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Susanna's Golden Ball

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Mother, writer, artist and teacher grappling with grief and loss.

    • Susanna, the Sheep and My iPad

      This photo just popped up from my cloud:

           Susanna, in a red and white gingham dress, was talking to a sheep. Speckled beige wool poked through a wire cage at the Prospect Park Zoo. We had just fed the ducks and chickens.  Over and over, we dropped quarters upon quarters into the corn and seed filled vending machines, as her four-year-old fingers caught and tossed the food. She had no interest in stopping or moving on. Just Susanna, the animals, and the kindness of feeding. I have never since met anyone as charitable or ethereal as my daughter. I miss her always.

           The last time I wrote a blog post for Susanna’s Golden Ball was December of last year. This was around the time I purchased an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil. I downloaded the Procreate app and haven’t been the same since.

          I had been drawing again for a few months, mostly with woodless colored pencils (I still love those), and not showing my work to anyone. After talking with my life coach, who helped me sort through some things, I had decided to make a little art each week. At some point I wondered whether the smooth pencil surfaces were a segway to drawing with a stylus. They were.

          I watched a few tutorials and mastered how to make repeat patterns. I drew ice cream and cinnamon rolls, pandas, koalas, sheep. I drew platform shoes and vintage swimwear. Anemones and jellyfish, sunflowers, pussy willows. I drew lots of microbial beings, especially ones with polka dots and cilium. Organic shapes and rich colors poured from the tiny pencil tip. They seemed to live not on physical sheets of paper but in the ethers, like Susanna. I drew with joy, like I did when I was five, and again when I was seventeen.  I drew dancing women with long hair, as I did in high school. I drew some of the single images I used to paint in oils on wood panels in my studio. I shared a walk-up space under the Brooklyn Bridge in Dumbo, back when there was not much happening there.

          The deep emotions that come from being an artist came back. I once again felt the urge to make things, in such a big way that it was not only about me anymore. This was the powerful urge that convinced me to move to New York by myself in my thirties, with no money, to make my art. Art is strong. Art helps people become themselves. Art heals, it is even healing me. Art survives death, time and again.

          I do not know if the pain of losing my Susanna, so abruptly and unfairly, will ever go away. I doubt it, not in this lifetime. But this pain and grief belongs not just to me, but to humans. If we keep living, we lose those we love, then we die too. It’s these truths that unite us, scary as that is.

          I cannot say that my drawing habit made me retire early from my teaching job in June, but it was certainly a contributing factor. I could no longer resist the calling to do something more and something better. I am on a mission now. I am adding tech skills and learning about marketing, so that I can draw more.

          I need people to know about this. When things are hard, and make no sense, creating something makes me whole again.

      Follow my art at these links:

      https://www.instagram.com/trishfreer/

      /https://trishfreerstudio.org

      




      

      

      


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      “Kiss the Sky for Me.”
      



      

      

      

      



      

      Remote teaching has reminded me of what I know about trying to communicate with the discarnate. You know others are there, yet you are not with them, and seek  validation. It’s not exactly the same but teaching art class from my kitchen makes me dig inside and hope my  experience can help and inspire someone. I get less feedback than when I am really in the same room, so I do my best and leave the results in the ether sometimes.
      




      Since my students have significant disabilities of all kinds, most of them are remote learning in the company of family members or caretakers who I cannot see. This adds to the mystery. I have tried to appeal to all ages and make things interesting.
      




      In the absence of my rusty metal art cart and its thrifty, non-toxic, and eclectic contents, I have tried new things. I rarely have read books to my students in person. Honestly, I dislike the idea of reading aloud with a book in my hands when others are not listening. That seems like it would be embarrassing. For remote class, I discovered some wonderfully poetic picture books about famous artists. I streamed read aloud books from YouTube with full screen pictures.
      




      These are some of my favorites. I felt stirred by them. I felt the things I felt as a young person looking for meaning in my life. My life has been rich so far, but after all these months of isolation I want more. I hope everyone else does too. More art, more authentic living, more dreams realized, more connections that run deeper. I hope so. These are my highly personalized impressions of the books. They are beautiful, awesome books. Please try them for yourself.
      




      Georgia O’Keeffe
      




      


      




      When I was in my twenties, I had a dream visit with Georgia O’Keeffe. She was climbing a desert mountain by putting one foot at a time on small, ascending ledges. I was following close behind her. I realized how high we were and asked how I would get back down, and she turned around and telepathically answered with the obvious. I was not going back down.
      




      Back to the book, my synopsis. Georgia discovered she wanted to paint her own ideas beyond what was happening in art school. Georgia had awesome late 19th and early  20th century style, practical prairie dresses with boots, black hats, and capes. For some reason, she was followed by three crows. She drove far into the desert, “the Faraway’ and used her model A jalopy as a studio. She claimed the Pedernal Mountain as her own, she believed God promised it to her because she painted it so many times. Georgia climbed a high ladder to the roof of her adobe house, and slept under the stars, waiting to watch the sun come up. She said, “Kiss the sky for me”, and slipped into eternity.
      




      This is the video I like best:
      




      


      




      Yayoi Kusama
      




      


      




      When I first moved to New York twenty something years ago, I worked in the poster section of the bookstore at the Museum of Modern Art. I had very little money, but I would eye the sale books table and calculate the employee discount sometimes. I bought this poster for a song. It hung in a few of my rented rooms in Park Slope, Brooklyn. (My own poster was slightly tattered, I do not have it anymore.)
      




      




      My synopsis of the book: Yayoi found solace in her family gardens, looking at pebbles, and drawing dots in her sketch book. Like Georgia, she did not feel like she fit in. (How great it is when people can channel their alienation into art). She flew a long, long way to New York from Japan, with dollar bills stuffed in her shoes. I sensed her anxiety and air sickness. I related to wandering around New York, new and  alone, I am someone who did this too. She went to the top of the Empire State building, and looked down on people who looked like dots. We were able to see her dot paintings in her apartment and the city skyline outside of the windows. She constructed mirrors that made the dots go on, infinity. We saw her make friends and become successful. We saw what she looks like now in photos at the end. Red wig with bangs, wearing dots.
      




      This is the read aloud video:
      




      


      




      Louise Bourgeois
      




      


      




      One day, when I still lived in Connecticut and commuted to art school in New York, I saw Louise Bourgeois in front of her apartment. I recognized her because I had seen photos, and also, I was captivated by her face when she looked at me. Intense.
      




      The synopsis: Louise grew up in a family of textile weavers, along a river in France which has since been filled in and disappeared. She studied math and science in college, but when her mother died suddenly, she turned to art to express herself. She likened her mother to a spider, in the manner of how spiders are amazing weavers throughout the ages, hence those huge spider sculptures. Louise created using the actual fabric of her life. This book is so good. The title, Cloth Lullaby, makes me want to sleep by a French river in a blanket fort, like Louise.
      




      I could not find a read aloud video, so I read it myself and made a PowerPoint recording with the book pages. I did not want to read it five times a day all week.
      




      Jean-Michel Basquiat
      




      


      




      Jean-Michel Basquiat rests eternally in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, the same as my daughter Susanna, and not far from her. When I go there, I try to locate his voice. I feel like I know him a little from the other side because of this. I have no idea what he was really like while living, but in my imagination, he is warm on the other side and calls me “Mama”.
      




      If you are interested in this book, I suggest listening to it read by its author/illustrator, Javaka Steptoe, in his lovely speaking voice, here:
      




      


      




      Synopsis: When Jean-Michel was a child, he drew all the time. We saw the colorful skeletons of his future work in his sketches, hanging all over his family’s Brooklyn home. Not made within the lines, “but still somehow beautiful”. Jean-Michel suffered his own injury and the stress of seeing his beloved mother, Matilda, ill, and he kept drawing, drawing, and drawing. Jean-Michel became successful and famous, as he desired. His mother was very proud of him. This is what is most important about his story.
      




      I’s a beautiful world out there, in spite of everything. Let’s all create something. Peace.
      

      




      




      




      

      

      


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      Susanna’s Golden Mouse
      



      

      

      

      



      

      




          At first, I was the only one who had seen the mouse. A flash of golden fawn, confusing. The first time was under the sink by the garbage can, followed by twice in my son’s room, on and around the old, crappy, black futon with built in storage. We have had many a mouse inside, but this was the first time I had seen one of this color. My son was disturbed, and I was thinking more about the mouse going away than about the wonder of it arriving.
      




         “Fancy Mouse” is the name of the breed, domestic pets which come in an array of colors such as champagne, chocolate, lilac, cinnamon, and fawn. The color seems to be what distinguishes them from the household pest variety, the feral ones in dull gray and brown. I do not know what would happen, should someone catch a rough and ashen household variety and make it a pet, but our golden mouse was a pet and became ours for a couple of days.
      




         On Saturday afternoon, I watched the mouse jump from the kitchen counter into one of the gas stove burners. I yelled for my S.O. to come (he is super handy in these situations). I was not enamored yet, I wanted to just make sure it was gone. Once C. had seen the mouse, who popped its head up, I would describe his words as cooing. “Oh, that’s a beautiful animal. What a beautiful baby”. Within a couple of hours, he had finessed it into a cereal box. He fashioned a temporary container from a large glass globe from a lamp fixture, on top of a small bicycle tire to hold it steady, covered with an old pot lid which had a hole where the handle used to be. This was our mouse cage.
      




         I searched for information about this situation. It does not seem to come up often, finding a stray pet mouse in your home. What little I found suggested that Fancy Mice do not live long in the wild. Among wild mice in general, I also learned, the great many are destined to die rather quickly. It is rare to survive long enough to reproduce. In my search for possible spiritual and symbolic meaning, mice represent paying attention to details. They represent change coming, or how small we all really are. In the greater system, a mouse sacrifices for its size. A lifetime spent being crushed by circumstances, living often to be food for larger animals. Humbling, all in all. 
      




          By the next day I had thought to call an animal rescue, once I saw posts of mice available at one nearby. My son did not want a mouse, even a caged one, and I worried about us losing it, or my dog catching it (our dog killed a mockingbird last summer, but that is a whole other blog post. It was self-defense). The shelter agreed to accept our mouse, of unknown gender at that point. In the meantime, C. and I figured out how to clean the lamp fixture cage. He caught the mouse with a paper towel roll to transport it to a box, and back again. It had kept tipping over the water, so I found a medicine dropper to offer some. Tiny feet gripped it and the adorable little mouth dribbled, just like a baby, suckling on its mother. I loved her. After transporting her to a plastic carrying case, I could see she was a girl.
      




          I dropped off my golden girl mouse at the shelter on Tuesday, two days before the seventh anniversary of the death of my beautiful five-year-old daughter, Susanna. Susanna’s resting place, glorious Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, was a block away so I walked through toward the subway. The weather, the sky, the fiercely green grass, and spring half blooms were unspeakably pretty. I felt guilty for not feeling good, but I was so sad. I was devastated, I realized, because I was able to save the mouse, together with C., the way we could not save Susanna. I am always sad that I could not save Susanna. I live with this sadness, a part of me now, and it presents itself in different ways and in different strengths, as time goes on. I am grateful that Susanna’s father and I could share in this kind act. We provided a better life for a living being. This feels good. It does not matter how small someone is, or what species, when there is an opportunity to be kind.
      




        I wonder, as I sometimes do, what Susanna would think about what happened. From her perspective, where she is, discarnate, I wonder if she has empathized with a life small and short and found meaning as I did. Susanna loved the word fancy, and anything golden. She would certainly make a connection to Cinderella, and any other princess who may have spoken to mice. Maybe Susanna orchestrated the visit, I do not know how these things work. I do know that there is much more to the universe than what we see here. Beyond a life that may be short or small, there is eternity. Not only monumental love, but eternity.  I picture Susanna, dancing and singing, from golden mountain tops. I love you, Susanna. Save me a spot.
      




      

      




      




      




      

      

      


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      Some Disney Stories
      



      

      

      

      



      Icy rain laced the snow, coating the sidewalks between the Times Square subway station and the theater. My son and I pulled hoods close to our faces and minimized our activities other than claiming our seats for The Lion King. There were things we knew ahead from watching segments on YouTube. Stilts, eclectic animal costumes, familiar songs with words in Zulu and Swahili. But a live, human performance was something we have sorely needed these past winter months. Life and school seem drenched in inescapable drudgery. We painlessly turned off our phones for the day, held close to each other and watched the play.
      

      When my son was about three years old, and Susanna about two, we obtained an old VHS version of the animated film and popped it into a player. When we reached the middle, and Mufasa died, Susanna lapsed into inconsolable grief. She sat on the sofa and wept for a long time. She refused from then on to watch that film, and never saw the rest. Memories like this make me wonder about the things only our souls know, leaking out just a bit, mysteriously. I wonder if Susanna was remembering her mission in some small way. I wonder if she was knowing that our foursome, full of cartoons and frivolity, was going to be gone abruptly in a few years and never regained, due to her untimely death. This is a sad and irreparable situation, still.
      

      I wept a lot during the live performance. I did not start when Mufasa died, but at the beginning of the first number as the performers entered the stage from all sides. I wept mostly in relief, because I have felt so far apart from life lately. Amidst the music and energy, I realized that life was still waiting for me. Things have been difficult, but I have not died. The stress and problems have not evaporated, but I feel a bit more accepting and a bit less alone since this.
      

      When the play reached its midpoint, and again Simba’s father did in fact die, I glanced around to see if any children were crying. We were in proximity to many little girls. Mufasa was pushed to his death and I heard one girl in front state, matter-of-factly, “That was mean”.
      

      Another little girl behind me asked, innocently, “What happened?” I did not observe any children crying, but it was a huge sea of red velvet seats and I could not see everyone.
      

      This brought to my mind an exercise I learned in therapy. When I fear that my child is going to die suddenly (this happens quite a bit, since I have experienced this firsthand), I picture two adjoining screens. To the left, there are the few children who die, like Susanna. On the screen to the right are the many billions of children who do not die. There is a typical journey. It is the few and certainly not the many who leave so early. It helps sometimes.
      

      If we all continue after our death, as I am sure we do, and we reunite with loved ones on the other side, there is nothing left to genuinely be afraid of. Mufasa himself tried to make light of this, in his royal way of describing that he will join his ancestors in the cosmos. That is fine, masterfully demonstrated in the starry stage props, but I want more. I will keep seeking Susanna and how she remains with me, though I accept that I have purchased one velvet seat beside me instead of two. It is a messy and uncomfortable process.
      

      We returned home on the subway. As it was rush hour, we were in seats but separated. I looked at my son sitting on his own and noticed how in between things he is, his body nearly adult sized but his face obviously young. I am not him, but I imagined the enormity of how that must feel. Growing into his adult throne and kingdom of sorts, whatever it will be. He is at the point where baby Simba becomes adult Simba and searches himself beyond the borders.
      

      Later at home, we remembered more about watching our animated The Lion King. For days we had called my S.O. Mufasa, and he had lifted my son, Simba, above the imaginary cliff as if beginning the circle of life. I also remembered more things about Susanna and Disney cartoons. How she refused to stop rewinding and searching Bambi because she wanted to see the hunter who killed Bambi’s mother. She could not accept having that happen without seeing who was responsible. My son and I kept explaining that the shot came from a hunter, and she kept saying, “But I cannot see him!”
      

      It would be a couple of years past Bambi and the mystery shooter, when Susanna would often sit quietly in front of a screen, watching Frozen and singing “For the First Time in Forever”. In my memory she was present in body, but also ethereal, like we all are. Her eyes reflected her deep concentration, her body was taken into the song. This was happening right as we approached the door, the day between then and now. That song from Frozen became my constant companion in the early time after Susanna died, playing in my mind throughout the days. I hoped she was singing to me from a broader and grander ballroom than I could offer here.
      

      




      




      




      

      

      


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      Cicadas
      



      

      

      

      



      

       
      




      The salt marsh across the street from the park was overgrown today. Plush, shaggy and sodden. I decided to take a lap around while out walking in the rain. I was calling it a “mist” in my imagination, planning to use this word if anyone questioned my being out, but it was raining. I needed the walk more than I needed to be dry or to appear sensible.
      




      The path dribbles off to the side in a few places, providing spotty benches for couples or cyclists to sit and look at the marsh. This path is not a circle, it wavers, rises and dips over hills, and even provides forks in the road where you must decide which way to go.
      




      I have walked through here many times, but this was the first during which the opulent overgrowth completely obstructed the view of the gravel path. I was surprised by this but felt drawn in, as if I had been invited by some unseen force to be here. I put one foot in front of the other and used my memory to direct me, because I could see nothing but the rich grasses and a little piece of foot path right in front of me. This made me think of my coursework about teaching the visually impaired. If one is congenitally blind, there is no knowledge of what something looks like so navigation is all about using the other senses. If one is adventitiously blind, memory of sight can provide a roadmap of how to move. I was following blindly but this territory was not new to me. The long grasses reached all the open places in my trench coat and brushed water across my legs. This was the most spectacular walk I have been on for some time.
      




      I listened for cicadas and katydids, the sounds that remind me of being a kid going back to school in early September. A couple of years ago I wrote this haiku:
      




       
      




      Cicada season
      




      Crying outside the closed door
      




      Only one comes out.
      




       
      




      By some standards, I know, haiku is supposed to be about nature. Me, a school door, picking up one child instead of two. I believe this pain has brought me to a place better understood by the cicadas and the deep grass than by any human means. Nature, and nature only, can swallow loss and put it in perspective. One cicada does not live long, but the song of cicadas will be there for the long run.
      




      It is a rough time of year, September. There is no longer time to clean my house or ponder or just be. Susanna is not here to go to school and add to the list of stationary supplies I need to pick up. Susanna is not here to pick out new clothes. Susanna is not here to cheer me up. Susanna is not here. I feel full of cement. I feel full of toxins. I feel full of tears. There may be any number of things to complain about or to deal with, but nothing compares to her absence.
      




       
      




       
      




      

      




      




      




      

      

      


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      A Ghost Story
      



      

      

      

      



      

      Before we lived here our house had grown wild. We do not know all the details. From what I understand, there was a span of time when no one lived here.  There had been some attempts at restoration, and some repairs made in the living room, first floor bedroom and bath. It was obvious, however, that no heat had pumped through during some New York winters since we discovered multiple holes in the steam pipes and chunks of coarse, crumbled metal where the boiler had disintegrated. We did not know anyone to ask how long the abandonment had lasted other than the stray cats in the backyard, who did not welcome us.
      




      After the minimal initial repairs and arduous mortgage approval, we moved in to make it our own. The first night, Susanna in utero and my son approaching his first birthday, we slept on a mattress in that first- floor bedroom. We had moved from one neighborhood over, walking distance. This new neighborhood had pieces of open, star spattered sky. Somehow the air was cooler. Somehow this house had become our destiny. On our first Thanksgiving, we were awakened to a surprise parade going right by our house, including Sesame Street characters and a marching band. A unique neighborhood tradition we could not have foreseen.
      




      There was first a restoration of the kitchen, which had a big hole in the floor where the refrigerator and washer/dryer needed to go. This preceded the biggest part of the makeover by about a year. The crux was when S.O. decided to use his adequate savings to tear off the roof and siding and rebuild the entire second floor. Rented dumpsters filled with scads of house flesh. Worn brown outer walls were replaced with pale blue vinyl. By now, Susanna had arrived and grown old enough to complain that she wanted a pink house. The most exhilarating point was when I arrived home from work one day to see many extra workmen using compressors to grind and tear into everything that needed to go. This preceded coming home to a house so transformed it seemed a new one. The house was rebuilt, thoroughly almost to the bone, but there was destiny yet to meet.
      




      During Superstorm Sandy there was the flood water which rose up under a full moon at high tide, to reach far enough to unexpectedly wash in. Afterward we scrubbed away mud and replaced tainted flooring and sheetrock. I greeted a new sadness, a mistrust of the universe and would have thought it a low point. I was disheveled and looked at videos posted of those floodwaters sometimes and cried. My two small children noticed and would ask that I not watch the flood anymore.
      




      Two years later, Susanna’s brain aneurysm ballooned and ruptured. There were no signs of this, no symptoms. I am writing about that night these days. That occurrence, my discovering what had happened to my daughter when I saw her face, in the living room, that is a crucial turning point in my life. I wonder if my wild house absorbed the shock and pain, whether some of it will speak from inside the walls when we no longer live here. I wonder if that pain was so great that it will outlive me.
      




      If walls can soak up emotions and experiences, my family and I have contributed much to layer upon the veneer. There will be the giggles and mirth of two happy small children playing and watching cartoons. There will be the courageous and energetic laughter of a young man who has learned to live well in honor of his sister, so much work that a child should not need to face. There will be a love and romance which repeatedly transcends linguistic and cultural barriers and an unthinkable common tragedy. There will be more than the anguished cries of three people in pain, but that will be here. I can not erase it or scrub it off, so I will honor it as a most important part of our history.
      




      There is no point in the story of my house where I was alone. Nor when my small family was alone. There were the workmen who painstakingly took the house apart and replaced its body. There were the people in the marching band who paraded by our house that Thanksgiving and every Thanksgiving since. There were all the people who came that night, the crucial night, to help revive Susanna and get her to the hospital. And the people who came to stay and try to soothe us when she did not come home. I am convinced that we come here not just as a part of one tribe but a multitude of tribes. There are the great many humans we can see, plus the great many other discarnate we cannot. There are the connections we make with the rest of the world plus all those which happen beyond our understanding.  Just as Susanna’s story did not end after the five short years she was a resident of this wild house, my story does not end here either. There is more to be lived and more to be revealed. Peace.
      

      




      




      




      

      

      


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      Susanna and Mii
      



      

      

      

      



      

      Yesterday I had been driven inside by the cold and resorted to Wii Fit U, Free Run, in lieu of my walk in the park. The simulated run was icy in appearance, snow falling in seasonal nature graphics. Somehow it was dark in my running world though it was only 3 PM, but I did not mind following the full yellow moon and the huge lighthouse.
      




      I bought our first gaming console last winter as a battle tool, having gained a bit of weight. My biggest complaint about the fitness program has been the way I am judged by a four star system after each activity, which I see as part of an achievement driven and heartless culture. Susanna used to run up to the television and pound a couple of extra stars on for me with her hand if I acted disappointed by my score (my sweet angel). At some point glittery star stickers began to appear around the sides of the screen.
      




      Since the day of Susanna’s aneurysm and sudden death, nothing of the world has the same weight or feel. I cannot say I am living apart from reality because it feels like the opposite. All that used to seem solid (though I never knew it seemed solid) has been set adrift and I am hovering, sort of on a magic carpet ride which will never end. I am not alone, nor delusional. We are all here in a physical state for a limited span of time. To live as if your life and body and your set of intellectual understandings are everything will only take you so far. We all know this but we all struggle with remembering.
      




      During the first days, before the calling hours and the completion of the autopsy, my son and I turned on our Wii and saw ourselves in the Miiverse (a universe populated by avatars, some created by my kids) with our Susanna. She was and is still there, wearing the same bun in her hair with tendrils as I am, the same pink dress and heavy blue eye shadow of her choosing. I can tell the two of us apart from a distance by size. We watched ourselves huddle a bit in the center of the “plaza” and suddenly he said, “Look! Susanna’s dead!” Her Mii character was lying down, but promptly got up. In some planes we do not need to be without her forever.
      




      So yesterday I set out on my run to look for her as I always do. I passed the Mii people we made to represent so many friends and family members, and she showed up in front of me. My own avatar was shadowy, like a ghost, but Susanna was solid and her feet pounded on and on with great strength. I ran to keep up but not pass her, I did not want her to see me and get scared or go away. My heart and lungs pumped in good health, I am alive. I thought about my son and how sometimes lately I love to watch him run ahead of me. When I am able to believe he is on his own eternal path apart from me, I can let go, a little. Run on, Susanna. I need to keep going and only you are ahead to lead the way. At one point she dropped off to the side but came back and passed me, flashing me a crinkly eyed smile. I followed her near to the end of my run, short by four minutes and she veered off. I yelled good bye to her and crossed the virtual finish line. For now. 
      




      

      




      




      




      

      

      


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      Unfrozen
      



      

      

      

      



      

      Young girl in a pink hooded jacket runninh in the snow toward a snowman and tree with birds.
      




          It’s Susanna’s birthday today. She was born sixteen years ago, during a deep freeze and snowstorm. The pipes froze while she was arriving, but the iron boiler installed in the kitchen of our new basementless home chugged on. The ice clogs within the pipes dissolved soon after, and Cesar washed the pile of dishes accumulated as I slept with my two babies. This was the beginning of the five years I spent with both of my children, alive with me. She slept peacefully in a battery-operated swing during the days that winter, wearing pajamas with cow prints or pink leopard.
      




          I miss Susanna always, and my thoughts of her, every one of them, are laced with the pain of her having left. This morning, I meditated with a guided video and went to purposefully look for her. I do not know exactly where we all go, after dying. For me the details and specifics are vague, but I know we go on.
      




          I located her in a meadow of spring flowers and asked her a question. I have wanted to know; does she grow up on the other side? I cannot see a sixteen-year-old daughter. My visual of her can only reach age five. Susanna in her tulle and satin party dresses, ponytails held with tiny colored rubber bands. Susanna with a giggly sweet voice, full of airy music. I can hear her singing songs from Frozen, my winter baby.
      




         During the weeks after she died, I heard the soundtrack incessantly. The words that stood out: I’m never going back. The past is in the past. That perfect girl is gone. I felt like she had left me because I had not given her a magical life here. We had not used our ballroom. We had not used the salad plates, and Susanna opened the gates and left, for the first time in forever.
      




          Susanna had an answer, and I came to write about it in her blog. I don’t think this should be kept to myself.
      




          As relayed to me: Yes! I am growing up here. It’s so much better. I am so much happier than when I was there.
      




      (This was hard for me. I want her to be here. But there is more).
      




          I can see everything on earth. The lights go off. The sun goes down, the city lights go out. Susanna can see all the changes during the day, and the changes in the seasons, which have become so important to me. But she can also see far above that, the solar system. She can see that the sun is always there, even when it is hidden from those who live here.
      




          I was still confused about the difference between her being sixteen or five, but I sense that this part is non-linear. Susanna said that she is everyone. She is all of us, every wise woman, every ancestor, every person. The things I wished I could teach her, my life wisdom, she knows them. She can see me, at any age. She has that, all my love, plus more.
      




          I wish she were here, even as the world looks broken, burning and treacherous. But I understand. I see why it may seem better there. All that I wanted was to know that my child is happy and cared for, just the same as my grown child who remains. I needed this. Happy birthday Susanna. I’m going to bake a cake. I love you forever.
      




      




      




      




      More of my illustrations here Trish Freer Studio
      




      

      




      




      




      

      

      


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      Miss
      



      

      

      

      



      

      





      photo of Susanna, April, 2014
      




      April is the cruellest month, breeding
      




      Lilacs out of the dead land,
      




      Memory and desire, stirring
      




      Dull roots with spring rain.
      




      from The Waste Land by T.S. Elliot
      





      I miss Susanna in the sunshine. I miss her in the rain. I miss her in the snow. I miss her in October when the air cools, and I start mentioning that the veil is thin. I miss her in April, when Easter passes with a clump of pink glittery Peeps and crocuses, and I start to relive the whole thing again. The trip to my mother’s house (which now belongs to another family), saying good bye to her while machines breathed for her and pumped her heart. Choosing an undersized white casket with her initials engraved (the last part I do not remember very clearly, but I know we did that). I relive all of it other times, too. Honestly, I miss Susanna every day with every breath I take. She is always with me just as when I carried her in a Baby Bjorn, or pushed her in the obtrusive double stroller, or when we shopped together for silky party dresses and hair ornaments. I won’t take enough breaths to miss her enough, there is no such thing. I will stop missing her when I close my eyes for the last time, and open them in another dimension where I will joyfully shout her name, and never have to miss her again.
      




      




      Some private notes to Susanna 
      




      I can’t believe it has been ten years. I know you are watching, but just an update:
      




      Your brother has grown up. If you could come back, you would look funny next to him (but both of your souls have always been old).
      




      We have a dog.
      




      Your father and I don’t go to work anymore. I retired early so I can draw on my iPad all the time. I know you would approve.
      




      Give Grandma a big hug for me. We love you forever and ever.
      






      

      




      




      




      

      

      


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      “I’m Here”: A Fictional Halloween Story (2022)
      



      

      

      

      



      

      It would be nice to feel sad when you want to, instead of when you do. I am sad again. I have a lot going on, more to be revealed in future blogs. I am searching for and finding various places where I belong in the world. One thing I know is that Susanna brought me to the edge between life and death. We are all there, whether we are noticing from the particular place in life we are, or not. I am trying to add some beauty to the world, and help people to know that things are okay here, on the edge.
      




      This is a story I wrote last October, with some of my illustrations added. 
      




      Follow my burgeoning illustration career here:
      




      https://www.instagram.com/trishfreer/
      




      Peace to everyone during this October, with the thin veil.
      




      “I’m Here”: A Fictional Halloween Story
      




      Essence was going to be an angel for Halloween. She had several costumes this year, some for parties that happened on other days preceding. Her mother had hesitated to buy more than one costume, worrying this might be excessive. But she bought more, for her little girl, who was deeply loved. One costume was a ballerina, with actual authentic leather ballet slippers, in matching pale rose. Essence wore her hair in a bun. The second was a Rainbow Fairy. There was a rainbow tutu, glittery wings, a ribbon wand with a star shape on the tip, and rainbow striped leg warmers. The last costume, for trick or treating on Halloween night, was an angel. A tinsel halo attached to a headband, beautiful, feathered wings, and a long white gown. Essence knew what angels were and wanted to be one. When she walked, she kept her hands folded, and smiled.
      




          Halloween smelled like leaves that you raked into a pile, then jumped into. “Watch out for worms!” some people would say. But the leaf pillow was a cushion of crunchiness and smelled divine. The air also smelled like cold nights coming, passing into your nostrils for the first time in months. Halloween smelled like pumpkin guts, both slimy and stringy, and tasted like the seeds, roasted in a three-hundred-degree oven and well salted, a little hard to chew. It also tasted like Tootsie Rolls, with their odd profile of citrus and chocolate, rolled into tiny, waxed papers, twisted closed on each end. Halloween smelled like shaving cream sprayed by young vandals. Essence’s older brother, a teenager, did not like shaving cream or vandalism. Her mother and her friends reminisced about how shaving cream is what Halloween smelled like.
      




      




          The group of kids gathered at the corner when it became dark, costumed. Some had used smeared, greasy makeup sticks on their faces to draw cat whiskers or clown smiles. They carried bags with pictures of black cats on them, or bulbous plastic jack o’ lanterns with handles. The parents kissed them, told them to look both ways when crossing the street, and not to eat loose candy, and to have fun.
      




          The kids charged toward doors to ring them. They stepped over elaborate displays of plastic bones and tombstones which said things like “Here Lies Izzy Dead”. Essence chuckled. She knew Halloween would pass quickly and had looked forward to all the fun. When she stepped on the sidewalk, her feet felt light and airy. She knew she needed to step harder, to ground herself, so she would not float away.
      




          There were whisps and murmurs in the air, missed by some of the kids. Near the streetlamps, forms bounced in the light. They swirled together, illuminated dewdrops. Essence knew there was much more happening than could be seen.
      




      




          Essence looked delicate and ethereal, but at each door, she screamed a full force “Trick or Treat” and shrieked with joyous laughter. She had forgotten to bring a bag, and did not receive any pieces of candy, but she did not mind. She had come for the fun of being with kids, and hearing the sounds, smelling the smells, and seeing the misty sights. She could not wait to go home and see her mom.
      




          The night got older, the bags and pumpkins full. Bits of candy wrappers littered the ground. Someone’s feet hurt; someone had a stomach-ache. The kids went home.  “Good night, Justin.” “Good night, Sienna”. “Good night, Shareef”. They would reconvene at school the next day.
      




          Essence floated home, a little slowly and sadly. Her mother was in the kitchen, looking at a bag of small costumes. The candy bowl was empty, as was the table surface. As she turned off the light, the tears began to come, then the crying sounds, then the sobs. Mom sat on the floor in the dark, hugged her knees, and surrendered to it. Essence gently rubbed her mother’s shoulders with tiny, barely detectable fingertips. She whispered, “It’s okay, Mommy. I’m here. I’m here.”
      




      

      




      




      




      

      

      


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      Ghosts Love Christmas
      



      

      

      

      



      

      




      Ghosts love Christmas. They get to drop in and enjoy the fun parts, without the logistical worries. I don’t know that, perhaps ghosts have worries too. I have heard they have jobs to do, and we know they are not perfect or finished beings.
      




          They love the music and food. They spur us on to sing the same songs and bake the same confections of hundreds of years ago. Even mince pie and flaming puddings. They coined the saying “Merry Christmas” and made it almost mandatory, while “merry” isn’t even a word used for anything else anymore. It just sounds uncomfortably British and Victorian, in this geographic area, but we keep saying it anyway.
      




          Perhaps you never go to church services or have thought much about what you believe for religion, but here you are, in a dark candlelit chapel at midnight, belting out “Oh Come All ye Faithful” and feeling like you have done this for an eternity. The ghosts are there, loving that.
      




          There might be some family recipe you want to make. Going back not as far as the Victorians, my family made cheesecake “tarts” on top of Nilla wafers, in mini foil cupcake wrappers. You would have to carefully spoon the cherry pie filling from the can, so it would fit. Ghosts come from all time periods. The people you remember and miss. And the people from much longer ago, who were discreetly written both onto pages from registers and bibles, and your DNA. We are not as separate from our ancestors as we think, even when we want to be.
      




          Ghosts come around from much longer ago than Christmas. They remind you of how they liked to dance around campfires and roar with laughter, as the solstice arrived with its promise of returning light. They lived so long ago, yet they remember you and know exactly who you are. Time means nothing to them. They will help you if you ask them. They might even say they have been waiting for you to ask.
      




         When you drag in a pine tree from some forest and gather your family together to stay warm and look at its lights, ghosts might come from all around, even if they are not directly related to you. They might be telling you stories from the land, the same forests, and how they used to live there in a quieter time. They may have noticed you the other day, and arranged for three crows to speak with you, on your afternoon walk.
      




         Some ghosts may be tiny: salamanders, birds, worms, and microbes. They have been making the earth for you and breathing alongside you, all along. They might look at the cold stars and wonder if it will snow, just like you.
      




          Ghosts have gone through each Christmas with you before. They will remind you of the people who left, and the people you once cherished even though they have since gone in a different direction. They will remind you of a night on which you were young and captivated by all the ghostliness around you, and joined in the laughter and song, even though you had no idea what you were doing.
      




         My daughter is a ghost now. After she had gone, I was not ready to think about that for a long time. I was unable to visit her resting place. That was for dead people, and ghosts. I instead visited her in her dresser drawer. I found her by looking at the dresses, socks, and tights I had bought for her and remembering everything we did together.
      




          Now, I love visiting her there, Green Wood Cemetery. It is a place full of natural beauty and history, catacombs where cello concerts are performed, and a meditative Koi Pond. It is a place where my sadness and sacred questions are allowed to breathe.
      




          My family is delayed in some holiday preparations due to having Covid. I puttered around during my isolation last week and tried, once again, to build a fortress where death could not find us from here on. There is no such thing. But we are fortified with modern medicine and doing okay.
      




          I picked through some of the Christmas things I needed today, including all the angel ornaments given to us by many friends, family and neighbors, to help us always remember Susanna. I said out loud, “Why did this have to happen, Susanna? Why did you die? Why?” There is no answer for this. “Why? Why? Why?” is answered by “Because, Because, Because.” Or in Spanish, there is only one word: ?Por que? Porque.
      




          The smallest light is growing on the darkest night. Life is hard, but life is rich, and we all belong here, together. Cheers, have a bowl of hot punch.
      

      




      




      




      

      

      


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      “I Like Your Earrings”
      



      

      

      

      



      

      




      illustration by Arthur Rackham
      




      




      “Sadness lets you wear stilettos, sadness lets you dance in the moonlight. She just has dark rims around her eyes.”  – Tori Amos
      




      Spirit communicates in faint whispers sometimes, right below the surface. Sometimes through a voice vibrating warm in the flesh of my ear, as I awake from a dream. That voice can be a “Hey, lookout!” voice, or a “Hey, I’m here!” voice. A life where I am not receiving the language of my dreams and my passing thoughts, that is never fulfilling to me. Yet I get there often, as we all do. It is hard to be fully cognizant of all the inklings and emotions it takes to be alive. There is the joy that makes you feel vulnerable, the anger which can make you change things, the sadness that I keep thinking should be over. It is not. I want to be myself, anything else does not matter, so I work on getting back to how I feel, again and again.
      




          The other night (or afternoon, I am not sure since it was dark and cold and at this point the two can be hard to distinguish), I stopped into the pizzeria to pick up a couple of slices for my son. A step down from the sidewalk, garden level, toasty and brick laden. While I was waiting, a girl had entered and stood behind me. She had a familiar presence. I looked at her, searching to place her, but I did not know her. She had long curly hair, golden, like graham crackers. A sweet and warm face, pretty and distinctive. She smiled at me and said, “I love your earrings”. They were iridescent pink circles, crystal, which I bought during the summer at my sister’s online jewelry party.
      




         It was later that I thought about how old she was, probably thirteen as Susanna would be. The presence I felt was not of a stranger but of Susanna. I had reached out and felt her as if she had never left. Sometimes people from the other side show up like this, through strangers. I see a face on the subway which reminds me of a lost friend, and this face smiles at me. I think about my mother, and hear her voice  saying something reassuring. There is so much to know, that is unknown. I do not know the particulars, but I know we go on, and I know they are still here.