The Greatest Mom on Earth is Now in Heaven

My mom, Ellen Finly Loffswold, in a Muse Group a couple years ago

There’s so much to say and write and art about the last few days of my mother’s passing.  The abridged version, for now, is that she died peacefully on December 27 in her own bed after two weeks of grace filled transition with our family.  I am a leaky faucet of tears, with a heart newly opened to the world and everyone in it.  This is a certain kind of grieving that bears a strange kinship to rejoicing.  She was 93, and even as we watched her body shrink in the last month of her life, that smile scarcely left and was often accompanied by deep chuckles.  We all started to feel a bit jealous of the inner peace and freedom from cares she was experiencing even as her body was dying.

I was sitting down to write her obituary and ran across this picture, taken in a Muse Group she attended a couple years ago. She was the one who got me started painting, and in the last year as her hands became arthritic so she couldn’t even write, let alone paint, she lived vicariously through my art.

And so I knew she would not mind if I sketched her in her last days.  I will share these on the blog soon.