Remembering Larry, with Gratitude

When I learned that my brother in law Larry had passed away a couple days ago, my first response was to feel a sense of loss--on my own account, especially on Sandy's account--and what an inspiring, mutually strengthening couple they were--but also a loss to the world of a highly talented, extremely goodhearted and genuinely lovely man.

Old picture from this blog, with Sandy and Phil's Mom, 2011

But this regret was soon followed by gratitude, seasonally appropriate, and celebrating Larry's life is the happiest and most fitting reaction/

I am so grateful to have known him. And after my grandmother died this year just as I was thinking that I should seize some time with her before it was too late (and then it was too late), I am so grateful to have had some time with Larry this last August. It was a short visit as I passed through Portland, ironically just a few days before I almost died myself, but I stayed with Larry longer than I'd thought I had time for. We looked through a photograph album of the mural he was working on--still working, still making art, even as his prognosis worsened and his body weakened. We drank green tea with stevia. We talked; we shared silence. When I left, I felt awareness of the possibility that this would be the last time we met in life.

Now, I remember the words of a wise friend many years ago: our dead are always with us, sometimes as intimately and vividly so as when they were alive. I salute Larry's spirit that remains with everyone whom he loved so well and who loved him.

Here are some of the examples Larry set in his life:
--He was unwaveringly positive in his outlook. He accepted what came his way, including cancer, and loved the world just as it was, in just the configuration it offered itself.
--He supported other human beings--with generosity, kindness, helpfulness, and support of all kinds.
--He was so committed to his work, and he took pride in it. Larry's murals were physically demanding to produce because of their large scale, but they display a sense of intimate detail in the small things right down to clothing and facial features, and there are always some humorous touches also. Perhaps the largeness of his canvas helped him not to be self effacing about the work, but he shared pictures and touching personal stories (e.g. of the real-life people who ended up featuring in the murals) with enthusiasm and a sense of wonder. I always felt inspired by his deep-seated knowledge that his art, art in general, was worth talking about and sharing.
--He encouraged other artists. He encouraged Sandy to let her creative talents blossom, as they have indeed. Whenever we talked about creative writing, I went away feeling empowered to ride out the blankity blank times or the troughs of despair and self flagellation.
--He was always learning. Recently he had been taking photography classes and developing his considerable talents in that arena too. The most stunning picture of Phil I've ever seen was taken by him.

The only time Phil and I asked what his advice was for happiness and success in life and relationships, his answer was simple and frank: focus on the love first and foremost; let everything else come second to it or go by the by in its service.
I wish I could be better at taking that advice.
I knew a man who practiced what he only preached when asked, who walked his talk.

I give thanks for and celebrate Larry's life.

I love you

This time, two weeks since I posted. And the 4,395 tally for my comments folder is beyond my ken or forbearance. The real comments from real people are so precious I can't just delete everything, but that's some golden needles in an enormous haybarn.

Okay, start again. Welcome to my space! I'm so glad you stopped by. I love you.

What a wild and freewheeling time this is. On a genuinely hot day recently, I stood at a high window, enjoying the warmth, puzzled by a brownian dusting of snowflakes, where were they coming from, what were they portending (harbinging?). I stared for a while and eventually recognized they were seeds. Dandelion and other wind-borne seeds, lifting and dipping like the sparrow flight I keep coming back to in my writing.

Even the sparrow makes a difference when it falls.

I think it's a sparrow. What's fascinating to me is that when I first found it, splayed almost symmetrically between the two apple trees in the lush greenhouse here, I thought perhaps it had been laid there as a sacred act (also known as sacrifice). I thought it looked iridescent, the bluish under-feathers gleaming against the dun.

WARNING: If you are squeamish or easily grossed out, please scroll fast past the next picture. I'm sharing it to share my point that everything is beautiful and that life breeds life, spirit continues.
Come to find out, as I did with my bare left hand, approaching the corpse as gently as if to nudge a sleeper awake, this bird had been lying between the two trees for some time. As luminous as the feathers up top had appeared to me, in some sort of meta way, the underside was a teeming of a different ordering of ensoulment.
Scroll past if you're squeamish, and I'll leave space between, but please hear me on this, with William Blake:
EVERYTHING THAT LIVES IS HOLY.


















EVERYTHING THAT LIVES IS HOLY

One of the key pieces I'm working on for my thesis centers on Bede's allegory of a sparrow flying through a hall from the darkness before and back into darkness beyond, representing a human lifespan. Isn't it ironic, or bizarre, or freaky, or encouraging, or worrying, that I have just reconstructed a version of this allegory where the sparrow flies into a greenhouse, flies through, and finds no open end at the far side, slams into it, and falls down to become an offering to a pair of apple trees wed for life by their pollen, to become a nurse for life forms about whom we know so little but who have such vigor. Air to earth. And into the ground.



Yes. Rest there. But you'll be so busy, you soon won't remember the bird part of you that's doing the resting--the rest of you, the new, teeming part, will be so busy. The rest will take care of themselves. And your sweet dreamy rest will take care of itself.

Odd, too, that I'm so totally unsqueamish, especially considering that I'm about the last person you'd want around in an emergency. But when it's 'gross' stuff (except vomit), I'm your girl. One year in college, there was an outbreak of horribly wounded hedgehogs, still alive but actively being taken over, evidently had been side-sliced by a weed-whacker or something. Neighbors would come find me if they found one and ask me to deal with it because they just couldn't. I stockpiled small boxes and walked many poor hedgehogs to the vet to be euthanized, having done what I could for them first.

If everything that lives is holy, and everything that exists metamorphoses...I can lie on my back in the middle of the driveway and listen to stacked layers of birdsong and feel the crosshairs of the universe shift away from me awhile. Feels good.

Ooh--my final challenge just as I write this: I can hear a rodent gnawing in my room, very close to me! I can't find it--I have no sense of directional hearing so I can't tell where it is. Let's keep that unsqueamish face on...