A few days before we got the orders to all wear masks, I went down the street to get some things from the drug store. About a block from my apartment, I was joined by a very talkative guy. Unless they feel threatening, I don’t have a problem talking with strangers, even those who seem a little abnormal. I have mental illness in my family and in my self, so I just don’t get alarmed unless there’s a reason. I do steel myself against requests for money, and I have a few protection devices, so I feel safe enough.
Turns out, this guy was going to the drug store, too. I didn’t have to worry about making conversation, he could carry it off all by himself. He carried a shopping bag full of stuff, and a pair of white shoes with what looked like red springs in the soles. I soon realized he had a compulsion to pick things up. He picked dandelions for me from a vacant lot. He followed me around the store a bit and I was getting worried that I’d have to seek out the manager, but eventually he was distracted by someone else, so I got my stuff and came home.
I’ve been meaning to do a visual journal post about him, but though I have all the time in the world, I can’t seem to get much done. I am trying to spend some time drawing each day. So here’s my story or that day, whatever day it was, in the month of whatever on the date of whenever. I let him speak for himself…
I did NOT put the dandelions in my hair, but in a pocket on the outside of my purse.
A Flyer is The Memphis Flyer our free local newspaper.
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I’m greatly delighted to say my friend Mary Ruth turned 104 today. She’s bright, lucid, reads (without glasses) and hears fairly well without hearing aids. She stays up to date on the news and always has insightful things to say. (For her 100th birthday, she asked for an Ipad.)
She’s in a nursing home, and has had a foot amputated as a result of her Marfan’s disease — long brittle bones. She was a very tall woman and now none of her bones are really strong enough to support her.
She was born in Knob Noster, Missouri. She didn’t have children.
She was in her 60s and I was in my late 20s when we met. (She was in her 40s when I was born.)
She was a photographer who went all over the world — including Russia and Cuba during the cold war. She’s a brave African American woman who wanted to see the world for herself and not blindly believe what governments told her.
Over this last winter, she was sick for a while. I go to visit her with two other friends and we couldn’t get her to wake up enough to converse. Usually she’s up in her wheelchair, and ready for conversation.
At that visit, my friends and I would talk to each other, then Mary Ruth would wake and say something about how nice it was to be outside in the bright sunlight, and how beautiful the plants were. It was actually a rather dreary and cold winter day. She’d dose off, wake up again, and thank us for coming and for being in the warm sunshine with her. She said thank you over and over.
I painted this in my sketchbook after that winter visit, plans for a future larger painting. Her hands are extraordinary from the nature of her disorder and age.
We decided we should visit more often. I felt sure she was going to die soon.
The next visit, we brought music — Fats Waller, Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Holiday. Mary Ruth was in bed again, dozing. When we put the music on, her foot began to tap to the rhythm, then she woke up and we had a great conversation about the music of her youth.
We visited a month later and she was up in her chair, bright, lucid and ready to converse.
And today, she turned 104. Unfortunately, we can’t visit her because of the corona virus. I talked to her on the phone and we made plans to see each other as soon we can make plans again. She said the nursing home held a party, and there were dancers out in the courtyard for her to watch.
I sometimes wonder if I could manage my life being reduced to a small room, unable to care for myself. The care home she’s in used to be in Memphis, but it moved out to Bartlett, so it’s a long way from her friends. And she has lots of friends and acquaintances because she never restricted herself to her own age group. She was active in the Peace and Justice Center until she was about 98.
Now her photographs are archived at the University of Memphis. And she is in a small room in Bartlett.
Often when I’m feeling dismal about my own health and mobility problems, I see her smiling face, and hear her voice, soft and sweet, telling me how much she loves our visits.
She marvels at her age. “It’s such a blessing to be here.”
And I’ve got to believe what a 104 year old friend says. Especially on this beautiful, sunny day, with all the plants coming into bloom, in spite of everything. We are mourning a lot of losses and losing a lot of our friends. But Mary Ruth for now, for today, is holding steady, watching and learning from another year of life on this planet.
The Oldest Trees Have the Most Blooms by Joy Murray
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When I was about 13, I came home from school to find my mom and a few of her friends drinking and smoking and laughing. It wasn’t unusual, so I went into the kitchen to get something to eat. The refrigerator was gone. I had a bit of dizziness. There was a dirty square on the floor where the refrigerator had been. It felt like a dream sequence.
In it’s place was a styrofoam cooler, a weak, stained little thing that had already started to deposit little balls of foam on the kitchen floor.
“Mom? Where’s the refrigerator?”
Laughter broke out in the living room. My mom staggered into the kitchen. “It’s okay, honey. We only pawned it. I had to have some money to pay the electricity and get some food.” She didn’t mention the beer and cigarettes, and her new group of friends.
“It’s not too hot outside. We can manage with a cooler til the end of the month.”
“You pawned the refrigerator?” I asked, still not quite sure I wasn’t dreaming. I pinched myself, but nothing changed. Mom was still there, smiling, smoking, and swaying in our now spacious kitchen.
“I got us some food. Go ahead and have whatever you want.”
I was hungry. I opened the cooler. Most of the ice had melted. Floating around between the beer cans, was an open package of American cheese, bologna, and a package of ground beef. The seal around the beef had come loose in the watery ice and rivulets of blood ran through it all.
“Mom,” I whined in my most irritating teenage voice, “This is so gross.”
My mom could go from happy to angry so fast it could give you whip lash, crashing head first into the power of her wrath.
I don’t remember her exact wording, but by the end of it I knew I was the most ungrateful child in the world who had no idea how hard her life was.
I had a younger brother and sister. They were wisely staying out of the way of her and her friends.
I remember feeling so lonely and frustrated. It hadn’t been long since my grandmother died. She had her flaws, too, but she never drank, and she kept a clean house. Even cleaned our house sometimes. And she was a great cook. I couldn’t call her and ask to spend the night with her anymore.
My mom was a binge drinker. We moved around a lot. She got sober, got a boyfriend, we got luxuries like refrigerators and televisions. Then she’d fall of her wagon, and it’d all be pawned. And we’d be on our way to another boarding house, or some squalid apartment to share with her new man.
Years later, my husband and I were listened to “Souvenirs” by John Prine. I was in love with the song because it was simply elegant and spoke to my heart. My husband said, “He must be reading your mail.” Reading my mail, breaking and mending my heart at the same time.
I can’t say I like all his songs and there are a few I just don’t understand. But I dearly love a lot of them, the way they slip in a phrase that defines an emotion in a way I never could. He was funny and endearing.
I started listening to him when I was still a teenager. Now I’m nearing 60, and I still listen to Souvenirs almost every day. It’s like a meditation for me. And although the lyrics say, “It took me years, to get those souvenirs, and I don’t know how they slipped away from me,” the song kept my souvenirs from slipping away, made a place in my heart for the sorrow and the forgiveness that help me carry more lightly the weight of my existence.
This version is sung with Steve Goodman, because it’s good to have a friend to sing with.
I have no doubt Mr. Prine will rest in peace. He left us with so many songs. Up to the end he was singing. And he’ll always be with us through the magic of music.
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This blog is brought to you by the generosity of people who support me on Patreon , buy my art, and who support me in so many different ways.
Cards and prints on some of my art is available on Redbubble.
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joy murray art~stories~life 