My Broken Heart (Mended)

My Broken Heart (Mended), 2009

Wool roving, wool yarn, hand-dyed, crocheted, needlefelted, 5"

My Broken Heart (Mended), verso

This is one of the pieces I worked on this week. As I worked, it seemed to me that one side was for Patrick and one side for my mother. It was very healing to create this, to be holding the idea that I was making a visual representation of my hurt heart, and my healing journey.

A year ago today, Valentine's Day, my mother died.
I awoke this morning in the dark and felt wide-awake, thinking of Mom. I looked at the clock. It said 6:45. That was about the time she died. At 6:55, I was called by the nurse who said she had just died, and that she had been with my mother, had heard her last heartbeat.

The note below has been by my phone for at least two years now. I put it there to remind me how I wanted to act and be when my mother called. Dementia often made phone conversations and visits turn into horrible interactions that left me feeling small, frustrated and ashamed. This note helped me to prevent that many times. I haven't been able to bear to remove it, but I think that today might be an appropriate day to let it go...

Love. Love. Love.

Zann