The Country Mice

My mother, generally a rather pleasant person, would have felt a little cranky today.

Eighty years old. Ouch.

Art was her passion and faith was her breath. She lived these elements with fervor and a constant hunger for greater understanding.

She was 52 when she received her doctor’s affectless directive: “Go home and get your things in order.” She didn’t really have any idea how long she’d live with ALS, nor how quickly the disease would progress. No one did.

I suspect she cried but I never saw her do so. I was 24, my brother 18. We were adults. We were kids.

Around my mother rallied the great throng of people she’d collected over the years — artists, priests, nuns, family members, atheists, agnostics — all had a place at the dinner table.

They’d fight, debate, argue, quote, recite, pray and ponder. The discussions were a great blessing to her and energized her mind and soul while the disease laid waste to her body.

Her two great creative passions at the time were five-foot canvases of studied, thoughtful combinations of colour and texture; and her electric kiln and potter’s wheel. One of the former could be completed in a year, the latter could produce multiples in a single evening.

She didn’t know whether she had a year so she opted to focus her remaining physical energy into tackling the hundreds of pounds of packaged clay stacked in our basement, and prepared for her final life’s work, an art show and sale whose proceeds would be sent to Mother Teresa in Calcutta.

From September, a month after her diagnosis, until December, the time of the sale, she threw dozens of pots. We saw them diminish in height over the four months, a grim rubric of the inexorable progression of the ALS.

But the fire burned within, fueling the desire to continue her heart’s mission: giving to those forgotten by others.

Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me.

My mother may not have been able to travel to India to serve the poor and the destitute, but following the sale she was able to send thousands of dollars to a tiny sari-clad woman who could.

Saving the world was definitely on her agenda.

But getting old? Grey hair? Wrinkles? Age spots? Definitely not.

The thought of celebrating with her here in Winnipeg this evening, singing Happy Birthday and blowing out eight decades of candles just makes me laugh out loud. She would have been some ticked off.

So ticked off in fact that we don’t even refer to her as ‘Grandma’ around here. She’s just ‘Lyla.’

Yes, she’d have been a little annoyed today. Happy to be here, folks, but let’s just avoid all talk of numbers, all right?

Funny duck. I miss her so.