What a lovely afternoon....

Contemplations....

Recently, I picked up a couple of oil paintings done years ago by my grandmother.  They have been hanging in my elderly uncle's house for many, many years.  But recently my uncle had to move into a care facility, and the house he shared with his late wife, my mom's sister, for 35 years is slowly emptying out and will be going up for sale.  I was anxious to collect the paintings before they accidentally became lost in the inevitable confusion of moving and redistribution of belongings.

This house is bound up in memories of my past....how well I remember visiting on Christmas or some other occasion, trooping into the foyer to be greeted by my aunt reaching for our coats while the most delicious aromas of my uncles wonderful cooking delighted our nostrils.  After a meal lively with conversation and the constant insistance of my uncle to eat, eat and eat!!  there would be a hilarious dish-washing session and then we would gather in the living room, where sometimes music would be playing and, as the after-dinner wine or beer flowed, dancing would commense!  My sister, cousins, and, sometimes also present, my uncles nieces - all of us would be giggling over the antics of the slightly tipsy adults, as they laughed and danced around the spacious living room.......I remember my Mom, who enjoyed music and dancing, once losing her balance slightly and bumping askew one of the oil paintings on the wall, the same painting that, years later, just a few days ago in fact, I found myself lifting off the wall and blowing dust from the frame.........

The house is quiet now, and seems strange without the larger than life presence of my uncle.  One of my uncle's nieces had let me into the house, and together we wandered,talking, into the various rooms and I think we were both having the same memories, seeing the same ghostly images from a vigorous, youthful past.  We've all grown older, my aunt and mother have passed on, life is different for those of us still working on this eartly plane.  This is the inevitability of life, that it's in a constant state of flux and will always change.  And it's good, and right that it should be so and that we should put our faces towards the future, lucky to be armed with good memories of the past.  My grandmother's paintings will grace the walls of a new house, and someday, my young second cousins will hopefully be placing them on the walls of their homes.

 
The photograph made it come out much yellower than the painting appears in real life, but with the flash it came out really washed out.  I don't know when my grandmother painted it, but she had a nice way with catching light effects with oil paint.  This is one of the bigger canvases she did.  It hung for years over my uncles chair in the living room.  I remember my other uncle, my mom's brother, (also long ago passed on) making up a story about it once for the amusement of us kids, about the family that perhaps lived in the little cottage.

 

 
Again the photo came out really yellow, but I hadn't really LOOKED at this painting before I took it home the other day.  Dave likes this one the best of all of grandma's paintings that he's seen, and he's right, it's really one of her better ones I think.   The photo doesn't show it well, but the sky has a lovely pale pinkish tint.  In total, I think my grandmother probably painted about 10 or 15 canvases, I guess.  Most of them are in the homes of her descendants. 

A Tribute

On August 22nd, 2010, my mother, Doris Brightman, passed away.

Such a simple sentence for such a profound event.

She was born in Toronto; my grandfather, a church organist, had emigrated to Canada from his native Yorkshire, England in the 1920s, my grandmother joining him a few years later.  They started a new life in Canada and had three children, Thelma, Arthur and my mother.   The family moved to Cobourg in the mid-1930s.

Growing up in the depresson years was not easy for anyone, but my Mom, who was always a glass-half-full kind of person, had good childhood memories of long summer afternoons swimming in Lake Ontario and picnicing on the beach, and of riding a local farmer's horse around the neighbourhood.  Where she got her love of riding is a mystery, since my Grandmother was terrified of horses! 

As a teenager, Mom attended the Cobourg District Collegiate Institute West High School, where years later my sister and myself were also students.  She enjoyed high school, played on the basket ball team and made good friends.

In her early twenties, Mom, by this time a tall, graceful woman with the looks of a 1940s film star (she had aspirations of modeling at one point), met my Dad on the badminton courts in Cobourg, and thus began a relationship spanning 60 years, 5 years of engagement and 55 years of marriage.  They were married in 1955 and in 1959 bought a house on the top of what used to be called Creighton Heights Hill.  There were lovely views of the surrounding countryside all around, and a beautiful valley where Mom loved to walk.  Her interest and love of nature really took wing here, and my childhood memories are filled with walks through the woods, Mom with her Peterson wildflower identification guidebook, and, later, her camera in hand. 

She was always so interested in wild things.  These walks were always a journey of discovery, and she was always excited when she found a wildflower growing that she had not before seen.  Her wildflower guide became filled with her notations of where various flowers had been found and samples of some of the plants became pressed and dried between it's pages.  The sometimes mysterious names of the flowers fascinated me and I love the sound of them still.....Grass of Parnassus, Foam Flower, Pitcher Plant, Cheeses.  Birds were another passion, I remember her standing, breathless with wonder, staring upwards at flocks of wild geese heading north in the spring.  I remember walking with her on the busy main street in Cobourg, and a little purple finch began singing it's heart out in one of the small trees that lined the sidewalk.  In the midst of all the people walking mindlessly by, not noticing the little bird's song, she stopped to listen, with a smile of pleasure on her face.  My Mom taught me the value of joy in simple things, and I consider it one of her greatest legacies, because to this day it still gives me joy and always will.

In addition, she taught the joy of the printed word to my sister and myself, each night when we were little she would read to us.  I particularly remember the Narnia stories, and how she looked forward to the next chapter as much as we did.  The house was always crowded with books, art books, history books, nature books, novels.  To this day, my own house is full of books, and I still find them preferable to television much of the time.  She used to say, 'if you can read, you will never be bored!' 

Mom was a classical music lover and had a huge record collection of classical works.  The background music to my childhood memories of home is Bach, Ravel, Debussey, Sibelius, Massonet, Vaughn-Williams......the list goes on.  I still cultivate a love for the classical greats, although my musical tastes are wide and varied as those who know me can attest!

She loved Algonquin park very much, and for some years we spent alot of time there, canoeing, hiking, and for a winter or two we cross-country skied and snowshoed.  I do feel as though she was happiest there, she loved getting out on the northern lakes in the canoes, then exploring the shorelines and surrounding bushland.  I think the following photograph shows how happy she was outdoors in Algonquin Park, and it's one of my favorite pictures of her.  That's Dad, stern paddling behind her. 

 

Over the years she had so many interests.....nature, photography, needlepoint, reading, her volunteer work for the Northumberland Humane Society.    But illness in the last few years of her life robbed her of much of her mobility.  Still, she took pleasure in the simple pastimes of reading and crossword puzzles, and in the closeness of family and pets.   And right up until the last month of her life, she was lucky enough to be able to stay in the home she'd lived in her entire married life, with family close by.  My Dad and Mom are the epitomy of what marriage should be - I'm sure it wasn't always easy as no marriage is, but there were there for each other in sickness and in health, and this was never more clearly demonstrated than in the final months and weeks of her life.  Dad went with her right to the very end, reminding me strongly of Shakespeare's Sonnot 116......'Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds................Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom...'

What happens to a life?  Where does it go, all the interests, the talent, the glorying in a thousand sunsets?  I find myself asking this.  And, as all of us do when a loved one passes on, where are they now?  Just as, in my quieter moments, I feel profound regret for not spending more time with her in those last years....but, as a friend has said to me who has also recently lost his mother, we can waste time on regrets, or we can go forward into the rest of our lives with as many good memories as we can.  And consider ourselves lucky that we have good memories.........

I recently attended a memorial for a friend of my Mom's who had passed away about a month after her.  Pearl and my Mom had done volunteer work at the Northumberland Humane Society's fund-raising thrift shoppe for many years, and at the end of their lives fate had decreed that they were placed right across the hall from one another in the hospital.  Visiting my Mother during those last weeks, I dropped into the habit of also spending a bit of time with Pearl. 

As I stood in front of the congregation, sharing my memories of Pearl, it occured to me that such a gathering of friends and family was nice, it was nice to share memories.  I was happy to tell of my memories of Pearl and the family in the front row smiled through their tears as they remembered with me.  It made me happy to hopefully have been able to give them some new memories of their loved one to carry forward with them into the rest of their lives.  

My Mom had no such memorial, and that was how she wanted it, and I cannot be more supportive and happy with that.  Still, to be able to hear the recollections and memories of those who knew my Mom....that would be nice.   So, in the comment thread below, please do take a moment and share your favorite memory of Doris Brightman. 

When I was about 6 or 7 I had a walk of about a quarter mile to and from Cook's Public School.  Often, Mom would come and meet me after classes and we would walk home together, sometimes through the woods.  One day, it was snowing heavily as school ended at 330, and as I walked down the hill towards the bridge spanning the creek that crosses Danforth Road, I could barely see her figure through the flying snow, standing there waiting for me in her red-quilted winter coat.  When my time comes to make the journey out of this life, I hope that as I come along that mysterious road that I see her, coming clearer to view as she did through the whirling flakes of snow that day, waiting to guide me over the bridge.

This excerpt from a Tewa Pueblo prayer makes me think of Mom, and I would like to end this tribute with it.

Then weave for us a garment of brightness;

May the warp be the white light of morning,

May the weft be the red light of evening,

May the fringes be the falling rain,

May the border be the standing rainbow,

Thus weave for us a garment of brightness

That we may walk fittingly

where grass is green.

O our Mother the Earth,

O our Father the sky!