My day has not gone the way I expected....
A cool breeze tempted me out onto the front porch with my cup of coffee, a perfect way to start the day. Beside a pot of Oxalis a seventeen year cicada lay on its back, the first I have seen on our property this year. I was expecting them today or, at the latest, tomorrow. The sound of their mating call was distant yesterday morning and grew louder as the day passed. This morning it filled my ears like surround sound in a movie theater with the volume set on high.
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17 year cicada
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Naturally, I picked up pen and sketchbook. I couldn’t ask for a more cooperative model. As I began to draw, I realized that the cicada still lived, but I knew, not for long. The creature had lived in the ground for seventeen years, a long wait for a six week mating binge followed by death. The one I drew was silent and spent. I hope it had been worth it for the noisy little winged creature.
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Fallen from its nest
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I spent far longer than anticipated drawing my lovely cicada. I’m nowhere near finished re-organizing my studio and cleaning the house for guests. Being somewhat sensible I put it aside after the drawing was complete, hoping to paint it this evening. Rather proud of being so disciplined I headed to the studio, filled a garbage bag with trash and carried it to the dumpster. Had I been looking up at the bittersweet instead of down at the weeds I need to pull, I would have missed seeing the newborn bird on the pavement. Not only was a filled with sadness, I was filled with awe at the beauty of the colors of its featherless skin. The shapes of its head, distended belly and jointed claws intrigued me. All thoughts of cleaning my studio vanished. I retrieved my low chair, pen and sketchbook and began to draw. I had absolutely no intention of putting off painting it until this evening. I knew the colors would change and the moment would be lost.
.No sooner had I put pen to paper when the tiny creature’s belly grew even larger as it took a gasping breath. Well, there’s a dilemma. Most of the animals I find and draw are dead already. When I’m done drawing them I bury them in my secret garden in the back corner of the yard. I had never drawn a dying animal until this morning. Now I found myself drawing the second of two dying animals. What is the right thing to do? go in the house so that I don’t have to watch it die? Put it out of its misery? And what is the kindest way to put it out of its misery? Once I trapped a mouse and found it still alive but with a broken back. I might have let the mouse out of the trap in the field to allow nature to take its course, but I was attached to this little mouse. I greeted me every morning in my studio. When it began eating my drawings, I knew our friendship had to end. I thought that the “put it out of its misery” was a kinder thing to do, so I buried it alive........ I have always regretted that choice. So ..... what did I do with the newborn bird? I spent the next two hours drawing and painting it. The skin changed color and the ants started to crawl all over it. The baby bird continued to take gasping breaths at odd intervals. Queasy is not the right word for how I felt. It was certainly not the first death I had witnessed nor the first time I had drawn death. I just hadn’t drawn an animal dying.
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I felt uneasy, yet calm and compassionate. The little bird was not dying alone. I was being witness to its passing and I was honoring it by recognizing the beauty it brought into the world as brief as it was. I am grateful to have been at the bedside of Tom’s mother and especially at the bedside of my own mother as well as my first (and second but not third) husband and father of my three children. I am also grateful for the experience of being with and drawing an old friend from high school who lay in a comma, brain dead while the time and date for pulling the plug was being determined. I like to believe that being in the presence of the dying allows for resolution of the experiences both the dying and the witness have had in life, no matter how long or short. It is a gift, not to be rejected, but to be embraced. I hope the little bird felt the same way as it gasped for breath until it finally surrendered and passed to the other side.
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Sketch:
Fallen From Nest - drawn first in ink with fountain pen, followed by watercolor
Drawing Death - Fallen From Nest
