It’s the day after Valentine’s Day and perhaps the day didn’t go as well for you as the commercials and love songs promised. Your loved one may have spent too much money on flowers that will die rather than a plant you would prefer so you can plant it, or on sweets that aren’t on your eating program. Or you might be the one that was too busy to know what day it even was. In general, our culture makes a big investment in helping us communicate our love to one another. According to the National Retail Federation 53% of consumers in the US will spend $25.8 billion dollars this Valentine’s Day on flowers, dinners, chocolate candy, and cards.
If you’ve been in a relationship for a lot of years you’ve been through some “rough patches.” Maybe you’re still in one of them. Perhaps your relationship ended recently, or your partner is not able to know what day it is. Maybe you are grieving these losses and the secondary losses connected to them. Or you feel the loss of the dream of where you had expected to be in this phase of your life. Perhaps it’s future losses that loom large, so you are grieving something that hasn’t even happened yet.
As I have been researching and writing about grief for almost 10 years, I now ask several “what if” questions. What if we assume, in the art of living a life, that loss is a frequent, episodic occurrence, expected to happen throughout our years, and that grieving needs to be an art we practice and eventually get good at? What if we call on the arts to help us navigate the comings and goings in the love relationships in our lives?
In my family, greeting cards have been a way to honor the relationships we have with one another and to communicate our love. Our daughter Corinne, when she had lost her own hair to chemo treatments sent a Father’s Day card to her stepdad, which he still has on his desk after nearly two decades. The artwork, under the header of “Top Dad Hairstyles,” features cartoon images of men with various patterned baldness hair styles, to honor what she called, “we hair challenged individuals!
It can take quite an investment of time to select just the right card for a specific occasion, or to create one, which becomes a gift of art to the receiver and the giver alike. The image is the message, along with hopefully, just the right few words. This year I re-gifted the card that I had given my husband last year. Like an artist who makes her art out of found objects, when I came across the card in my desk drawer, I knew it carried an image and handwritten message worth repeating. My husband’s card to me this year was a piece of artwork I will be saving, especially since, after his recent participation in a calligraphy class, I can actually decipher his handwriting.
To let loved ones know of our love, we don’t have to spend money in response to the advertisers’ hype, on Valentines’ Day, or any other cultural holiday that ignites the business engines of our economy. The hand painted watercolor image of a butterfly on a get-well card sent to me by a young friend after I had surgery still broadcasts its loving message from the counter in my kitchen where it’s been living for years.
In preparation for next Valentine’s Day–can you picture yourself finding or creating a card to send to yourself as reassurance that you are loveable and loved. Don’t be shy about re-gifting a card that holds a special memory. And imagine playing the song that was always known to you as “our song,” and dancing to the song, either with your partner together in your kitchen, or dancing alone, with a celebratory stemmed glass lifted in honor of the love that began your relationship, and appreciation for your no-longer-present-to you-in-this -life-loved one and the love you shared. Perhaps it’s true that love is the only thing that never dies.
Stay tuned for upcoming news on the launch of my new book, The Art of Grieving: How Art and Artmaking Help Us Grieve and Live Our Best Lives. With assistance from guest artists, I’ll be presenting an online five session course, The Art of Grieving Series beginning March 5th on Let’s Reimagine.org based on the book. https://letsreimagine.org/76768/the-art-of-grieving-series-storytelling
