On my mom's blog, June 7, 2012 she wrote:

Painting made me feel like me, like I was made for this.  All my liabilities became assests, and  my sensitivities and oddities became useful.  From the first day, if my paintings lacked skill  the thing they never lacked was life or honesty.  And that is still true.

Instead of celebrating my 10th anniversary of the first time I ever held a brush to canvas, yesterday I lied here and slept on and off,  recuperating from the stereotatic radiosurgery from the day before, medicated and drinking egg creams sometimes half-dreaming about what I will work on when I get my ass out of this bed (finish espresso lino-cut reduction prints, work on painting of Anna, get back out to plein air work, get back to life drawing.   My daughter Anna and my friend Mari took turns staying near me while I slept the day away til Jon came home.

My life as an artist is about all the days of my life, about my current  identity in this world, and–with or without my permission– it pervades all the other things I do or don't do.  Even my druggy sleep, even during the radiation—I am painting even when I am not painting.

I am painting even when I am not painting-- I feel like that. I'm always creating in my head. Something. Anything. A painting, a comic, a piece of clothing, rearranging the rooms in our house, seeing the light come in just so or how a small face of one of my kids changes.

I remember the stereotactic radiosurgery my mom writes about above. I had planned a birthday party-- I was turning 27-- just a simple gathering of friends for beer and fries at a local pub. Someone new was going to be there, a guy who had entered the scene only 2 weeks before, and I was excited. I had a boyfriend at the time who was not a very good boyfriend. This new guy was a new friend, nothing more than that, but the kind of friend you know is important. So when my mom's doctor said we had to do the stereotactic radiosurgery right away, that the tumors in her brain were growing faster than anyone expected, I canceled my birthday party. I was disappointed. I was 27 and even though that's an adult's age, I was young and angry that my mom was sick, that I might lose her soon, that she'd had cancer my whole adult life and I didn't know how to talk about how angry and scared I was. So I let myself be angry about my canceled party.

My mom had to lie in bed on her ten year painting anniversary. She had to have her brain zapped, and had to be watched like a child, couldn't be left alone. She was painting even when she wasn't painting. Even before she started painting. She was painting her whole life.

I sat with my mom in the hospital that day, filling out her advanced directive. She answered questions about quality of life, and what she wanted and didn't want. But I didn't know the right questions to ask back then. There's so much I wish I'd known to ask. How can we know what we will need to know at the end? In the impossible situations?

I wish my mom was here right now (I always do).

This week we had a covid exposure-- we are all fine but the 3-year-old is too young to be vaccinated and needs to quarantine, so I am not working. But I'm making art even when I am not making art.

My mom is still my mom even when she is dead.

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