Death and Grief

 I listened to an interview today that author Phillip Roth gave a number of years back. He said some things that resonated with me, having recently lost another one of my life long friends to illness.

It was pointed out during the interview, that there is a theme of death running through his books, and he was asked if this was something he often thinks about. He said yes, everyday. He explained that when we become a certain age, 60 years and over we begin to see many friends that get sick and die.


Unfortunately we live in a culture that keeps death at arms length. The result of which is the inability to know how to cope with death, within our immediate families or extended circles of friends. I think it's much more difficult when we don't have a belief in a Creator, that can enable us to come to a level of acceptance, understanding and even comfort, in knowing that it is death that teaches us the most essential and important lessons about how beautiful and precious life is.

As a youth and into my young adulthood I had several friends, close family members , and a young husband who died at the age of 26, and so I've been acutely aware of death and it's profound affects that are manifested through and in grief.

Certainly coping with death and grief is never easy, it takes time, and remains difficult for me to this day. But I also know there are many things in this world worse than death.

Today I'm very grateful that I've many more tools at the age of 64, in order to help me cope, because I have a belief and a faith in a power greater than myself, and an ever increasing hope in a higher consciousness of this life force, and a transformation that is beyond my complete comprehension while on this earth.

Karolina Jonderko - " Portrait With My Mother "

I have learned that there is no time line for grieving. When my first husband died at the age of 26, while in my last year of University in 1980, I excelled in my art work. Creating art helped me to grieve. Many artists use there work as a vehicle to process their grief. It's something I think for many artists is a natural inclination, even if we are not fully conscious of this at the time. Creativity is a conduit for processing and communicating deep heart ache.

Karolina Jonderko I think, found this to be true for her, inadvertently with no intention of sharing what she was doing after the death of her mother, who had been very sick with cancer. She began to take a series of photographs of herself, in her mothers clothes. To some this might seem morbid, and perhaps not being able to let go. There is never a set formula in knowing how to grieve if we have not experienced it personally, in such a profound way, and it think it is different for all of us, though we can identify with many of the feelings.

When those we love die, it is profound, death is profound, as is life, neither are easy but both can be very beautiful. I believe mortality is what gives our lives meaning.

A few years back I learned about Caitlyn Doughty a member of The Order of The Good Death, and a mortician in Los Angeles, Califonia. Her approach and attitude toward death I believe we can all learn and benefit from, as our society has kept death at arms length. We don't want to talk about it.

People need to be allowed to grieve in what ever way they wish. However suppression of feelings after a period of time becomes repression, which is toxic to our health and happiness. I can't think of any more proactive way to communicate emotion, than expressing ourselves through creating art work.

Here's the link to an interview with Karolina Jonderko about her exhibit of photography, Portrait With My Mother.

Singing Over The Bones

The Wild Woman - Singing Over The Bones - Catherine Meyers"  The Wild Woman lives where the dead come to be kissed and the living send their prayers. "

I have always been fascinated with all kinds of stories that are manifested through mythology, and tomorrow is The Day of the Dead, which originates from Aztec Mythology, and it is the celebrated holiday when the dead, family and friends are all remembered. I wish all my Mexican and Spanish friends a Happy Day of the Dead. I don't know a whole lot about Aztec Mythology, but have always been interested in ancient cultures, their stories, myths and legends, as they teach us about life, and death.

I have found it some what sad how our Western world is so out of touch with death. Death is what we all have in common, yet we keep death at arms length. Ancient and traditional cultures are much more connected with the Life-Death-Life cycle.


The myth of The Day of The Dead revolves around the underworld of Mictlan which was ruled by King Mictlantecuhtli ("Lord of the Underworld") and his wife, Mictecacihuatl ("Lady of the Underworld").
It is the most celebrated holiday in Mexico, and has become integrated with Spanish traditions, and all over the world. The goddess Mictlantecuhtli reminds me of Persephone, in Greek Mythology she is Psyche, and the High Priestess of the Tarot. The High Priestess is an image of that natural law at work within the depths of the soul. Persephone like Mictecacihuatl  is also the goddess of the underworld or the night world of the unconscious, which is revealed through feelings, intuition, dreams, and fantasies.


Within the art world, death seems to be mostly avoided, and not reflected usually within the subject matter of the contemporary artist.

The story of the Inuit myth about Skeleton Women best reflects for me the Life-Death-Life cycle.

Skeleton Woman - Catherine Meyers

The Happiness of Pursuit

Chris Guillebeau's self-help book, The Happiness of Pursuit, published by Random House, is a real good one and I highly recommend everyone to read. Chris is an inspiring adventurous and wise fellow, an old soul I would describe him.

I'm about half way through this book and am finding very insightful wisdom, and practical advice, manifested within the stories of those who have sought after their goals by pursuing personal quests. I identify greatly with this book, as I have had many of my own person quests and journeys that have tested my own personal fortitude, made me a stronger, more compassionate individual and changed my life.

 Especially touching and poignant to me, was the story about a remarkable human being, Phoebe Snetsinger who came to deeply understand life through facing her own mortality, after being diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Her quest became even more clarified and she went after her goals with more passion and commitment than what she possessed before she was diagnosed with cancer. This story reminded me of another story I read in  Dr. Clarrisa Pinkola Estes' book, Women Who Run With The Wolves. It was entitled Skeleton Women an Inuit story about embracing life death and life cycle.

In my own life because of the loss of many people that I deeply loved I came to see life as precious and my priorities in my life became clear and paramount to me. I was able to discern what was absolutely important and my perspective changed. I learned not to sweat the small petty things and not to pet the big sweaty things!

Skeleton Woman - Egg Tempera on Wood Panel 12"x12" 2012 - Catherine Meyers

Mosaic

I was recently asked to submit a six by six inch tile to the Mosaic for Mental Health. The theme for this year's exhibition is "Transformation and Triumph"

Kabballah Sacred Tree of Life

I love the Fall. I can even say I love the Winter. The change of the seasons, always make me think of the rhythms of the life, death, and life cycle of our human experience on this good earth. Many believe that this cycle is simply life, and then death. I do not.
There is a world of wonder, mystery, miracle, and awe to be found in life, and in death. I have so many reasons to believe in the God of my understanding, and to have faith, that this mortal coil, is certainly not the end.

 I have a faith that has seen me through much transformation, and triumph in life. I have many to thank for this They have imparted their own faith to me. I am grateful for, and to those whom have given and continue to give, me hope to transform, and triumph over adversity, and difficulties. We cannot have the sun without the rain, nor joy without the sadness. I have come to understand why compassion, and suffering are so directly connected, and essential to happiness.

Graceful Aging and Sally O'Malley

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I've always been fond of the saying "growing old gracefully". Many seem to do this well with grace,   embracing the natural life-death-life cycle. Others rail against it, in that they are fearful, full of dread and complaints about getting old. Many folks I have known over the years, have an agelessness about their personality who are truly young at heart, love life with optimism and humour, that always inspires. They set an example of how to age gracefully.

 Our elders have an essential and vital role to play within families, and in a society that seems to have forgotten the important lessons they have to teach us. Instead, we are youth obsessed and in denial about getting old, and keep death at arms length.

My parents and my brother were young at heart, and rather ageless, though I was acutely aware they were aging and how the toll disease took on their bodies. Aging nor getting old is not for sissies as Betty Davis once said. But it is still very possible to remain young at heart.

Remembering what it was like to be a teenager helps a lot. Too many adults I believe tend to forget what it was like to have a sense of childlike joy and wonder. I believe we can continue to have this if we bother to look and allow ourselves to let go of rigid ideas of what we should be acting like when we reach a certain age, and be let this dictate and define us.

 My chronological age does not define who I am. I don't think I can ever say that I really feel my age. Sometimes I feel very young, on other occasions I feel like an ancient crone who's been living for an eternity, under some big mossy toadstool. Something like that.

My old friends, my body and bones usually have particular way of reminding me that life is short and time is passing rapidly, and that I need to live life as fully as I can, with my body, soul, and mind, with a love of humanity, humility and a sense of humour.

Our attitude toward life and living contributes so much to the aging process, and I believe determines our behaviour whether it be positive or negative.

As a Youth Care Worker, being around young people helped me to remember my youth. As well, my mother was an older mum when I was born, this day, June 4th in 1953, she was 42 years old with a very youthful spirit, which remained with her all through her life. I never really saw her as old, because she taught me that we are so much more than our chronological age and it does not define who I am, unless I let it.

Since I turned fourty years old I've always made it a point to mark each decade milestone with some kind of memorable learning experience. At fourty I went riding horses for two years, when I turned fifty, I learned to belly dance and now I'm sixty, I can say it's been a year since I graduated from Mount Allison University with my Bachelor of Fine Art, and the old CPP it gonna be rollin' in next month! Life is very sweet and good at sixty!

And so Monday June 4th 2018 is my birthday and like Sally O'Malley, I'm hear to say, I was SIXTY! And now I'll be SIXTY FIVE YEARS OLD. THE BIG SIX 5! I like to KICK, Stretch AND KICK!

Life Death Life Cycle

Caitlin Doughty is a Los Angeles, CA. mortician and a writer who started The Order of The Good Death in 2011. I heard an interview with her on CBC radio for a second time. The first time I didn't listen as intently as I did on this occasion. Why I paid close attention today was because a close friend's brother-in-law died just a few days prior to Christmas. I came to the realization that I think deeply at Christmas about those that we love and loose to death, under very difficult and painful circumstances, that perhaps we can ever imagine.

Amidst the Christmas festivity, and celebration of the birth of the Christ Child,  present to me, is a pervading sense and reminder of death. This may sound morbid, but I have come to realize this is all part and parcel of  cycle of life. It is what Jungian analyst, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola  refers to, in the story about Skeleton Woman, as being  the life-death-life cycle.  There is life after death I believe. I am not just talking about Heaven or the after life, but the kind of life we choose to live when we can face our fears surrounding death, confronting and accepting our mortality.

 I am someone who has personally experienced a lot of death with the loss of a husband at the young age of 27, loosing my mother in 1995, after one year of sobriety, and then ten years later loosing my father and my older brother within two months of one another. In considering what I have lost and what I have gained, I am amazed and so grateful to be able to celebrate on January 2nd, 2013, nineteen years of contented sobriety.

The death of my loved ones has given me an appreciation for life and a wisdom that I would never have otherwise. I learned many hard lessons from death and continue to do so. What I have gleaned from these lessons, I have to share, pay it forward, in hopes of perhaps helping another, the way others have so generously helped me.

I remember many years ago reading, Love and Will by Rollo May. He makes some profound statements that have long resonated with me, about the relationship between Love and Death. This is clarified for me is his quotation from  a letter written by Abraham Maslow, who was recuperating from a heart attack.

" The confrontation with death-and the reprieve from it-makes everything look so precious, so sacred, so beautiful that I feel more strongly than ever the impulse to love it. My river has never looked so beautiful....Death, and its ever present possibility makes love, passionate love, more possible. I wonder if we could love passionately, if ecstasy would be possible at all, if we knew we'd never die."
                                           
"Death is always in the shadow of the delight of love."

He speaks as well of the other side of the death and love relationship.

 " The obsession with sex serves to cover up contemporary man's fear of death."

At one time death was not so much at arms length as it is today in the twenty first century, much to our own detriment.

When I first came to the realization I am somewhat preoccupied with contemplating thoughts about death, especially around this time of year, at Christmas, I didn't really want to admit this to myself. However today, after closely and intently listening and reading what Caitlin Doughty has to say, I can  better embrace my thoughts and feelings about death and mortality. I now understand  and know this is healthy and normal considering what my life experience has been.

Caitlin says, "Many of us have thoughts of death, but we don't see them to the end. We get stuck in the loops, reliving the scary part over and over but never the resolution."

Skeleton Woman

Lately I have been thinking a great deal about my father, and about  meanings of a healing dream I had recently about him. I'm certain it has to do with re-reading Woman That Run With The Wolves and the poignant themes of the stories relating to relationship with self, others, life and death.


Over the years I have had many  powerful experiences with receiving messages through my dreams that helped me through either difficult relationships or even the death of those I love. 


Relationship and death seem to be a central theme in many of my dreams. Perhaps because I have had a lot of personal experience with death in my own life.


Remembering the book, Love and Will, I read many years ago, by Rollo May, said  that sex was once the taboo topic, but now it is death. I have always found this to be true. Death has become far removed from our lives and most people push death away, or flee from it, in one way or another.


In the ancient tale of the, " Skeleton Woman" I am reading now, I am some what conflicted, uncomfortable and yet fascinated with it's deep meaning and imagery which explores what it is to understand the Life/Death/Life Nature of Love. This story Clarissa Pinkola Estes shares was given to her by Mary Uukalat in a five line poem, in an old Inuit setting.


I am anxious to see what images I express in my painting and interpret the meaning of what I think is the most powerful story in this book. Here is what Clarissa writes about the Life/Death/ Life Nature of Love.


"Wolves are good at relationships. Anyone who has observed wolves sees how deeply they bond. Mates are most often for life. Even though they clash, even though there is dissension, their bonds carry them over and through harsh winters, plentiful springs, long walks, new offspring, old predators, tribal dances, and group sings. The relational needs of humans are no different.

While the instinctual lives of wolves include loyalty and lifelong bonds of trust and devotion, humans sometimes have trouble with these matters. If we were to use archetypal terms to describe what determines the strong bonds among wolves, we might surmise that the integrity of their relationships is derived from their submission to the ancient Life/Death/Life nature.

The ancient Life/Death/Life nature is a cycle of animation, development, decline, and death that is always followed by reanimation. This cycle affects all physical life and all facets of psychological life. Everything—the sun, the novas, and the moon, as well as the affairs of humans and those of the tiniest creatures, like cells and atoms—has this fluttering, then faltering, then fluttering again.

Unlike humans, wolves do not deem the ups and downs of life, energy, power, food, opportunity as startling or punitive. The peaks and valleys just are, and wolves ride them as efficiently, as fluidly, as possible. The instinctual nature has the miraculous ability to live through all positive boon, all negative consequence, and still maintain relationship to self, to another.

Among wolves, the Life/Death/Life cycles of nature and fate are met with grace and wit and the endurance to stay tight with one’s mate and to live long and well as can be. But in order for humans to live and give loyalty in this most fit manner, one has to go up against the very thing one fears most. There is no way around it, as well shall see. One must sleep with Lady Death.

Skeleton Woman is a hunting story about love. In stories from the north, love is not a romantic tryst between two lovers. Stories from the circumpolar regions describe love as a union of two beings whose strength together enables one or both to enter into communication with the soul-world and to participate in fate as a dance with life and death.

To understand this story, we have to see that there, in one of the harshest environs and one of the most stressed hunting cultures in the world, love does not mean a flirtation or a pursuit for simple ego pleasure, but a visible bond composed of psychic sinew of endurance, a union which prevails through bounty and austerity, through the most complicated and most simple days and nights. The union of two beings is seen as “angakok” magic in itself, as a relationship through which “the powers that be” become known to both individuals.

But there are requirements for this kind of union. In order to create this enduring love, one invites a third partner to the union. The third partner is Skeleton Woman. She is also called Lady Death, and as such, she is the Life/Death/Life nature in one of her many guises. In this form, Lady Death is not a disease, but a deity.

In a relationship she has the role of the oracle who knows when it is time for cycles to begin and end. As such, she is the wildish aspect of relationship, the one of whom men are most terrified… and sometimes women also, for when faith in the transformative has been lost, the natural cycles of increase and attrition are feared as well.

To create enduring love, Skeleton Woman must be admitted to the relationship and be embraced by both lovers. Here, in this old Inuit story, are the psychic stages for mastery of that embrace. This story was given to me by Mary Uukalat. Let us peer at the images which rise from the smoke of this story. "

Here is the story of, " Skeleton Woman".

" She had done something of which her father disapproved, although no one any longer remembered what it was. But her father had dragged her to the cliffs and thrown her over and into the sea. There, the fish ate her flesh away and plucked out her eyes. As she lay under the sea, her skeleton turned over and over in the currents.

One day a fisherman came fishing, well, in truth many came to this bay once. But this fisherman had drifted far from his home place and did not know that the local fisherman stayed away, saying this inlet was haunted.

The fisherman's hook drifted down through the water, and caught of all places, in the bones of Skeleton Woman's rib cage. The fisherman thought, "Oh, now I've really got a big one! Now I really have one!" In his mind he was thinking of how many people this great fish would feed, how long it would last, how long he might be free from the chore of hunting. And as he struggled with this great weight on the end of the hook, the sea was stirred to a thrashing froth, and his kayak bucked and shook, for she who was beneath struggled to disentangle herself. And the more she struggled, the more she tangled in the line. No matter what she did, she was inexorably dragged upward, tugged up by the bones of her own ribs.

The hunter had turned to scoop up his net, so he did not see her bald head rise above the waves, he did not see the little coral creatures glinting in the orbs of her skull, he did not see the crustaceans on her old ivory teeth. When he turned back with his net, her entire body, such as it was, had come to the surface and was hanging from the tip of his kayak by her long front teeth.

"Agh!" cried the man, and his heart fell into his knees, his eyes hid in terror on the back of his head, and his ears blazed bright red. "Agh!" he screamed, and knocked her off the prow with his oar and began paddling like a demon toward shoreline. And not realizing she was tangled in his line, he was frightened all the more for she appeared to stand upon her toes while chasing him all the way to shore. No matter which way he zigged his kayak, she stayed right behind, and her breath rolled over the water in clouds of steam, and her arms flailed out as though to snatch him down into the depths.

"Agh!" he wailed as he ran aground. In one leap he was out of his kayak, clutching his fishing stick and running, and the coral white corpse of skeleton woman, still snagged in the fishing line, bumpety-bumped behind right after him. Over the rocks he ran, and she followed. Over the frozen tundra he ran, and she kept right up. Over the meat laid out to dry he ran, cracking it to pieces as his mukluks bore down.

Throughout it all she kept right up, in fact, she grabbed some of the frozen fish as she was dragged behind. This she began to eat, for she had not gorged in a long, long time. Finally, the man reached his snowhouse and dove right into the tunnel and on hands and knees scrabbled his way into the interior. Panting and sobbing he lay there in the dark, his heart a drum, a mighty drum. Safe at last, oh so safe, yes, safe thank the Gods, Raven, yes, thank Raven, yes, and all bountiful Sedna, safe... at...last.

Imagine when he lit his whale oil lamp, there she - it - lay in a tumble upon his snow floor, one heel over her shoulder, one knee inside her rib cage, one foot over her elbow. He could not say later what it was, perhaps the firelight softened her features, or the fact that he was a lonely man... but a feeling of some kindness came into his breathing, and slowly he reached out his grimy hands and using words softly like a mother to child, began to untangle her from the fishing line.

"Oh, na, na, na." First he untangled the toes, then the ankles. "Oh, na, na, na." On and on he worked into the night, until dressing her in furs to keep her warm, Skeleton Woman's bones were all in the order a human's should be.

He felt into his leather cuffs for his flint and used some of his hair to light a little more fire. He gazed at her from time to time as he oiled the precious wood of his fishing stick and rewound the gut line. And she in the furs uttered not a word - she did not dare - lest this hunter take her out and throw her down to the rocks and break her bones to pieces utterly.

The man became drowsy, slid under his sleeping skins, and soon was dreaming. And sometimes as humans sleep, you know, a tear escapes from the dreamer's eye; we never know what sort of dream causes this, but we know it is either a dream of sadness or longing. And this is what happened to the man.

Skeleton Woman saw the tear glisten in the firelight and she became suddenly soooo thirsty. She tinkled and clanked and crawled over to the sleeping man and put her mouth to his tear. The single tear was like a river and she drank and drank and drank until her many-years-long thirst was slaked.

While lying beside him, she reached inside the sleeping man and took out his heart, the mighty drum. She sat up and banged on both sides of it:Bom Bomm!.....Bom Bomm!

As she drummed, she began to sing out "Flesh, flesh, flesh! Flesh, Flesh, Flesh!" And the more she sang, the more her body filled out with flesh. She sang for hair and good eyes and nice fat hands. She sang the divide between her legs, and breasts long enough to wrap for warmth, and all the things a woman needs.

And when she was all done, she also sang the sleeping man's clothes off and crept into his bed with him, skin against skin. She returned the great drum, his heart, to his body, and that is how they awakened, wrapped one around the other, tangled from their night, in another way now, a good and lasting way.

The people who cannot remember how she came to her first ill fortune say she and the fisherman went away and were consistently well fed by the creatures she had known in her life under water. The people say that it is true and that is all they know."