the studio, not me) we have found ourselves strangers to one another.  This has been another thing to be cross about.  But Art is not dead!  Oh no, while I have been sulking on my sofa in my hypothetical holding bay, a email arrived to tell me that the Overview of the Compassionate Communities Report in England, commissioned by the Dying Matters Coalition, is just out, and A Graceful Death is in it. Oh good.  And then, my dear kind clever friend in Brighton has just sent a message telling me that he and his partner have found a venue for A Graceful Death in next year's Brighton Festival.  

Perhaps after all, I shall be nice to my guests this weekend, and I shall take the paper bag from my head.  But perhaps my guests would prefer I spend the day in silence with a paper bag on my head.  I hadn't thought of that.

At the top of a mountain a few years ago with two of my brothers.  See, I have been to the top before, and not always on my own..

Pain and Pudding, Music and Not Grumbling.

This week has been very hard.  A week of difficult decisions, a week of stepping out of a dance that does nobody any good.  A week of being tough, and I am not tough.  Well, I am now, but I have to work up to it.  I wasn't born with the three strikes and you're out gene, I don't have the Clint Eastwood glint in my eye.  I am co operative, I am stumped by aggression and bad behaviour.  The week has been full, and there have been dreadful moments, and wonderful moments.  And moments of sheer British stiff upper lip-ness.  Those moments involved my father, his sister, and her husband, all in their mid to late 80s in a posh restaurant in Winchester.  More on that later.  This account will be split into three parts.

1. Pain
2. Beauty
3. Mustn't Grumble

1.  Pain.  

My oldest boy has been choosing danger and a lifestyle that is beyond my help.  This week, I found myself closing the doors, and telling him that he was on his own.  I don't remember making the decision, I only remember having done it.  I didn't like it, and my heart breaks at the thought of my beautiful boy suffering, of his vulnerability, his youth and his state of mind.  But I need some help myself, and I am afraid, and I am not helping either him, myself, or my household.  And so, he is on his own.  There have been some very good people who have held my hand, and reminded me that I have not locked the door, I have just pulled it closed, and on the one side my son will follow his choices, and on the other, I will recover my soul.  The door can be opened at any time, but my son will take a long time to understand that the power to open it is in his hands, that I will be holding a safe space for him on my side, it will take time and experience for him to understand that true love will do this.

On the one hand, I am exhausted with the relief that he won't be in the house any more.  On the other hand, I think, where is this child that was so keen on cars, that if we were in a traffic jam on the M25, he would be delighted and impressed?  I saw someone who looked like him at a railway station a few years ago, haggard and scruffy and ill, and had a dreadful premonition.  I wonder, if I paint him in my studio as a saint, will he come back?


2.  Beauty.

My dear friend, Musician Extraordinaire Lizzie Hornby, has recorded a dedicated new piece called A Graceful Death, for the exhibition.  Listen to the notes like a heartbeat running through the piece, halting, and pausing, and stopping before starting again. Like life dwindling, and rekindling, and the heart patiently trying to continue with life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kD3-qoqVh38&feature=youtu.be

I asked Lizzie if I can use her music for the exhibition because it is beautiful and it does not lead me to laugh or cry.  It is music that is so much itself, that it commands my attention and carries me along with it.  I want music for the exhibition that does not create sentiment, nor make going to the exhibition like going to a weepy movie.  The exhibition needs to stand on its own, so that when you are there, your response it entirely your own. The music has to be special, and Lizzie's music is, to my mind, perfect.  Lizzie writes from her heart. She understands what I am doing, she is not swayed by it and she has used her talent and gifts to do her own thing alongside what I do, and so has created music that compliments A Graceful Death, and adds to the whole experience.  This title piece, that Lizzie has been working on over the past few months as the theme tune for AGD, has made me sure that God is good and lives in creativity and expression.  Lizzie is touring in the US at the moment.  She is also giving a concert for the A Graceful Death opening night in Bridport on the 1st of November this year.  And, while she is in the US, I am going to hide away in her cottage in Dorset for a while.  I think I win big time here.

Lizzie playing the piano at an art exhibition in Ditchling in West Sussex this Spring.  The piece she is playing is the one that started the whole thing off, and this became the music for AGD.  Now I have a dedicated piece of music called A Graceful Death to play alongside all her other work.  I am thrilled.

3.  Mustn't Grumble.

Esteemed Father and Excellent Son. Pudding was still uncomplicated here.

My brother Ralph and I took our esteemed father (82) to Winchester to visit his grand and memorable older sister and her husband (combined ages of Aunt and her husband about 172).  All was well, on this hot and dusty day, over lunch at an upmarket eatery, until I glanced at my Aunt who looked as if she was struggling not to rest her forehead in her plate of risotto.  "Do you want to go home, Aunt?" I said, to which she replied that she thought she ought to.  Before anyone could decide how this was best done, Aunt slid gloriously into her risotto and started snoring.  Quickly standing behind her and holding her head, I asked the waitress to get an ambulance, while Ralph took care of Esteemed Dad and Venerable Uncle.  "Is she still breathing?" the waitress asked me ( she many months pregnant, and calm as a cucumber), prompted by the emergency services on the phone.  Aunt looked paralytically drunk by this time, worryingly so, with her eyes half open and her head lolling into my hands.  "She is breathing!" we cried as Aunt delicately snored on.  "Lay her flat on the floor" the emergency services on the phone told the waitress to tell us, and so Ralph, some waiters and I, carried Aunt over the chair, and onto a hastily cleared space on the floor of the busy upmarket eatery in Winchester.

One lady left her table to come over and help, bless her.  Everyone else carried on eating. The lady who came over to help made sure Aunt was decent (Aunt is very decent), that Aunt's skirt and blouse were as smooth and elegant and as well presented as she could be as she lay under the table surrounded by jolly lunchers above.  As she came round, Aunt's first concern was that we all go back to the lunch table and finish our puddings.  At what point, I asked her, in all her training as a nurse, was she taught to leave elderly relatives semi conscious on the floor of restaurants in order to finish puddings? Aunt agreed that it wasn't done, and passed out again. And anyway, pudding had been ordered but had not, understandably, arrived.

And so we stayed on the floor, until the Ambulance came, I holding my gracious and formal Aunts head in my hands and stroking her hair, Ralph looking after Uncle and Dad and lunch carrying on around and above us as normal.  Uncle sat on a chair near Aunt, calmly watching and looking wise and serious.  Dad, who has memory problems, sat at the table looking extremely confused.  One minute we were all above the table having lunch, the next thing, half the party were under the table, and pudding was on hold.  Ralph was wonderful looking after him.

All ended well.  Aunt and Uncle are home after a spell in hospital, with a bit of rest, all will be back to normal. Dad suggested to Ralph as we left that we stop off en route from Winchester to London, for a pudding stop.  And so we did.  The moral of the story?  Mustn't grumble.  And always have pudding.

Today is a quiet day here for me in Bognor.  I shall mow the lawn, and tend my teeny meadow.  I shall think of my son and how this all came about.  My other son, and my daughter, are very supportive, as are local agencies around here.  But I cannot help feeling that Son is still only a child, and that I have said Go, Son, and die somewhere alone and unloved.  That is not the case, Son is loved.  He does not love himself, and is somewhere beyond me.  Until he comes back, I suppose I mustn't grumble.  And have some more pudding.

Pudding.  Made by Son for my birthday a few years ago.  It says Antonia in bananas. 

A Eureka Moment which includes Bongos and Verdi's Requiem.

I had a Eureka moment yesterday evening.  I glimpsed the nature of the divine in creativity.  I am not very connected to music, but I am going to concentrate on music right now, and the almost too fleeting moment, when I thought I caught the divine.  No great symphonies, no big concerts, just a moment in a church with friends, a choir with some bongos, and a burst of insight.

I have great difficulty with the certainty in, and the stories behind, religions. God seems to be a very good idea, and a jolly necessary concept.  But as a child, I was horrified by the idea that Man made God in his own image.  That set the cat amongst the pigeons, and for many a year, I was conscious that it was all the wrong way round, and that we, the people, were being fooled and God didn't make us at all, we made God.  Oh that bothered me so much.  How is this, I thought, that we made God and the church (I was raised a Catholic) is carrying on as if they hadn't heard and were sticking to the old story that God got there first, and made us.  "I'm a child," I thought, with rising panic, "and I know this, it's out there in black and white, what is wrong with them!"  This thinking manifested itself by causing a distance between me and music of any kind in the church, with hymns, choral music, and even big fancy Requiem Masses.  It caused a distance between me and any kind of religious music. I could love the effect, but I got stuck at the silliness of believing all the doctrines of the church, and I could not understand how anyone, who had the gift of music in them, could write music and songs around it.  And Verdi, who wrote my favourite Requiem, if he was so clever, what on earth was he doing writing a funeral mass?

I spent much of my life thinking that those who wrote for the church, about the church, and in the church, were possibly wonderful people, but had a bit of a problem with reality.

I stood in a congregation last night, celebrating ten years of a friend's priesthood.  On the one side of the altar, was a small choir, with an organist, on the other side of the altar was another local choir, with a drum and some maracas.  It was while listening to the choirs that I had a glimpse of what it was all about.  The passion and the creativity in church music is not about the church doctrines.  It's not about words or philosophy, it's not really about rules at all.  Inside an artist is a need to create and to express.  Simple.  But how does that feel? Oh the thing about creativity is that it is something quite other, quite beyond our rational mind, quite different from the need to sit down, the need to eat, the need to have a long bubble bath.  Creativity is something that is both inside us and outside us.  In order to access it - and you do have to access it - you have to give in to it, and step outside yourself to let it in and let it work with you. I think the Ancient Greeks believed that your talent, your Genius, was not in and of you, it was outside of you, a divine gift, and you had to ask for it to come to you.

It is not the same as inspiration.  If we wait for inspiration, we will never do anything. Inspiration is always just a bit beyond us, and just a little bit esoteric, and waiting for it, keeps it at bay.  Inspiration is the icing on the cake.  If it is there, fabulous.  If it is not, carry on anyway.  Creativity lives in all of us, inspiration is a gift that we can produce for ourselves by using our creativity, and the result becomes expression.  Oh and isn't expression the thing we crave?  To express ourselves, to say our piece, to be seen, heard and understood?  To express ourselves in our clothes, our choices, our friends, our reading matter, to express ourselves in our opinions?  What if you could write music to express yourself?  What if you could step aside from yourself to let in this thing called creativity, and you grasped your inspiration, and used it all make something that was a total expression of your experience and gift?  My Eureka moment was that it is not the church, the doctrines, or the stories that made such glorious music, it was something so different and so deep and so wonderful, something so God given and divine, that caused the writing of the music.  The church is a vehicle, the creativity is on a par with the divine itself.  And the expression of it, is the gift we receive.

Those singers singing with the drums in the church last night, were taking part in this divine spark by singing.  They were co operating with the whole creation/inspiration thing by expressing, and by expressing, by singing and using the music to step outside of themselves to let in that "other" that I call divine creativity, they were joining and affirming the spark that the creator of the music took and used and made something of in the first place.

I saw that it didn't matter that the words and setting were religious. I saw how God, who I do believe exists and is my personal friend, breathes creativity into all of us, and watches us ignite each other.  One person's work, by stepping aside and entering into their creativity and working with it to create, for example, a piece of music with some bongos and some local singers, is used by those singers to express themselves by singing at the tops of their voices, for us who listen and are moved to sing too, and so we all end up expressing ourselves.  So Verdi, who wrote that marvellous Requiem Mass, is giving vent to this thing that he can do, and he is doing it.  The Catholic church is his vehicle.  It's not about the church, though it is for the church, it is a direct connection to the mind and heart of God, and so beyond words and analysis completely.  My Eureka moment was that we are following religions, we are searching for meaning, we are looking for answers and we are longing for something to explain ourselves to ourselves, and the answer is in this extraordinary thing called creativity.

Now that I have this straight I can listen to church music, and be as moved as if God had leaned over and touched me with divine finger tips, and whispered in my ear, "Go Girl.  It's what it's all about, cry if you want to, wave your hands in the air, whatever.  Just shed the attitude and step into the light and let's groove".

On Work, and Play, and Mr Christmas coming for a visit.

We will divide this week's blog into two sections.  Section one will be work and section two will be domestic.  Woven into each section will be references and hints at other things, such as personal, kids, and escape routes.  And so, let us wade forth!  Courage, mon brave, it will soon be over.

Section One, Work.

Last weekend I finished the portrait of the young terminally ill doctor Kate Granger.  It was a difficult portrait to paint because Kate looks so well, and works so hard.  I am glad that it is done, and that she will now join the A Graceful Death exhibition as a powerful lesson in how someone facing their own death, refuses to stop everything and wait.  The exhibition will benefit from Kate's presence and lessons, and I am so pleased to have met Kate.  She will be writing something for the exhibition herself, adding much welly to the portrait.  I hope very much that she will come to an AGD, in the near future.

Kate on her sofa at her home.  Note the tension in her hands, and her wedding ring.  Interesting details.

Sound Workshop and Sound Bath Experience

Next Saturday, for those who can come, my friend and colleague Sarah Weller will be holding a Sound Workshop and Sound Bath here at my house.  We are raising funds for AGD, and will ask for contributions from you who attend, for the sessions.  Sarah's practice runs from Blacknest Golf and Country Club in Alton, East Hampshire, you can see her page here - https://www.facebook.com/SarahWellerAtBlacknest . Here is a taste of what we are doing, 

Sarah Weller, inspiring Sound and Drumming Therapist and Soul Midwife, will be giving a workshop as a fund raising event for the A Graceful Death Project. Sarah's workshops, featuring drums and gongs, are energising, mysterious and deeply wonderful. We are asking only for donations to the AGD Project, we will leave that entirely up to you. The Sound Bath is a glorious way to experience mystery in pure sound. It is peaceful, meditative and effective. Sarah will play her many different sound bowls while you rest, eyes closed, and feel the power of the vibrations and frequencies healing and soothing you. I will provide the necessary tea and cake, you will need it after experiencing Sarah's wonderful Sound Workshop and Sound Bath. We are raising funds for the A Graceful Death project, that enables paintings of those who are facing the end of life, to go on public display as part of a project to start talking about what it means to live, and die, and be fully alive while dying. Many of you know and have supported the AGD Project and know that without your help, I could not do the work I do. It is ongoing, as I do not charge anyone who is painted for the exhibition, just to work with them is gift and a treasure beyond compare. But I still need to fund the creation, the exhibiting and the maintenance of the project. Sarah is offering her valuable help with this Sound Therapy Workshop and I am honoured to have her support.

Sarah and I are also going to offer another screening of the film "I Am Breathing" after this workshop.  This is a powerful film of the last year of a young father with Motor Neuron Disease.  The film is sponsored by the MND Association, and we will ask for donations to that too, if you stay on to see the film after the Sound Workshop.  We are able to show the film with the blessing of the MND Association, and hope you will be able to stay and see it.  All donations to see the film will go directly to the Motor Neuron Association.

Please have a look at the page set up on Facebook and come along.  https://www.facebook.com/events/168946923282149/.  Let me know if you are coming, I will double the biscuit levels and get out the extra big teapot.  

Next week I go to visit another old friend and Sound Therapist, Sharon, to talk about AGD going to a Hospice near her.  If that comes off, I will let you all know, endlessly and repetitively, and make you all come to it.  Sharon lives in Lightwater in Surrey, you can find her on www.sharongalliford.com.  

And!  I have promised myself a day off in the studio!  A day where I can throw glitter around, fiddle with pots of paint, make paper aeroplanes and lie on the floor and sing to reggae as loud as I can.  And hoover behind all the stacks of wood I keep on the off chance that I will paint a masterpiece on one of them. This day may be tomorrow, Sunday, I feel it taking shape in my soul.   

Domestic

I am renting out my Older Son's rooms.  He has two, a big bedroom and a teeny room alongside it.  For some reason, the teeny one has captured the heart of my Polish lady who already lives here, and she has moved out of her small room to this even teenier one.  "Are you sure?" I said, and "But yes!" she said.  And so, it took her 20 minutes to move her things over the landing, and she has taken up residency as from last night.  Older Son has stopped talking to me, which is quite nice, and is camped out (with all mod cons) in the TV room downstairs.  He does have a place in Brighton but it is better here, more food.  This afternoon I have a man called Mr Christmas coming to look at the bigger of the rooms.  I wonder if he has a sense of humour.  I shall line up the whole household to look at him, we could be offering accommodation to someone we need to keep on the good side of.  If I dress as an elf, and he has no sense of humour at all, and thinks this is normal, then he is perfect for this household.  He won't notice anything.  Giant Boy tends to eat big meals in the early hours of the morning, and Older Boy is often furious.  I may be lying on the floor of the studio on his first day here, singing shamelessly along to reggae in a pseudo Jamaican accent that only middle class middle aged fairies can do.  A profound sense of humour works here, or none at all.  Just a bit of a sense of humour, and you can feel oppressed.  It needs careful navigating, this house, at times.

While mowing the lawn last week, I had to dodge the bumble bees.  My lawn is 20 % grass, 80% dandelions, daisies and other wild flowers.  "Sorry!" I kept saying to the bees, as I tried to mow in all sorts of patterns around them so that they could finish doing what they do with the flowers.  So I have left a patch of grass, about 4' in diameter, for them to play.  I have a meadow.  I have now got a bee friendly meadow, where the bees can frolic.

Where the bee sucks there suck I.

Here will be my own Dingly Dell in the making.  Soon it will have a pond, some benches, overhanging branches and weeping willows.  It is all very new, and I have found some bees not in the Meadow this morning, but on my other flowers.  I gave them a stiff talking to, and told them to not look a gift horse in the mouth.  I shall check up on them later.  Just for reference, here is Eileen photographing in the real Dingly Dell

Like Where's Wally?  Where's Eileen?

And now.  I must prepare the room for Mr Christmas.  I am painting some old furniture white, and it is in the garden waiting for the second coat.  It goes in the room I wish to rent.  And later, Sarah Weller, of Sound Bath and Sound Therapy fame, is coming for the night and we shall have our first screening of the "I Am Breathing" film.  Tonight, we are showing it to a selected audience with dinner and discussion, to raise funds and awareness of and for, Motor Neuron Disease.  That will really test Mr Christmas.