Mickey Mouth

Mick Jagger would definitely get no satisfaction if he could see what Frank N Furter has done to his face during one of his failed experiments. It serves you right, Mickey Mouth, for having refused to let one of our friends take a photo of you in the days when you looked a lot better than this!

Seventy Years Ago

My mother survived my father by 19 years. It´s sad to think that neither of them lived to celebrate the 70^th anniversary of their marriage this year. I only have 2 photos of the occasion, one of which I´ve had for many years and another which I found at the bottom of a drawer after my mother´s death last Christmas. Mine is framed and in pristine condition. My mother´s is dog-eared, faded and worn looking like many of the old family photos. I´ve often wondered why this should be and have decided that it´s probably partly due to the fact that my mother, like her mother before her, lived for the present and didn´t dwell on the past. Also, although I often told her that she was remarkably attractive in all her photos, she always laughed and denied it. The only framed photos in her house were of her mother, her husband and her children, so being the selfless person she undoubtedly was, perhaps that reflects what was most important to her. 

The following page is a memorial to both of my parents. It may look at first glance as if I had quite a few photos but in reality there really are only the two plus a couple of little sketches created using an action I made a while ago.

 

I created the above page using the kit I´m presently working on, unnamed as yet though suggestions would be gratefully received.  

Forgetting To Remember

My mother passed away last Christmas and since then I´ve thought of her practically every day and felt sad. I say “practically” because just recently there have been happy days when I´ve been so busy or so preoccupied that I´ve forgotten to remember her and then afterwards felt grief-stricken and guilty. Of course I know in my heart that I´ll never forget her. I´m sure that this occasional “forgetting to remember” is just a normal part of the grieving process. 

Then just yesterday I remembered this poem by Christina Rossetti which has comforted me because I know for sure that the last two lines express exactly what my mother would have wished for me. Here it is in its entirety. 

Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad. 

So I´ve been keeping these 2 lines in mind and trying to leave the sadness behind by starting to create a new scrapbook kit in her memory and the first photo I´ve been building it around is the one I restored recently and showed in my last blog post...with one tiny difference which may be obvious only to me.

This project may take some time. It always takes me ages before I´m happy with any part of a kit, or with anything for that matter, though I´m trying hard not to be so ridiculously self-critical. I wish I had someone who´d slap my wrist occasionally and tell me to "leave well alone”. That was always one of my mother´s – many - favourite sayings when I was growing up which I´ll try to take to heart in future. Sometimes less is more and very often things are fine just the way they are.

(Maybe I should have heeded that before I messed with the photo....)