Sunday Blog 154 – 30 Sep 2024 Graduation photo From the night before she died, I started making shrines for my mother. It began with a candle and a photo nestled alongside the fragrant bouquets I’d received from kind friends and family. I burned candles all night long, without stopping, in the days between her …
Tag Archives: death
Early steps on the valedictory tour
Sunday Blog 153 – 22nd September 2024 One of the absolute wonders of travel to me is that I can be me, but somewhere far from home, if I just travel enough miles. And since Wednesday, I’ve travelled 17,000 kms/ 10,563 miles. The I, the Me that is housed in my body can find itself …
No funeral without laughter
Sunday Blog 152 – 15th September 2024 Perhaps you noticed there was no Sunday blog last week. It was half a conscious decision to pause, have a minute’s, or rather a week’s silence. The other half was the exhaustion of washing up on the Sunday between my mother’s death and her funeral, with the clock …
Goodbye darling Mum
Sunday Blog 151 – 1 September 2024 Almost to the very end of her long life, my mother, Bet, remained who she was, of sound mind. Funny, spunky, unpredictable. In the emergency department last week where she was being treated for her broken hip, she was next to a man who had imbibed a little …
Seeing sepia in colour
Sunday Blog 120 – 28 January 2024 Old photo albums marinade us in the difficult truth that everything passes. A picture from the late 1920s of my mother as a toddler, smiling in front of the rose garden her father created from the heat and dust in the small town of Winchester in mid-west Western …
Vale Dawnie
Sunday Blog 113 – 3rd December 2023 This is a visual tribute dedicated to a beautiful visual artist, Dawn Meader. Tuesday this week she was laid to rest in a moving funeral service. Just one year ago, in her sixtieth year on this earth, she was diagnosed with brain cancer. She didn’t fight cancer – …
Woo-woo curious
Sunday Blog 111 – 19th November 2023 Buckle up because this Sunday blog is going woo-woo (definition “dubiously or outlandishly mystical, supernatural, or unscientific”) I’m pretty sure my Dad would not love the real estate agent’s description of our family home as “a renovator’s delight”, but, well, it is. That the real estate agent chose …
You don’t remember me
Sunday Blog 109 – 5th November 2023 Yesterday I had the opportunity to refresh the creative well, responding to flash prompts. Here is one I felt the urge to share – flash memoir from the blur of recent hospital visits “You don’t remember me, do you?” She called to me across the room. Once. Twice. …
Outrageous Luck
Sunday Blog 107 – 22nd October 2023 It is perhaps hard to be cheerful at the moment, so here is some dark warmth for your Sunday. This holy water font was spotted on my holiday in a Salzburg church, a ghoulish flourish on the way out. Dip your finger into the skull for a dab …
Not the day, not the hour
Sunday Blog 96 – 6th August 2023 I began the week with two cousins born in the same year, same month as me, and ended it with one. On Wednesday I was looking after my mother as per usual and heard the phone ring. As she always has it on speakerphone, I usually get to …