Tag: Grief

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Heart Art

Tending to Endings (twenty-eight)

When the towers in New York were hit by airplanes, I was the mother of twin six-year-olds and an English teacher to classrooms full of middle and high school students at a community school in Idaho. In the days that followed the tragedy, I set aside the planned for curriculum and instead, my students and I wrote poems.  We eventually turned it into literary journal that included contributions from each student and faculty in the school. The theme of the first annual RiverRock Review was hope.

I’ve been thinking lately about the the relationship between creativity and upheaval. When my foundation is shaken and nothing makes sense, creativity suddenly feels meaningful, worthy, even comforting. I always know art is important, but there is something about crises or loss or major life transitions that makes creative pursuits one of the few endeavors worthy of the conditions. Art doesn’t have to make sense. 

During the years I taught creative writing through a nonprofit arts center in Boise, I often worked with students whose lives were in transition. Some of the most powerful writing came from students at the school for pregnant and parenting teens, the cancer unit at the hospital, the juvenile detention center. Having lost many of the things that had defined their former life, these writers were seeing things anew. It was a gift to bear witness to their journey. 

Sometimes I think all of the cooking is going on these days is part of that same impulse to create during a time of collective grief. As Grace Paley demonstrates in The Poet’s Occasional Alternative, it is an art form that is more dependable in terms of satisfaction than writing a poem. 

The painted rocks and crocheted hearts and sidewalk murals feel part of this creative energy, too. As does gardening, which has been on an upswing. My father, who spent much of the first spring after my mom’s death planting flowers, tells me this year he cannot find his usual plants at the nursery because so many people are growing gardens.

We aren’t always very good in our culture about encouraging creativity. We remind each other to exercise and eat and sleep right, but we really don’t remind each other to be creative very often, though I am sure it is as important as being intellectually and physically active. I don’t mean creating art for galleries or for the masses, but rather, exercising the muscle. I mean playing around with music or words or the dirt in the garden. 

Especially when the ground beneath me is shifting, creativity helps me to get from one day to the next. One of the reasons I have so many details from my mom’s experience to use in these posts is that I journaled during the time I was caregiving. I didn’t know whether I would ever share any of that material publicly, but I found comfort in putting sentences around the experience.

I realize writing isn’t comforting for everyone. I love messing around with with words, but if someone hands me a colored pencil and tells me to draw something, I usually feel anxious. I know for many people, the opposite is true. When it comes to creating during hard times, I think it helps to pick a form that feels more like play than performance.

And now when so many people are separated from those they love most, it occurs to me that art is another way we find each other.

In The American Book of Living and Dying, authors Richard Groves and Henriette Anne Klauser tell a heart wrenching story of a four-year-old with leukemia on hospice care whose mom is incarcerated. The girl loves to draw pictures, particularly of sunflowers and she even paints one on her bald head, which becomes her signature. The mother, Angie, is encouraged to engage in art therapy from the prison, and the two begin to share drawings as a way of healing relationship wounds and connecting. Years later, Angie eventually teaches art therapy in a senior center using her daughters pictures and experience as a model. 

Though my mom died the spring before Covid-19 isolations, she was separated by an ocean and a cognitive disease from many loved ones. The memory book we put together brought many of her friends to her during her final days.  And people added their own projects. My aunt quilted a blanket using soft textures and my mom’s favorite shades of blue. My dad brought moms favorite Hawaiian flower arrangements to her bedside. My sisters made playlists from old favorites like the Carpenters “Close to You,” and Cat Steven’s “Peace Train.”

Hearing about how much my mom responded to music, my son Dylan sang a beautiful version of Iron and Wine’s “Trapeze Swinger” and sent the file to our phones so we could play it for my mom in her last days. 

My mom received these creative offerings. Even after she could no longer talk, they would make her smile. They were a form of connecting when very little else held meaning.

Dad’s garden. Dylans music. Carol’s blankets. Creativity moves things. It feels good when it is hard to feel good about anything. It honors moments when everyday tasks, like turning to page 373 of the textbook after your country has sustained a tragedy, feel wrong. Instead, you write a poem about hope. You build a castle in the sandbox with your toddler. Plant a garden, make a quilt, curate a slide show. You sing a song.


Other Resources

Alive Inside, is a powerful and inspiring documentary about the power of music on those living with dementia.

The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, by Julia Cameron is a book that offers a path for reconnecting with creativity and shedding some of the obstacles that get in the way of creative expression.

Poetic Medicine: The Healing Art of Poem Making, by John Fox is a book about writing poetry as a way of healing. It offers information and exercises.

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Speaking Names

Tending to Endings (twenty-three)

Much of this week for me has been about listening and weeping and witnessing and reading and very little cohesive writing. But I do want to share a few personal reflections that seem relevant during this collective loss, and also, a few resources in case you find them helpful.

Boise held a vigil on Tuesday evening to mourn the killing of George Floyd and a long list of other Black lives taken by state sponsored violence. Five thousand attended at the steps of the Capitol. I watched over livestream and wished I was there in person. The Black leaders who organized the vigil helped us channel anger and despair into story and silence and song. And then we said the names, thirty minutes of names, each one followed by fifteen seconds of silence. Some were familiar to me: Tamir Rice, Eric Gardner, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Emmett Till, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd. Far too many were not.

I’ve thought a lot recently about how difficult it is to speak the name of those who have died even when the death is not untimely or brutal or tragic. Bringing up the name of a loved one who is gone sometimes brings uncomfortable things into the conversation–sadness, the need to console, new questions, the reminder that we are mortal.

When the death is one that is marred by tragedy or wrongdoing or violence, when I am uncertain of my own responsibility, when innocent people get hurt, it is even harder.

At times in my own life, I have felt the pull to avoid reckoning and grief. When my kids were young, for instance, and I was going through a divorce, it was tempting to avoid stories about their past that included their father. Divorce with young children was excruciating and I felt a great deal of guilt and anger and uncertainty and sadness. I didn’t want more hurt to arise for them or me. It was tempting to try to start from where we were in our new parallel co-parenting lives.

But one afternoon while my sons and I snuggled on the couch for story time, one of them asked me to tell the story of when they were born. I hesitated, thinking, no way can I tell that one. And then I took a deep breath and dove in to the story they had heard many times before. The telling was healing for me and important for my sons. It was their origin story and evidence that they come from great love.

That moment of hesitation gave me awareness, and it was the beginning of me learning to not step around any of our stories. It took practice and a willingness to be very uncomfortable and, for me, lots of therapy. I needed to talk through all the painful stories with wise adults so that I could be present for my sons as they worked through their own hard journey. That work brought me to a point where I could talk about their daddy as they did, with ease and enthusiasm and kindness.

This has come to mind lately, not because it compares in scope or scale (it doesn’t), but because guides me as I grapple with the question of my own role in the painful story of racism our country. That moment of hesitation still informs me.

For instance, saying Black lives matter shouldn’t be any more complicated for me than saying the lives of the elderly matter. Both of those statements are true and needed and both have implications for policy and politics. I believe both deeply. But only one feels like it takes a bit of bravery for me to say. I suspect this is because I have not fully integrated our collective past with our current story.

I believe much of my own anti-racism work begins with making space for that larger story. In my experience, stories are essential for healing, not because they provide closure, but because they offer a path to connection and belonging. It’s human to want to skip over the hard part, but I don’t think we get anywhere good without it.

More Resources

These are just some of my favorites that speak to the healing power of story, particularly stories that have been excluded or left behind

In this ten minute episode of Poetry Unbound, Ali Cobby Eckermann’s A Poem for Keeping Memory Alive. Pádraig Ó Tuama introduces the poem:

Ali Cobby Eckermann’s poem calls readers to pay attention to the fact that remembering is a moral act; it is a courageous act, and to remember the ways in which our people may have participated in massacre mobs and to remember that mourning is an ongoing muscle that we need to recognize and that we need to practice;

Isabel Wilkerson is a masterful storyteller and historian and The Warmth of Other Suns: the Epic Story of America’s Great Migration is one of the best books I’ve read in recent years on the topic of American history.

Our US Poet Laureate, Joy Harjo writes often of indigenous stories that have been silenced in her newest book, An American Sunrise. The poem, “Washing My Mother’s Body,” is a particularly visceral account of reconnecting with story through memory and ritual:

I never got to wash my mother’s body when she died./ I return to take care of her in memory./ That’s how I make peace when things are left undone./ I go back and open the door./ I step in to make my ritual. To do what should have been done,…

I used to incorporate Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk: The Danger of a Single Story into my writing classes, and it has been coming to mind a lot lately:

Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person. The Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti writes that if you want to dispossess a people, the simplest way to do it is to tell their story and to start with, “secondly.” Start the story with the arrows of the Native Americans, and not with the arrival of the British, and you have an entirely different story. Start the story with the failure of the African state, and not with the colonial creation of the African state, and you have an entirely different story.

The Facebook Page of the Idaho Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence includes links to the video of the Boise vigil held on Tuesday. I have also been participating in their Collective Thriving Story Circles that they are facilitating this year which may be of particular interest to those living in the Treasure Valley area.

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Thank you and Love.

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Like This

Tending to Endings (twenty)

This post will not be funny. This will not be funny because like many of you, I have been living in relative seclusion for I-lost-count-of-how-many days and I have learned things about myself. For instance, I have learned that I am relatively disciplined when it comes to writing and moderate exercise and cleaning the kitchen every day. But regarding laughter and playfulness and lightheartedness? For that, I apparently require the village.

I have even found myself envying friends who are quarantining with kids. Yes, they have to figure out how to attend video work meetings while simultaneously homeschooling and keeping an infant alive. But there is a chance that in the middle of an endless day when things feel heavy and uncertain, a couple toddlers will show up in a viking cap and ski goggles.

Once my kids got older and moved out, it was often my co-workers who helped save me from myself on a regular basis by making me laugh. People often say the favorite thing about their work are the people, and it was certainly true for me. During some of the most stressful weeks of the semester, faculty would pull out an art project or make crepes in the kitchen or launch a game of Telephone Pictionary.

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My friends at the college still help give me perspective. Because, while I can’t force funny, I can put myself in a place where it is more likely to happen. For instance, anywhere in the vicinity of my friend Maia who has a talent for being hilarious. While I’m complaining about the clunkiness of relation-shipping on Zoom, Maia is busy amusing herself, her math students, and an ever growing audience of Facebook followers with her daily Zoom wardrobe and scene changes.

My mom was funny. In fact, her sense of humor was one of the things that got me through during those difficult times towards the end of her life. I remember a moment when we were first bringing in hospice care and we were participating in the intake interview which basically meant that our nurse, Noelle would ask questions, and my mom would look to my dad and I to answer. Alzheimer’s had made even simple questions difficult.

At one point during the visit my Noelle asked how long my parents had been married and my dad answered they had been happily married for fifty-four years.

“Hasn’t it been fifty-five?” I asked.

“Well, fifty-four of them were happy,” my mom interjected. “There was that one.”

That moment helped Noelle get to know my mom more than any of her other questions, and they became quick friends.

One of the greatest gifts of spending six months living with my parents was discovering that they were truly in love. I could tell because they could still make each other laugh and they did so often and for their own amusement. They sang old drinking songs from college and had a patter with each other that was improvisational yet familiar.

One evening my parents and I were on the lanai watching the sun put on a particularly spectacular show, turning the ocean and sky bright gold.

“This is heaven,” mom said.

Which I took as an opportunity for a serious conversation. My mom was approaching the end of her life, after all, and it was difficult to discuss death especially with the confusion of her disease.

“What do you think heaven is like, really?” I asked.

And she looked at me and my father and spread her hands open to the sky and said, “Like this.”

Never one to let go of a goal easily, and also, because I was curious, I asked, “What about people who died before you like your mom? Do you think you see them?”

She looked at me, nodded,”Yes, I think so.”

“What about people you didn’t like very much?” my dad teased.

Well, they are there, but you don’t have to talk to them.” Her half-smile let me know she knew she was funny.

These moments were gifts not only because they made me laugh, but also because they told me my mom was still herself.

Tuesday my friend Patty and I went for our weekly walk which her husband calls our anti-social walk now that we keep space between us (even my friend’s spouses are funny). This time we decide to hit the trails and on the way up it starts to drizzle. I explain how I planned this whole blog about humor and playfulness. I thought I would be great fun to play all week as research, but then I couldn’t even think of anything fun to do, which was really depressing.

Patty laughed, which was exactly the right response, and I continued to describe my angst about not being able to lighten up enough to write about lightening up. Loudly because we were antisocial distance walking and all. Plus, the rain was getting stronger.

And as we reached the top of the ridge, and I could see the mountains in the distance, I noticed a peculiar green tint to the clouds that I hadn’t seen earlier and not very often at all in Boise. Then the skies opened up and just dumped on us.

We stood there a minute at the top of the ridge stunned by rain and its intensity. Even the the mountain bikers seemed impressed straddling their bikes on a knoll above us and staring upward as the sky let loose.

Then lightening flashed and brightened whole sky and Patty said, “Whoa,” and we began our way down. I counted in my my head like I did as a child during midwestern summer storms. One one-thousand, two and then the thunder cracked and Patty and I quickened our pace to a brisk walk-jog, rain pelting down drenching our clothes and our selves, both of us laughing.

Yes, I thought, like this.

More Resources

In case you, too, need some help lightening up, here are some recent links that made me laugh.

An article about Maia Zooming Her Best Life.

For those who don’t have enough kid humor in you lives already, this collection of funniest parent tweets reminded me.

If you haven’t yet watched John Krasinski’s Some Good News series, here is the most recent episode that includes a reunion of The Office cast.

And if you have a large quarantine household or are motivated to figure out how to do this on Zoom, here are simple instructions to Telephone Pictionary. Instructions are straightforward but the game itself promises silly fun.

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Touching Ground

Tending to Endings (sixteen)

Last week, on the first anniversary of my mom’s death, my sisters and dad and I planned to meet by Zoom. Like many, my family has taken our grief online. The digital world has made incredible things possible during the pandemic. John Prine dies and we are able to hear Brandi Carlile pay tribute from her home in Washington. Doctors and nurses help patients near death say goodbye to loved ones over FaceTime. And families gather in separate living rooms and grieve via video conferences. While it isn’t the same as holding and hugging, it is a form of connection, something more than we would’ve had, say, during the Influenza epidemic of 1918.

I’m so grateful for digital opportunities to see one another and talk, and yet, it is not enough. Too many senses are missing, particularly touch. And, timing, too, that delay, the fraction of lost time that affects laughter and eye contact and the ease of anything in unison. No one ever says jinx, you owe me a soda on Zoom. You cannot say a prayer aloud in unison. You cannot feel the music come through your own chest as someone sings, or the warmth of a shoulder near yours, or the clasp of another’s hand. 

And then there is the leaving. The way loved ones are there one minute and then gone and their absence is so complete, the screen making clear they were only an apparition.  I now am aware that when humans leave a room, their warmth, their scent, the echo of their movements remain awhile. People linger. After video chat, there is only the loneliness of the computer screen.

And so, as grateful as I am for the chance to see and converse with loved ones, sometimes, video conferences leave me feeling not quite grounded, missing something, off kilter. I’ve learned to balance digital time with earthier things.

The morning of April 9, a few hours before our meeting time, I turned off the news and closed my computer and began collecting items that belonged to my mom. Mom had a saying in our house—no shrines—to which she meant our bedroom was not going to be our bedroom after we left. Mine was quickly made into an office with sailboat pictures where my swim team ribbons used to hang. So a shrine isn’t exactly in line with Mom’s personality. I can hear her laughing, saying, What, you think I’m holy? Some kind of saint?

Still, it felt right to hold the objects she held. A pewter plate from her collection and the sugar bowl from her tea set that was always in our living room, the books she read until the bindings went soft. I included one of the stuffed bears she brought to the hospital when my the boys were born and Scrabble tiles arranged in the names of her grandchildren. I brought fresh cut flowers from the yard and found a photo of her with a classic Jane expression and her arms reaching towards the sky.

As the table came together, I decided, she would’ve appreciated my creation which was more along the lines of a Day of the Dead Altar than a shrine, a collection of things that she enjoyed here on earth. In any case, I loved it, and it felt good to hold things she held dear.

Once the day warmed, I went for a walk on the trails wearing Mom’s jacket. And when I returned, I knelt in the grass and planted iris bulbs and her favorite, lily of the valley. It felt good to have earth in my hands. I thought about all the days I came home from school and found my mom sitting in her garden, happily working in the dirt. These small acts of doing made me smile.

I know I’m not alone in my longing for tactile experiences during these days marked by collective and personal grief. Homeschoolers leave love notes on trails in the form of painted stones. Friends post photos of knitting creations and one mails me a paper crane and a letter penned on stationary. We find solace in sensory experiences: dancing, holding, making, planting, breathing.

Once it was late enough to text to Maui without waking Dad, I sent photos of the altar to him and my sisters and aunt and uncle. Amy followed with a photo of a tree her family will plant in their yard, a Jane Magnolia. And Sandy sent a photo Loa, born to my brother-in-law’s cousin and his wife that very morning. A new baby in the family. Mom would love that best of all.

Sometimes when I make room for grief, joy slips in. Grief is such an unpredictable force, isn’t it? Just when I think I know what is coming, it shifts again into something new.

April 9 was a beautiful day in Boise, and at three o’clock I sat on the back patio and opened my laptop so I could gather with my sisters and my dad via Zoom. We talked about our current lives, and how all our kids were doing. We considered what Jane would think of all of this, sure she would be philosophical and positive. She would be sending people book recommendations for saving the world and talking on the phone with friends. “She definitely would be supporting all of the restaurants by ordering carryout every night,” Sandy said. We all laughed.

“She would want to gather, though,” Amy said. And we knew, then, that Mom wouldn’t let a pandemic keep her from doing so. This is a woman who, in the 1980s set up live link via satellite in our basement (years before Dish network or internet) so that neighbors near our home in Chicago could attend Beyond War meetings with people in Palo Alto. (My dad notes that she did need some help with installation from him and Tim Kelly down the block).

In 1988 Beyond War awarded a peace prize to Reagan and Gorbachev for their work on ending the Cold War, and Mom helped organize an event in Evanston so hundreds of people could participate in the ceremony that linked the groups on different continents by what they called a space-bridge, and what we would now call video conferencing.

Mom would’ve found Zoom before any of us.

During all of this, Jane would be Jane—the woman who hates cooking and supports local business and more than anything wants peace on earth and good will toward all. Mom always knew the world could be (has always been) a heartbreaking place. Her response was to build bridges. To put her energy into whatever she could do. 

On the anniversary of my mom’s death, most of what I felt was grateful, happy even, to have my sisters and father all together, and my mom, too, in whatever way is possible. When our call came to a close and we expressed our love and said goodbye, I shut off Zoom and felt the sun warm on my skin, watched birds flit from branch to branch. Our laughter lingered still.

More Resources

Some of my motivation for this column came from a video Creating Tactile experiences to grieve death in the time of Covid and also an article, Funerals and Dying in Abstentia, by Sarah Chavez, executive director of The Order of the Good Death. The article offers both digital and tangible ways of honoring loss in the time of Covid-19.

The full collection of resources where I found these can be accessed at Pandemic Resources for End of Life in a newsletter published by the National Home Funeral Alliance.

Last week I included an episode of Unlocking Us on grief. David Kessler also has a website devoted to online grief support grief.com

If you have any resources or ideas about how to honor loss during a pandemic, please feel free to share them in the comments section. (If you don’t see a place to leave comments, click here.)

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Your Words

I feel lucky these days to be a word person. Even though I miss physical closeness, writing and storytelling have always been important forms of connection for me, too.

When I was a kid, my Aunt Carol would send us letters from Colorado and my family would sit around the kitchen table while my mom read them aloud. My aunt’s letters were newsy and insightful and funny. Reading them gave us a sense of intimacy—different than when we were all together with my cousins in the same room—but just as true.

Books, too, have provided me with a feeling of closeness that is difficult to explain. To this day it is hard to believe that Laura Ingalls Wilder or Beverly Cleary or Mary Oliver or Toni Morrison never knew me. Their writing seems to suggest otherwise. Not because the details of our lives were the same (they weren’t), but because the intimacy of their writing made me feel understood. Known.

Your letters did that for me this week, too, gave me opportunities to connect.

Next week, I plan to write about resources people have found or created to tend to end-of-life matters in the time of coronavirus. Like every other area of life, distancing measures have upended our normal ways of caregiving, mourning, and honoring end-of-life.

I want to share one with you this week that number of friends sent my way, Brene’ Brown’s podcast, Unlocking Us with grief expert David Kessler. Kessler speaks to why story sharing is so often part of our grief process:

Each person’s grief is as unique as their fingerprint. But what everyone has in common is that no matter how they grieve, they share a need for their grief to be witnessed. That doesn’t mean needing someone to try to lessen it or reframe it for them. The need is for someone to be fully present to the magnitude of their loss without trying to point out the silver lining.

Your stories about your loved ones were gifts this week. Thank you. And thank you for bearing witness.

It’s coming up on the 1st Anniversary of my 16-year-old nephew’s death by suicide followed 10 days later by my Auntie’s death of alcoholism. I’m experiencing, in hospice terminology, intense anticipatory grief. The quarantine is making it so much harder because I want to be near my cousins at this time to hug. Grief needs human touch.

Mindy Franssen

I lost my husband at age 52 to cancer and it shattered the nicely constructed future that included retirement, travel, and artistic growth. Every summer, both before Rob died and after, my parents would come from Kansas to visit and stay for a week or so. We would always plan a big pool party with family and friends. Over the years it became a noisy annual bash that we all looked forward to.

Three years after Rob’s death, we had our summer party. As we were gathering dishes and putting things away, I stopped in my tracks and started crying. My tears were triggered by a wonderful and horrible mix of emotions. I was stung by the realization that I hadn’t thought of Rob at all. I hadn’t said to myself “Rob would have loved this. I’m miss him so much”.

The realization that my life was moving on and I was making progress was a GOOD thing. But the realization that I had forgotten him during this event was also devastating. He had been such a big part of it: cooking, socializing, and celebrating. The pain came rushing up, full strength and unbound, a mixture of pride and sorrow. I had reached a turning point, a milestone, in a messy process that still continues, sixteen years later.
Susie Fisher

My Nonie (maternal grandmother) is forever the voice in my head. It is her wisdom I lean on when I don’t know what to do, and if I’m lost or need advice I always think “What would Nonie say?” Since she went home, I have missed her physical presence, but because she was such a big part of my upbringing (she was more a mother to me than my mom – she truly cared and would show up when I needed her) I knew what she would say at any given moment. I don’t necessarily mark the anniversary of her passing, but I honor her and include her at every moment when I need her and her wisdom – thus honoring her beyond the anniversary of her death. 

Here are some Nonie sayings that stay with me:

They’ve got the same pants to get glad in that they got mad in.

Let’s not go borrowing trouble from tomorrow.

If I see something I’ve never seen before, I’ll throw my hat at it.

Let’s buy some gum so we can have something to chonk on.

And my favorite:

I love you Hessie Annie – to the moon and back.

Leslie

My mom and dad died five months apart to the day in 2001 in June and November. I was happy my mom missed 9/11 and that my dad was so out of it by then, that he basically missed it too.  My mom died of lymphoma and my dad of pancreatic cancer. To this day I miss them both, but especially my mom. I never realized how very much I loved her until she wasn’t here anymore. However, with time, the pain fades and I remember the good times and I smile. I sometimes dream about my parents. In the dream they are much younger than when they died, and it is always a happy occasion. 

My mother’s birthday is May 22. My best friend’s mother’s birthday is May 23. She is also deceased. Around the time of their birthday, the two of us always go out for a special lunch honoring our mothers. We have a lovely time together and reminisce for a few hours.

Carol Y

What I remember about July 24, 1956 is walking into our back porch to meet my sister who told me our mother died.  I was coming home from my summer job with Pepsi Cola and had just completed my junior year in high school. I do remember thinking that this cannot be. I knew Mom had not been well, but everyone told me she would get better. Times were different in 1956. We did not talk about the possibility of losing one’s mother to cancer.

The following morning, I got up and went to work only to be met by the executive who also was our neighbor. He told me I should go home. No one had told me how to act in that situation, that you didn’t go to work the day after your mom died. The rest of my loss process is a blur, though I know there was a service and gathering at the cemetery.  

The part I held onto for a long time was I wish I had told mom how kind she was. Not just to me but to everyone who knew her. How proud I was that she was my mother and her part in making our home a happy place.  
Ron Stavoe

The last eight of my 62 years have included many losses. Just as I get to calm water and whoosh, here comes another loss. All along the way there have been loved ones and dear friends by my side. One of my favorite things I heard from a friend years ago and I like to share with others is “God is Fancy.”

I always think of my mom in the spring. She died on the first day of spring and her birthday was May 12, so spring flowers always remind me of her. Irises were one of her favorites. Not long before she died, I transplanted some of my mom’s iris into my yard in Montana.

A few years ago, I went through a very painful divorce. I left Montana and moved back to Boise in the middle of winter. I was heartbroken because the iris bulbs were buried in snow, so I couldn’t take them with me.

Eventually, as I rebuilt my life in Boise, I was able to buy a beautiful little cottage. That first spring when blossoms began to appear, I discovered the house was surrounded by purple iris. God is fancy.

Just yesterday I was out planting some flower seeds and enjoying the daffodils that are growing and the tulips are about to bloom. And I talked with my mom. I told her I wished she could see my beautiful yard and walk around with me and see all the beautiful flowers. And then I thought, silly me, she is right her with me. Alas, the purple iris, I can feel her winking at me.

Teresa Best McDonald

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