Launching the Ark

Joan Parker Thompson Moore
1/25/1931 - 3/4/1996

Tomorrow marks the sixteenth anniversary of my mother's death.

 Today marks the launching of a new arm of my commission practice. 

I would like to share how this idea for these unique commissions was born. 

    My mother lay in her bed in my childhood home in Trenton, New Jersey in the final stages of a battle that never really gave her a chance. The brain tumor was diagnosed on November 20th of 1995. She died three and a half months later. My mother was one of those souls on this earth that you meet once or twice, if you're lucky and leave those who were touched by her dumbfounded at a force that would take such a positive spirit from this planet. 
    Mom had been accepting visitors from close friends and family all this particular week. She had asked my brother, sister, father and I all in her own way if we would be okay. If we were happy. She even imagined lives for us that she knew she would never witness: a yellow house for me, a new partner for my father, children for my brother...She consulted with her pastor and made peace with a God she had loved dearly all her life even through the tragic death of my older brother, Jeff twenty years earlier. 
    I entered her room on one of the days after she had been talking with her pastor. She seemed agitated and I asked her what was wrong. She answered that she was angry at God. "I have told Him I am ready, I am ready to die and he won't take me...I want this pain to end, I am ready to go." Somewhere I got the courage to say to this woman who I could not imagine my life without, "Mom, maybe you could think of your life like an ark (my mother was a passionate collector of Noah's Arks)...that you have worked all your life building this ark to be strong and sea worthy through loves, losses, friendships, lessons and so many, many happy memories. It's time for you to trust that you have helped Sally, Tommy and I begin to build our own arks and that we will be safe, we will be comforted by your lessons, our memories. It's time to trust your own ark and push away from the shore, knowing that we will be okay." 
    Later that night I found my mother laying on her side, struggling to remove the photos I had taped to the wall next to her bed. I had chosen pictures of her friends and the many hilarious times they had cooked up together, I included sun rises and of course her grandchildren and family. She was so weak as she grabbed the photos and pushed them under the covers of her bed. When I asked what she was doing she said, "I want to put these in my ark...I want to take them all with me." My mother slipped into a coma the next day and died by the end of that week.  

"Grace"
12"x12"x2"
acrylic, ink, watercolor and tissue paper
on gesso board

To honor the memories and lessons that our loved ones leave us when they die I am launching

"Fill the Ark"

Memorial Commissions

This new arm of my commission practice will utilize my unique methods of creating original pieces of art born from respectful collaborations with bereft families. My background in grief facilitation with children and families will guide me to shape a timeless piece of art for the grieving family. The result will seek to celebrate the life of the loved one while serving as a deeply personal, timeless and visible reminder to all that share time in the home. 

I have much work to do to bring this new venture into the forefront of my business mission. I put it out there now as an intention. I can not wait to meet the new challenges this will bring!

*Please see related past blog entries: Love and Loss and Reverberation. 

Also - please refer to the section on my website that features my commission practice. Brochures are available.