19 Dec Surrounded by Love

Surrounded by Love
 By Kelly Salasin

The year after my mother died, I stumbled into a heart-wrenching exhibit at a small museum in my town.
The show was entitled, “Surrounded by Family and Friends,” and consisted of life-sized portraits
depicting the final days of loved ones with those who cared for them as they passed. I had stopped in at
the museum with my family on an impulse. We had been out on a Saturday morning shopping spree in
preparation for our little one’s first birthday. Just as we were about the cross the Connecticut on what my
sons now call, ‘the bridge to Wal-Mart’, someone said, “Let’s go to the museum!” It had probably been
me. I was always attempting to fit in as many experiences as possible on these family outings, a
compulsion that was fed by the endless feeling of a Saturday.

The kids liked the museum. It was housed in what was formerly a train station, and they could still see trains go by near the old ticket windows. Only now, the tickets were purchased on board, as there weren’t enough people traveling by train to warrant these beautiful marble floors and oak-laden benches and waiting areas. It was always cool inside here, even on this hot, late July morning. What had once been filled with passengers awaiting travel, was now filled with art, waiting to be seen. I had gotten more than I bargained for that day when it came to collecting experiences. After taking one peek into the main gallery, I knew that this detour had been a huge mistake. I wanted to turn around, but the kids had already passed through to one of their favorite rooms, and my husband was already deeply immersed by the exhibit. An undertow of emotions swept me along even though I was reluctant to proceed. There was no turning back however, as the kids were off to the display of organs in the back room and my husband was already immersed in the art before me. I cautiously allowed myself to gaze around the room, careful not to take too much to heart, but soon I could no longer resist of each piece. I breathed in the beautiful quilt-like panels, lovingly hand-stitched by the artist, each revealing a moment too intimate for words. A grandmother passing, a husband, a child. (God forbid.) Hands held, tears shed, hearts trembling, spirits soaring. I attempted to move through the exhibit quickly so that we might get on with the day I had originally planned, but then I saw it… A portrait that could have been my mother’s. A beautiful blanket covering a woman’s tiny body, like the one we had made for mom with each of our names on it, even the grandchildren’s. Frail wrists were exposed, a kitty at the woman’s side; Dying, and deeply beautiful at the same time; Engaged in life’s final work.

I had been eight months pregnant and living 300 miles away when we first received the crushing news of my mother’s diagnosis. Ironically, she and I were both now “due” in August of that year. At fifty-seven, her life had been assigned this abrupt ending, while mine had been given the simultaneous task of bringing forth new life. Birth and death were intricately woven into the fabric of my life that summer. Time shifted form, and I felt suspended in the marrow of life in its continuous cycles. My mother was the fading summer sun; and I, the fullness of harvest. As I awaited my baby’s arrival at our home in the Green Mountains, I felt the tug of my mother’s passing pull at my heart like the tides at her seashore home. Would I ever see her again? Would she meet her newest
grandchild?

The art of Deidre Scherer at the little museum in Brattleboro, Vermont tugged at my heart in much the same way. With waves of emotion, it brought me back to my mother’s home on the morning she died. My son, Aidan had come more than a week early, and my mother had held on for an entire month, allowing my family this pilgrimage to her side. Like the folks depicted in Deidre’s work, my mother was surrounded by those who loved her as she passed; my seven siblings, our children, our spouses, close friends and relatives. In one of our last moments with her, as we stood holding onto each other, quietly weeping, my step father spoke to us from the depth of his heart saying, “If I was a painter, I would paint this beautiful picture of all of you around Mom.”

And here it was before me… With layers of fabric and stitching, Deidre had crafted breathtaking portraits of other families forging this same crossing. There was so much beauty and warmth in the colorful quilt-like quality of the work, and so much agony in the face of death and loss.

I left the exhibit barely able to stand, my mind and body flooded by memories and emotion. I stumbled
into an adjoining room, attempting to distract myself from some of what I was feeling. How had this work intruded into the dailyness of my life, I wondered. This was supposed to be a fun day, acknowledging the anniversary of my son’s birth…and now it was overflowing with grief; a cruel repeat of the year before. I sat down in a rocking chair and looked about the tiny room I had entered. There were stuffed animals and photo albums. What kind of exhibit is this, I thought? And then realized that I had gone from the frying pan to the fire. This room had been put together by hospice, to help visitors “reflect and explore” the issues brought up by Deidre’s end-of-life scenes. It was entitled, “As We Remember”. I don’t want to remember right now! I wanted to scream. But there was no choice. Beside me stood a set of shelves filled with books and papers on death and dying and grief. “I could have used these things a year ago,” I said to myself, “It’s too late now.” But it wasn’t. I picked up a scrap book made by someone like me who had also lost someone they dearly loved, and tears seeped down my cheeks. I got up from the rocking chair, and looked at it all: art, video, music- all created immemorial to loved ones. So much grief.

Harnessing my emotions, I looked around for my family to leave, promising myself that I’d come back another time, when I could better handle this work. It just isn’t fitting into my plans today, I said to myself. My mother’s cancer was like that too. It just didn’t fit. It didn’t fit her to die at age fifty-seven. It didn’t fit the last months of my pregnancy to be loosing her. It didn’t fit the rest of my life not to have her in it. It didn’t!

With these thoughts, I found myself drawn to a table with four hand-crafted journals. Each had a question written on its cover beckoning response. I don’t want to think about these questions right now, I tried to remind myself. I don’t want to ponder my own fears of death. I don’t want to create a tombstone for myself to post on a bulletin board next to other living, busy, people like me. (What a morbid activity anyway!) How could death apply to any of us? To me? To my own mother even?! I don’t want to be here, I thought resentfully. How did I end up in this museum today? How did I deserve my mother’s death? And then my mind quieted in surrender. Maybe, I do need to be here now, I finally accepted. As the baby crawled toward the children’s corner, I sat down and opened the first journal, responding to its prompt, “How Has the Experience of Loosing Someone You Loved Changed Your
Attitudes and Values?”

Time stilled as I immersed myself in reading the words of others and then recorded my own on this, and
the next two journals.
“What Is It That Makes Your Life Meaningful?”
“What Is Your Greatest Fear About Death?”
My responses flowed easily until I came to the fourth and final question, the one to evaluate everything I knew and loved and feared. I paused for several moments, then wiping the stinging tears from my eyes, I recognized with great clarity and purpose my response. I was vaguely aware that my husband had come and taken the baby, and that my older son was banging a little too loudly on the children’s organ in the neighboring exhibit.
The fourth journal didn’t actually have a question like the others, but rather an unfinished statement
begging for completion.
“I Never Knew That I Loved…,” read its cover.
“I Never Knew That I Loved…,” I read a second time, hesitant to write my response; worried what
others might think of it; afraid to admit what I truly felt inside.
“I never knew that I loved…”
I let these words echo in my mind and heart a third time and then abandoned my fears to write what I had discovered was my unique response:
“I never knew that I loved…
Witnessing death.”

It was disturbing, but true. I never knew that I would love being present at death, but I did. I loved participating in that passage, just as I had loved being present at births. I loved being a part of this time for another. I loved the blessing of holding my mother’s hand in her last hours. I loved the opportunity to be there as midwife to her at this crossing. I loved that my newborn son suckled on my breast as my mother took her last breaths. And I loved that it was the sound of his cries that caused her to open her eyes one last time to look around at the loved ones who surrounded her.