Morning on the Farm

One of the things people don’t tell you about grief is that it’s fucking weird.

(Digital)

The day after my dad died, I went for a run with the Bert at Snelling state park, a place we had visited at least once per month since I adopted the boy four years before. I got lost about two miles in. I was so disoriented from grief that I was physically incapable of navigating a space I know very, very well. A place with paths, for godsake. At one point I told the Bert, “Well, we're going to die in Snelling” and got the giggles. Then I started crying.

The morning my sister died, which was about two and a half years before my dad passed away, I was alone in my parents’ living room while everyone else was at the hospital in Rochester. My sister had been flown there the night before via helicopter, but she died on the flight. Someone had to watch the multiple family dogs and I had volunteered because I thought my parents should be with my sister when she arrived at the hospital and because I thought she’d be alive for me to visit the next day.

I had gotten the call that she had died in the helicopter and I was sitting on the couch, watching the sun rise. I remember that I went and put on my coat and my hat and lay down on the couch because I was freezing but couldn’t problem solve locating a blanket. I remember the sky growing light long before the sun crested the far edge of the valley. I remember my dad coming in the door and saying, “I’m so cold; why am I so cold?” I remember realizing for both of us: “Shock, that’s why.” And then I don't remember much of the next five days.

I made a few paintings for my sister and one for my dad (I also wrote an essay about losing my dad, which the soon to-be-discussed therapist was also dismissive toward. Maybe she didn’t like essays. Maybe she just didn’t like my essay). Obviously, the paintings weren’t really for them, they were for me. The ones for my sister are about that sunrise. It remains the saddest, loneliest, coldest thing I’ve ever seen.

I couldn’t go grocery shopping after my sister died because I kept having panic attacks thinking about how she’d never eat yogurt again. I don't even know if she liked yogurt! It was a little less shocking when my dad died, because he had been sick, but the grief was still a massive, crushing wall of noise that obliterated average brain function.

Luckily, I have a devotional practice. I draw like breathing and paint in currents far deeper than thought. Are the shadows—those products that result from this devotion—worth anything? Who the fuck cares? Not me. Or at least not very often.

When my sister died I had been in therapy for a decent amount of time. I promptly quit, which was an extremely good choice on my part (sarcasm there, folks). I told my therapist I wanted to hang out with my dog and be a basic bitch. The deciding factor in this equation was that I could not form sentences (I also could not confront the dairy aisle, but I was willing to work around that quirk with the help of Instacart).

When my dad died, I had just started seeing a new therapist. She… had fundamentally different ideas about what “being a person” means than I do. I was not aware of that fact until I told her I was spending most of my time painting… and she told me (yes, told me; no, that’s not usually advised as therapist protocol) that I was using art to avoid grieving for my dad.

I still don’t know if art historian Sara or artist Sara was more fucking pissed off about that sentence. To reduce the practice of art to an avoidance technique remains both the most idiotic and the most insulting shit I have ever heard. Art historian Sara started internally screaming about the very foundation of human culture and emotional expression, not to mention the goddamn lineage of religious worship, holy aspirations, and the heart of what it means to be a human fucking being. Artist Sara was mostly baffled by the quiet, soulless banality buried in such a gross misunderstanding of the practice of art-making and the audacity to announce it out loud.

I am, at this point years later, a little sad for someone who has no way to talk to their god of choice. Then, however, I was very angry and insulted and too grief-stupid to sort out why. I immediately dumped the therapist (I don't get paid to be an art historian these days and I’ll be absolutely fucked if I’m gonna pay someone 150 an hour for the pleasure), but I asked around. What did people think of this statement?

Fellow artists were repulsed. They made the same face people make when you throw up in front of them. But with anger thrown in. Like you’d thrown up in their car when they specifically told you not to. Non-artists agreed with the therapist.

I couldn’t nail down exactly why they thought that, but I came up with a theory. Artists know that the working space is sacred. Yeah, sometimes we’re just drawing an ad design or something smutty to sell because we need to pay the bills, but that’s in the same water, just above the deep currents. Down there, there’s no time, no context, no noise. Just signal. Maybe we don’t get down that deep all the time. But just because we’re not sinking down doesn’t mean the current isn’t there. The current is always there.

If you work at your craft for years and years, no matter if the craft is writing, dancing, or drawing, you have made into instinct what once had to be learned as a skill. To non-artists, the movements of artists look like thought, concentration, effort. It looks like the sort of thing that might be a mere distraction from something deeply wounding, like grief.

The reality is that deep wounds can only be healed in deep places. That’s not exactly ideal, because it sure would be nice if we could just pay therapists, donate to gurus, or go buy fucking crystals from some nerd in a hideous tie-dyed shirt so they’ll tell us how to be better and it will happen. Unfortunately, we have to do that shit for ourselves, even if we get help from others.

Making art is how I do that. Making art is how I think everyone can do that. In an environment that is detrimental to our health on every level imaginable, slowing down to shape reality—without focusing only on an end result—is a radical activity. We can care for ourselves and for those around us just by being willing to tend to deeper concerns once in awhile. I’m not saying stop drawing your sexy fan-fic (1. I would never and 2. Get it). We don’t have to be all serious. That’s the kind of attitude that gets us to the “art is an escape” kind of psychological Puritanism. All I’m saying is: stay in the water.