Eggs drop, they crack, they shatter: it’s just the nature of the canvas. Such tragedy, though, need not be the end of the story. Helen’s collection of pysanky-art includes arrangements of broken shells in mosaic: works that retain the beauty of the egg’s design through a reimagining of its presentation. Whether purposely or in response to an accident, the artists gather up each tiny bit of decorated shell, reconstruct them like puzzle pieces, then glue them to a flat surface. An intact egg requires time and rotation to view the entirety of the design; here in continuous mosaic, however, one can appreciate the full pattern—the egg’s full story—as if in panorama. Most of us would woefully brush such tragedy in the trash; a loving and creative heart instead transforms it into repurposed beauty, retaining the fullness of its artistry in a strikingly new and bold composition.
Sometimes we, too, drop and crack and shatter. And we, like a shell-mosaicist, can gather up those broken bits of our life, examine each piece for the full beauty it still possesses, and display them together as a panoramic expression of our trials and journeys. The most profound artistic creations—physically and human-soul alike—often arise from the most tragic of life circumstances. My stories of Dad’s Alzheimer’s and my divorce: they each declare, as on a signpost to future travelers: “Here stretches a desert journey of eggshell cobblestones underfoot. May the beauty of this path point the way, inspire hope, and help guide you to the oasis of healing and wholeness that most assuredly awaits you at end of the trail.”
*******
My dad suffered from Alzheimer’s in the last few years of his life; we all suffered from his Alzheimer’s for those years. Rather than a nursing home, we kept him at home. Mom became his primary caregiver, and we had a couple nurses coming in daily to help. My brother and I spent alternating evenings and weekends there, assisting, supporting Mom, doing our best to keep him comfortable and happy in what ways we could, in what ways he could.
For as difficult as it was, though, it was on the easier side as Alzheimer’s goes. Dad went silent, he went immobile. No angry rants, no worries about night wanderings or silver-alert car escapes. Not a word, barely a movement in the end. He had to be bathed, fed, encouraged to drink, toileted, changed: a constant stream of responsibilities from dawn until the collapse into sleep at night. A very taxing and difficult time for my whole family, even if it was an “easier” set of symptoms to contend with.
Dad declined over the course of two years, and towards the end of his struggles I wrote the following dedication:
It has been a long and difficult road, taking care of Dad, and heartbreaking to see this great man so diminished by such a devastating and heartless disease. He has held up as best that he can, as have we. And Mom’s dedication as caretaker is nothing short of heroic, working to her own exhaustion so that he can spend his last years in the comfort and familiarity of his own home, surrounded by people he loves, and who love him. Our health aides have been our angels, providing more physical, mental, and emotional support than they’ll ever realize. And the calls, emails, cards, and concern of friends and family give us comfort, knowing that so many people care about him and about our whole family. He took care of us for so many years, and it’s now time to offer back to him all that he’s given to us.
Like my father, though, I’m not one to dwell in negativity; even in the midst of all these difficulties, I see how his Alzheimer’s brought our family together, perhaps more than anything else could have. I’ve probably spent more time with my parents and my brother in the past two years than I have over the previous ten years combined. While not the ideal circumstances, it’s a blessing to have shared this time together, the four of us. Someday Dad will be gone from this life, and I suspect that even with all our difficulties right now, we’ll wish he was back again, even for just a little while, and even if it’s under the same conditions in which we’re now living.
I once heard Alzheimer’s described as “the long goodbye.” And so it has been, watching him slip away little by little, month by month, sometimes even week by week. And as sad as his eventual passing will be, I can’t say that it’s unwelcome at this time. This is not what he’d want for himself, and it’s certainly not what he would want for us. And yet I believe that, for whatever reason—be it physical or spiritual—he’s not ready to go yet, and that he still has so much to offer, even in his current condition.
In Eastern Orthodox belief, one of the main purposes of our physical life is to acquire virtues. When we eventually fall asleep to this life, we leave behind all our money, our possessions, our family, our bodies: everything that is of this world. We can take with us only the virtues that we acquired through our choices in this lifetime: faith, love, peace, generosity, self-control, honesty, humility, patience, to name a few, all of which Dad diligently sought and attained over his years. When passing on to the next life, there is no more need for our bodies, no need for our minds, no need even for words. We take with us only what we’ve stockpiled in the treasuries of our hearts.
This “long goodbye” is, for him, a slow transition from this life into the next. His body is shutting down. He no longer possesses the free faculty of speech. His mind, while perhaps still sharp in some respects, has locked away memories, never to be shared again. His entire physical care has become our responsibility, maintaining his flesh in relative comfort until his spirit is ready to depart. But while his mind and body are shutting down, his heart overflows with his life’s accumulated virtues.
When hiring home-health aides, perfect strangers came into our house and fell in love with him immediately. He doesn’t talk, he doesn’t move, and yet his whole being still radiates all the goodness of a life well lived. One woman called him “Confucius,” noting the Zen-like peace and joy that radiates from his face, especially when he smiles. Throughout his life, he was always quick to smile and laugh, and those qualities are just as infectious now. He somehow still maintains his sense of humor, and a simple chuckle—even just one little smile on his face—can light up the room and fill us all with great joy. Humor is a complex reaction, so there must be more going on in his mind than he can currently communicate to us.
And yet I don’t know what’s in his mind right now. Does he recognize any of us? Does he cycle through long-term memories during the day? Can he remember what he had for dinner last night, or even just a few hours ago? And, most difficult to consider, how much of his current state is he aware of; and if he is aware, how must he be handling it all? I wish I knew what was in his mind, but at the same time, in the end, it’s not important. Even now I can see what’s in his heart, and that’s what truly matters.
Taking care of my dad has become a father-like experience for me. Like a child, he needs to be fed, and wiped, and dressed, and undressed, totally dependent on all of us for his continued health and comfort. The difference, of course, is that a child is raised into life. A child will learn, and grow, and improve, and be able to do more and more with each passing day. Dad, instead, declines day by day. The satisfaction of helping an infant take its first steps is absent from helping a once-capable man hobble up the stairs each night before bed. While similar to taking care of a child, this is no child: this is my father who took care of me, who nurtured me into life and childhood and adulthood, who provided well for his family. How can I offer anything less than to give back to him just as much love and nurturing as he gave to us?
Even through the sadness, I believe strongly that there is far more to come after our physical life ends. If this is a long goodbye, if he will someday live on in a spiritual form, and if life truly is about the acquisition of virtues, then all our caretaking efforts carry much deeper and more consequential significance than simply taking care of his body. A child is raised into life; we’re raising Dad into death. Raising him into death. And in the time we have left, there is still so much more that he has to offer us, and that we have to offer him, even in the midst of the struggles.
Many years ago a friend spoke about her own experience with her mother’s Alzheimer’s. She said, “Mom may not remember me, but I remember her.” Beyond just the memories in my brain, I remember him down to my very DNA. He raised me, he taught me, he’s a role-model and a hero, a man whose accomplishments I can only hope to touch during my own lifetime. His life points in a good direction—even now—and it’s through his life that I learned, myself, how to live. I inherited his sense of humor, his joy, his smile, his hairline. I see his sense of balance and diplomacy within me, his intelligence, his thoughtfulness, his love and quiet patience, his kindness, his dedication to education. These qualities were not attained through my efforts, nor are they indicative of any special talents on my part. They are his legacy to me, the result of forty years as his son, born with half of his physical and spiritual DNA, and brought up under the umbrella of the gentle giant that he is.
We will remember him even if he no longer remembers us; what he remembers in his mind no longer matters. What we remember of him will sustain and teach us now, and will continue to teach us for the rest of our lives and beyond. The culminating church-prayer for the deceased, reaching even unto the Mind of God, proclaims and beseeches “Memory Eternal.” Soon his memory will be held unto all eternity in a place where that memory will never fade. And I have faith that his memory will indeed be eternal, that he will indeed inherit the rewards of his virtues from a life and a world made better by his dedication to all that is good, leaving behind family and friends made better because he was a part of our lives. And I can say with great confidence: if he doesn’t make it to heaven, then none of us have any hope of getting there ourselves, such was the life that he lived.
I remember once swimming in Arrowhead Lake with Dad; I was maybe eight or nine years old at the time. He suggested that I try floating on my back in the water. I stretched out in the shallow end, arms above my head, and my swimsuit immediately nestled itself in the rough sand below. He picked up my hands, raised me, and slowly waved me back and forth on the water’s surface. I remember looking up into the sunny blue sky, swimming with clouds, while gently swaying back and forth, wondering if the clouds were floating in the sky, or if I was floating in the clouds. Coming out of this brief reverie, I realized that Dad had let go, and I was floating on my own. In the same way we’re now taking his hands, holding him up, gently soothing him as best we can, until he’s ready to let go and float away into the clouds of his own eternal reverie.
*******
Near the end of Dad’s life, my cousin gave birth to her second son. She named him Joseph after my father. In making a special egg for my dad, I unexpectedly acquired one for her newborn as well, with a symbolic link between the two eggs, between the two Josephs. Below is the letter that accompanied the gifted pysanka:
“Generations”
The design of this egg is divided into three sections: the main band represents this life and this world; the smaller bands surrounding represent the afterlife; and the ends of the egg represent the dwelling place of God. Starting in the center of the egg, there is the least developed “pinwheel” motif, symbolizing the generation of the children. Around those smallest pinwheels are chicken-feet symbols: the protection of the earth towards her young. Also surrounding the children on a green background (with green as the color of the earth) are “bends” which signify defense or protection: the children embraced by the earth and all the nurturance of this life and this world.
At the next level are the larger pinwheels, more developed in their motif, but not as developed as the pinwheels representing God on the ends of the egg. They also surround the children, showing the protection and guidance that the elders offer through their wisdom and experience. In between them are yellow and white sun symbols with blue for the sky, black for the universe, and netting baskets on green for the mothering aspects of the earth, all framing the central section: the whole of our physical lives lived between earth and sky.
Crossing over a thin boundary of parallel eternity lines, there is a representation of the afterlife in two bands of dark red—a color that has deep spiritual significance on an egg. These bands are filled with “spirals” which symbolize the mystery of life and death, as well as divinity and immortality. Here is where we will all end up some day, and in this design, the pinwheels representing the elders are nearest to these afterlife bands; their backgrounds are a matching dark red to show their closer connection with the realities of death and the life beyond the grave.
The ends of the egg have the pinwheel design taken to its ultimate expression: God, the Source towards Whom we strive, and the Ideal we seek to attain. At the very tip is a near-glowing point of light that contains the fullness of the infinite, radiating out in yellow streaks of light. Within the pinwheel are other spirals: the mysteries of life and death held closest within the Creator of all things. The small seed-stars represent the seeds of life that spring from the Creator. Some of the points of the pinwheel are held within this circle: the essence of God that is unknowable, unreachable, and infinite. Other points pierce even the veils of the afterlife bands, connecting with one corner of the elders’ diamonds: God’s energies extending to those on earth who are responsible for sharing that grace with others, particularly the young. The ends of the egg also contain the largest sections of black dye: the color of the absolute, constancy, eternity, and the womb, all of which are aspects of the Divine.
The first attempt at this design was done on a goose egg. For some reason, during its development, a number of wax sections peeled off the shell and allowed successive dyes to erase some of the finer details. I finished the egg, but, because of these flaws, could not give it as a newborn gift. I’m glad that I can give that first goose egg to my father instead: a matching design, and one egg for each of the Josephs. My dad’s is a bit worn and fading, yet still containing all the power and beauty of a deeply meaningful life-design; Baby Joseph’s is bright and full of light and hope, and with the promise of his whole life ahead of him. Both eggs are connected by the shared symbolism and these “prayers made flesh” for each of them.
We are all humbled and touched beyond description that you would name your son after my dad. This egg holds a piece of that gratitude, and the hope that what grace he attained during his lifetime will be passed on to Baby Joseph, to a prosperous and fulfilling life, to an attainment of all his hopes and dreams, and with eternal memory and gratitude for those who came before us.
Многая літа! Many years!
*******
Right when Dad began needing constant care, my then-wife declared her need for a separation. Quite the timing, that. Two of life’s most stressful events—the (slow) loss of a parent, and divorce—all served up simultaneously on the same painful two-and-a-half-year platter. She and I continued living together for the duration of Dad’s decline, but she detached herself from me and my family throughout that time.
I gave her a pysanka when we started dating. Between us—during better days—we’d turn out a dozen or more pysanky during Lent, including a jointly-made anniversary pysanka with special prayers and themes from that particular year. We compiled photos of our eggs in a handmade Ukrainian album: a sharing of our hopes and dreams through art. A beautiful set of traditions it was; an incredible egg-artist she was.
Divorce is never easy, but ours was on the easier end of the spectrum. No dragged-out courtroom drama. No drawers of underwear thrown into the yard. Instead, conflicting communication styles and joint neglect ushered in the slow shriveling-up of a together-life that once sparkled with joy and beauty. She, at the end, struck out to rediscover her “me,” while I pleaded my faith in the greater “we” of our union. I watered my couch with my tears and offered everything that I could—everything that I knew how to offer—to save the marriage. Living with a familiar stranger in the house. Late nights lying awake while she was out with her new friend, waiting and wondering. Fears and doubts kneaded together, slowly rising in the heat of regrets. I extended patience and understanding for months, talking, counselling, pouring out pages of hopeful and loving words to turn her heart. As time wore on, it became clear that her intentions were pointed outward; whither the heart goes, soon follows the body.
I spent my full allotment of feelings, holding firm throughout with two feet planted in the “I do” that I had long ago promised and committed to. Months along, my loving patience and hopeful appeals wore down into pricklier exchanges. I grew weary from the double drain on my emotions: Dad’s decline and the pains of separation, each amplifying the other. When she and he decided to move in together, a switch finally clicked. The paper walls I was struggling to hold up all peeled down in one final rip. And, emotionless, I let them. I had no hesitation or second thoughts after enduring two years of doubts and determination, patience and pleas. I let go of what I never had a hold of anyway, walking away from that collapsing pile of rubble without looking back. I journeyed through and out of this darkness with my integrity intact, learning, in the end, that marriage is 100/100, but divorce is exactly 50/50; a husband can’t save a marriage on his own.
I arrived early on divorce-day at the bank: an inglorious place to ingloriously end a twelve-ish-year marriage. She arrived wearing new glasses – kind of a statement, I guess. I noticed her mom’s frog-shaped ring on her finger: moral support, and maybe a sign of her metamorphosis. I used the bank’s pen instead of my own, not wanting to bring home even the smallest memento of this tragedy. Do bank tellers loathe this part of their job?
How many years we dated, how many months we planned the wedding, over a decade of living and laughing and loving and struggling together. Yet with the simple stroke of a pen, it was ended: upsettingly similar to the other financial transactions taking place in the bank that day. Outside in the fresh air, we exchanged a couple of items. She talked, and I listened with a polite attentiveness. As we finished up, she turned to me with a touch of sadness in her posture and asked, “Can I have a hug?” Sure: she gave me one arm, I gave her one and a half. It was a cardboard hug: plain, stiff, and bent a bit. In the brief embrace she choked up with an “I’m sorry” breathily half-whispered into my ear. I responded with silence and walked to my car without looking back. I drove away with tears at the tragedy and loss of it all, into the freedom that stretched out ahead.
Freedom. Horrible freedom.
For a long while, my life felt like a shattered pysanka: a beauty that once was, now forever damaged and defined by its brokenness. In Japan, when a prized piece of household pottery breaks, people will often turn to the art of kintsugi where master craftsmen mend the broken pieces using seams of solid gold. The cracks themselves—the brokenness of its tragedy—become highlighted by the most precious and beautiful of all metals. Gold shines like the sun; the scars glitter as they redefine and uplift the fullness of the piece. The mended wounds then become the most beautiful aspect of the piece, and the pottery resumes its life again, intact, whole, and healed.
When Great Lent arrived in the thick of the separation/divorce struggles, we were also mired in the loving difficulties of Dad’s home care. The egg table stood silent and cold for most of those weeks. I squeezed in what artistic time I could that year, all under the heavy burdens on my shoulders; I couldn’t let the challenges defeat such a long-standing tradition. I’d later re-make one of that year’s designs for a friend who also recently emerged from a divorce and was still in the process of healing. She acquired some rare-breed chicken eggs and mailed them to me. Below is the letter that accompanied my pysanka to her; this egg became one of the kintsugi-seams that helped fuse together my newly-broken pieces.
Dear R.J.,
Most of the eggs I make are disappointing to me. Either the colors are off, or the design is imbalanced, or the lines aren’t even. People who look at my eggs say otherwise, but I always want more from them. Only once in a great while I’ll be surprised by an egg that works, where everything comes together and, while never perfect, I can at least, at the end, say, “I like this one.” To date, I can count only eight of my eggs in this category. And the one here enclosed is the leader of that small pack.
The original egg with this design was made in the midst of my separation/divorce/Alzheimer’s-Dad struggles. In the past, my ex-wife and I would make at least a dozen eggs between the two of us; one season we even churned out a record eighteen over the course of Great Lent. When my world was crashing down around me, I barely eked out two that year, if for no other reason than to resist the wave of sorrows with at least a little bit of prayer and beauty. The first of that season, for whatever reason, was tearfully greeted at the initial wiping of the wax. A simple, balanced design and a rare, equally-balanced color scheme that flowed from one motif to the next, one color to the next. Straight and even lines artistically offset with the addition of circular flowers and leaves to break the monotony of geometry. I’ve also come to really enjoy making dye-less eggs where all the colors are revealed through an ever-deeper acid-etching rather than a dunk in colored liquid. And here an egg that combined all these traits, somehow bypassing the sorrows and darkness of those days to offer its consolation of light and beauty at a time when light and beauty seemed so very far away. A gift of healing through my hand, but not by it.
I offer this egg again in a rare second-run production on the darkest brown egg I’ve ever seen: a gift from you, and a gift back to you. The same balanced design as a prayer for your own regaining of equilibrium after struggles and sorrows. An egg whose light and bright colors are revealed only when the acidic trials of life etch away our hardened outer shells. Pieces of who we were remain, though, as reminders of those lessons, but now in balance with the rest, adding to the beauty of our overall composition. No varnish this time either; all-natural seemed the best way to go: an egg fully and completely itself without covers or artificial enhancement. When you hold it, it’s skin-on-shell with no barriers in between.
May it be a gift of healing, a window to greater beauties—both externally and internally—and a reminder of God’s love through Whom all beauty is borne.
*******
Love and forgiveness are inseparable; if I wish to embody the full potential of love, by necessity I must also learn to fully forgive, no matter how painful the wounds, no matter how long that journey takes. Resentments are useless dead weights that extend their negativity into the future, becoming self-perpetuated, ongoing distractions. The mind replays the hurts over and over again, analyzing and justifying our actions, denouncing the other’s choices, and day by day etching those emotional pains deeper and deeper into our hearts; scar upon scar upon scar, until it’s near impossible to remember the unblemished, unwounded soul that once was. “Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”
I took my unforgiven burdens to the Ocean, asking her calming, expansive presence for comfort and guidance: “teach me love; show me forgiveness.” Her vastness was incomprehensible, even in the small portion that I could see extending to the horizon on both ends of the sandy shore. I stepped forward with expectation; her autumn coolness rushed my feet. And as I bared to her this ragged heart, my salty teardrops were embraced by her salty waters.
For generations, we’ve wrought countless tragedies upon her: spilling our oil, dumping our garbage, poisoning her with the symptoms of our comfort and profit. She can never condone our poor and harmful choices, yet she still bears each of these burdens with powerful dignity and grace. Despite her suffering, the ocean remains fully ocean, and offers the fullness of who she is without change and without compromise: her waves lap the sandy shores and rocky beaches as they have from time immemorial; the sea mists still rise and fall; her fathomless depths hold no less mystery. She loves us, she forgives us, she takes our environmental sins and drowns them in her vastness while still giving all that she has to give.
As my salty tears of unforgiveness became proverbial drops in that ocean, the bubbling surf mixed and rolled those tears’ pain into oblivion. In that moment, I felt the depth and breadth of those waters reflected with equal grandeur inside my own heart. If she can suffer depravities and still forgive, then so can I. And with the Ocean as inspiration, the pains of past hurts dropped and disappeared into the love of my heart’s inner ocean. A flash of enduring peace became more tears: the ocean’s waters welling up from my heart, streaming down my cheeks, and released back into her surf. In that moment I felt healing. And at long last, in that moment, I finally began to forgive.
*******
The majority of the universe is darkness. And yet it’s the points of light that we look towards when we raise our eyes to the night sky.
“Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.”1
Pysanky defy the darkness of our days. Their light pierces and parts the darkness that surrounds. And in these small oases of light, the seeds of healing are planted—perhaps dormant at the time—but sprouting when spring emerges from our cold, dark winters. When the wax of pain melteth before the fire, there revealed are signs of hope and beauty which leap, like starlight, from the blackness that surrounds.
*******
“Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.”2
It’s ours to make sure the darkness doesn’t wait too long.
Click for next chapter: Baba – Dark Red
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1 Misattributed to Anne Frank
2 From Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett