By Dan White – Special to the Sydenham Current
Perhaps this will feel a bit odd this week, but I feel compelled to right about the art of grieving. It sounds bizarre perhaps but it is very relevant in my family right now.
Recently my elder sister, Karen, closed her eyes for the final time. Cancer invaded her body and she said goodbye to us in her 64th year. It is shocking to comprehend that a loved one is gone. Like many readers, I am not new to loss, but the loss of a sibling is a new, and unwelcome, experience. This is not a eulogy for Karen, that will come later in the privacy of a gathering with those who knew and loved her and hold her memories close.
Some readers will know Karen from her years managing the Peavey in Chatham. She was a force. Karen was a protector of her family and loved with ferocity. All of the emotions and memories wash over me when I don’t expect them, and as I took a breath to acknowledge them and reflect on the aftermath of her departure from this planet, a few thoughts revealed themselves.
The arts are sentinels of our grieving.
In looking at posts on social media from my family, poems are commonly used to encapsulate an emotion that we may struggle to articulate or the weight of which is so oppressive that we feel suffocated by it. Yet, a few stanzas of thoughtful words can ease that burden and breathe hope into us when a universal gut punch has us gasping.
Many people, including myself, scribble down poems when life is a tsunami of emotions. Those who don’t write them often find solace in another’s well-crafted verbiage. It is amazing to me how deeply a poem can delve into our souls when we can’t fathom looking there. The simple act of putting words on paper can draw one from the abyss, offer comfort in the darkest of moments, and illuminate joy when it seems lost.
This is one of the truly powerful properties of arts.
Music is another salve to a heart that has had a flamethrower ignite from within. How often does a song bring a lost loved one to the fore of your thoughts and create such a powerful memory that the event, the emotion, even the minor details dance before your mind’s eye? A shared song can bring you joy, dip your toes in the sadness of loss, and bring you back to the beauty and security of a loved one’s embrace.
The songs that brought comfort and joy to Karen while in palliative care are now forever associated with that and her smile, even when mortality was knocking at her door.
Most of us do not write songs to express emotions, but the best musicians often tap that well to create a masterpiece that is personal enough to resonate with a generation. Again, an art can agitate the protective barriers we create to hold emotions at bay and gently ease them down so we can walk with our grief. Locking emotions away is its own form of cancer, and art can help to cure that one.
Food, the culinary art, brings us comfort.
In a chance meeting with a friend at the hospital, Joni and I were introduced to a food that would take on a cherished spot in our lives. We bumped into our friend Chris, an electrician working at the hospital, and in the course of our chat he asked if we had tried the cinnamon buns at the kiosk. He emphatically stated that we had to try them, they are amazing. I believe he said the best he had ever had. We purchased one on the way up to visit Karen. I gave her the heart of the bun, and from that day until her second last day, every visit included a cinnamon bun heart that Karen eagerly awaited.
Those buns, smoothies made by my younger sister, and coffee from a once-Canadian franchise made her happy. A cinnamon bun will never be the same again and will always bring me to those happy moments with my sister.
Of course, food is often what we gather around to reminisce, to express our condolences, to offer comfort. The power of food to touch emotions and offer comfort goes way beyond nutrition.
Finally, visual arts.
Karen’s friend Brenda painted a wonderful work with an angel sitting with someone as the two looked out at a beautiful landscape. Karen loved it. It brought her great joy to accept that she had connected with Brenda so deeply that Brenda was inspired to create this for her. Now, that painting will hold a place of honor and reminder of the beauty in Karen’s life in her son’s home.
No, the arts don’t eliminate pain or suffering, but they do connect us and often offer comfort in an uncertain and often challenging world.
“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” — Thomas Merton
“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but the inward significance.” — Aristotle
“Any form of art is a form of power; it has the impact, it can affect change – it can not only move us, it makes us move.” — Pablo Picasso
