Tag: loss

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Wishes and Regrets

Smoky Hill River Festival

On Saturday I went to our outdoor arts festival, Art in the Park. It was boiling hot, as usual. I wore a t-shirt from one of my very favorite shows–the Smoky Hill River Festival in Salina, Kansas. One of the artists asked me about it.

Smoky Hill is the second weekend in June, i.e. this coming weekend. If you can do it, you should go. It’s wonderful. You’ll have a fabulous time.

I tried for several years to get into that show, without success. Finally, I tried something a little crazy. I figured, why not? On the application, it asked for a description of your technique and process. I wrote: “My technique and process are not nearly as complex as my wild desire to be in your show. Oh, please relent and let me in!” It worked. At last, I was in. What a joy!

Anne and her husband Terry, whom she’d lost a few years ago, in my booth

The show is not only extremely well attended by shoppers, absolutely filled to the brim with color and fun, terrific live music, great food, and wandering stiltwalkers, but the volunteers and patrons are some of the kindest, friendliest people I’ve ever met, anywhere. One of those people died last week.

I’d always intended to go back as a visitor after I stopped doing outdoor shows. I wanted to enjoy everything the show has to offer but I especially wanted to see Ann, my favorite person there, a volunteer who absolutely made the show a wonderful experience for me and for so many others. We’d been Facebook friends but I hadn’t seen any of her posts for quite awhile. Last week her daughter posted that she’d died. I scrolled through her page for an hour or so. I wanted to find out what had taken her and I ended up finding more and more reasons to love her. But now she’s gone. Cancer. Stupid f-ing cancer.

One of the wildly decorated vehicles to be seen at the Smoky Hill River Festival

The last year that I did that show, it was very very hot and my booth did not allow much air to flow through. I’d gone to the volunteer table for water, saying I felt “funny.” Ann wasn’t at the table right then but within minutes of arriving back at my booth, she showed up, her hand on her hip, head cocked, with a motherly look on her face, and said, “You come with me.” No arguing! I followed her to the First Aid station, where they gave me water and had me lie on a cot with a fan blowing on me.

All of the volunteers there were great, carrying two jugs around to our booths, one of ice water and the other iced tea. We had red ribbons to hang on our booths to let them know we needed something. One time I got up on my step stool to hang my ribbon and by the time I had stepped down, a gal with two jugs was standing there, smiling. I said, “Wow! You people are like Jimmy John’s!”

Anyway, lovely Ann. Gone. And I never managed to get back there to see her. I regret that, as I regret losing track of what was going on with her, even through Facebook. I wish I could have offered at least some little bit of something as she went through that terribly difficult time. I regret and I wish. Regrets and this particular wish, pretty useless pursuits but hard to escape.

“It’s not that we have to quit this life one day, it’s how many things we have to quit all at once: holding hands, hotel rooms, music, the physics of falling leaves, vanilla and jasmine, poppies, smiling, anthills, the color of the sky, coffee and cashmere, literature, sparks and subway trains . . . If only one could leave this life slowly!” ― Roman Payne, Hope and Despair

“My heart has joined the Thousand, for my friend stopped running today.” ― Richard Adams, Watership Down

“Whenever I saw a sunset, I would quietly make my secret wish right before the sun tucked under the western horizon and disappeared. It would seem as if the sun had taken my wish with it. I’d make it right before the last speck of light vanished.” ― Michael Jackson, Moonwalk

If you’re looking for my cards or art, you’ll find all of that on my website. If you enjoy these letters, feel free to forward this one to anyone you think might like it. And if someone forwarded this one to you, you can sign up here to receive the letters right in your Inbox. Finally, you’ll find past letters and poems here.

Thanks for listening,
Kay

P.S. MerryThoughts is the name of my first book, out of print at the moment. The word is a British one, referring both to a wishbone and to the ritual of breaking the wishbone with the intention of either having a wish granted or being the one who marries first, thus the “merry thoughts.”

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100 Day Projects

So here I am again, yammering on about the terrible state of the world, our country, the news, politics . . . and how much it degrades our happiness, our joy, and even our relationships with others. I debated with myself about whether or not to address any of the actual terrible stuff but really, I am not the person to do it. Nor is that my mission. I am here, instead, to offer the kind of thing I can offer.

When I had a very difficult year or so, during which my mother died, both of my dogs died, and my closest friend died, I gave myself a project. The friend, who was the last of my loves to die during that year, had been a gifted poet. She died at the age of 49 of pancreatic cancer. So I set myself the task of writing a poem a day for 49 days. The poems were all over the place, some about loss and love, some about woods, birds, trees, some silly, and some very serious. I did the writing faithfully every single day. The 49 days turned into more than a year of a daily practice. The poems are in my blog.

That was a healing practice for me. It gave me a purpose and the purpose was love-based. Having that kind of purpose at that time was so essential to me. It helped me to find a place to put all of that emotion. It was selfish, since at the time I never meant to share the poems. But eventually I did post them in my blog and I ended up using some of them on cards and collages.

Now I’m on Instagram and I notice people posting art or specific media with the title 100 Day Project. I haven’t really discovered much about those specific projects but I think that anything that encourages us to make pacts with ourselves can be healing. One hundred days is a big commitment. But isn’t that just what makes it meaningful? It could be a commitment to doing anything–meditating; recording in words or photos something that you find meaningful or inspiring; sending a note about whatever you’re grateful for to a friend who also sends theirs to you; making a small piece of art; taking a walk; listening to an uplifting podcast; doing a random act of kindness; calling a loved one to say how much you care about them. Or if politics is your thing, doing something, however small, for the cause you care about.

I’m still thinking about what my 100 Day Project will be, but it will be something. I am usually busy with some kind of project, anyway, but I’m due for a new one. Maybe sketchbook pages. Maybe random acts of kindness, with a recording of them in a notebook. My projects always seem to include pen and paper. Imagine that!

Shall we make a pact together? What might you do for yourself, for 100 days? It could be anything, great big or tiny, just a commitment to something positive. I’d love to know what you get up to.

“Whatever you do, be sure to do it well.”― Andrena Sawyer

“If you had started doing anything two weeks ago, by today you would have been two weeks better at it.”― John Mayer

“Freedom is not the absence of commitments, but the ability to choose – and commit myself to – what is best for me.”― Paulo Coelho, The Zahir

If you’re looking for my cards or art, you’ll find all of that on my website. And if you enjoy these letters, feel free to forward this one to anyone you think might like it. And if someone forwarded this one to you, you can sign up here to receive the letters right in your Inbox. Finally, you’ll find past letters and poems here.

Thanks for listening,
Kay

P.S. MerryThoughts is the name of my first book, out of print at the moment. The word is a British one, referring both to a wishbone and to the ritual of breaking the wishbone with the intention of either having a wish granted or being the one who marries first, thus the “merry thoughts.”

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Losses

My pickleball community just lost one of its best loved members. At this writing, it’s not even been 12 hours. We are, as a group and as individuals, immersed in this loss right now and I am hard pressed to think or write about anything else. Life sure does turn on a dime. I cannot very well write about nature or my dogs or anything else at all today.

Dick was a truly beautiful person. Oh, you hear that said about people all the time. But he really was one of those people that everyone loves. And I don’t think I’m stretching anything or hurting anyone’s feelings to say that he was, hands-down, the most beloved person in our community, having just joined us three years ago. Always joking, always fun to play with or against, and a very good player, too. Plus, he was adorable! One day when he was coming off the court and I was going on, he said as he passed, “I saw in the news that Hallmark is going out of business. The article specifically stated that you and your cards were the reason.”

For maybe ten years I have said I only want to live to be 82. And then Dick showed up. He was 82 then. He moved like a young guy. I was flabbergasted. I asked him where he had come from, etc., and he said he and his wife live here but had been wintering in Arizona. Oh, well, that explained it. Those people in Arizona are crazy over pickleball. They play all the time. “So you’ve been playing out there for a long time?” No, he said, he only just started playing. “You played tennis, though?” No. “Racquetball?” No. “Ping pong?” Nope. He just took up pickleball in his 80s and played like a young guy.

So that’s great, but the truly wonderful thing about Dick was his fun-loving personality. If you snuck in a clever dink that he couldn’t get to, he’d give you the stink eye, big time. It was all in fun, of course, and he’d make some remark about how we were supposed to be friends or how mean you were. But in reality, I don’t think Dick ever once got mad or even irritated at pickleball. He was pure joy to be around.

I wonder if it takes effort to be that sort of person–or did it just come naturally to him? Was it easy for him to be wonderful, kind, fun, and lovely? Or did he have to talk to himself about it? Did he have to work at it? Or was he born with an adorableness that you’d have to inherit genetically? Could I ever be even somewhat like him? I don’t know but I sure would like to be. I sure would love to embody his spirit for this last part of my life.

“Genuinely good people are like that. The sun shines out of them. They warm you right through.”

― Michael Morpurgo, Alone on a Wide Wide Sea

I know I should count myself lucky when my losses are hard, because they tell me I’ve had someone wonderful in my life. If I hadn’t met Dick or had the pleasure and fun of his company on the courts, I would be feeling very differently today. But what a loss that, too, would be.
If you’re looking for my cards or art, you’ll find all of that on my website. And if you enjoy these letters, feel free to forward this one to anyone you think might like it. Finally, you’ll find past letters and poems on here.

Thanks for listening,
Kay

P.S. MerryThoughts is the name of my first book, out of print at the moment. The word is a British one, referring both to a wishbone and to the ritual of breaking the wishbone with the intention of either having a wish granted or being the one who marries first, thus the “merry thoughts.”
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Friendship

Crows peck and hector a red-tailed hawk

but I fret over a friend who has closed a door

shut herself for whatever reason I cannot know.

I step carefully asking but even still

closed shuttered locked I won’t be told.

I have witlessly lost a friend unlike the hawk

who never had one never cared to but I

whatever I have done however I have changed

gone wrong disappointed failed to please

the result is all that’s clear.  I am no hawk

and I’ve lost a friend.