Apifera Farm - where art, story, animals & woman merge. Home to artist Katherine Dunn

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©Katherine Dunn.





Monday, September 16, 2013

Our friend the fog returns as does grief



The cooler air has returned to us and our friend the fog blanketed the upper hills yesterday. It is welcome. I love the fog - when I can be home anyway as it is not fun to drive in and I worry about Martyn in it at night.

But when it settles in over the farm I feel I'm being embraced by something much bigger than me.

I need the fog right now. I seem to have taken a dip in sadness. I'm happy, but sad. I am not a person who sinks into long periods of depression, and I feel for those who do. But I would never say never. Perhaps some of life's events could propel me into that, I hope not, but I am human.

I think it is the shuffling of my immediate family - what's left of it. I have lost my mother and two close aunts in less than six months. My father is gone, all my uncles and aunts are dead except one. The elders that made up my daily memories and family gatherings - the core people in my life for years - are all gone except a few. Maybe it was the phone call I had on Sunday - an old family friend now about ninety, who called to say hello. He is in assisted living with his wife. They knew my parents since before I was born. He sounded good, but it was a touching message.

The old family dynamic is gone. A new one made up of only me and my brother must be recreated.

I miss my mother.

I want to sew and as soon as "Misfits" is at the printer, I plan to start making my comfort blankets out of my mother's sweaters. The blanket will be like the fog, a wrap to cover myself in.

Professor sat at the top of the compost heap warming his bones, I worked below, contently, but with a sense of a hole somewhere in my gut.