• Patty FranklinNeighbor

  • Woodinville, WA

I LOVE COLOR...  <i>(I have a bright <b>blue</b> front door)</i>.  The joy that color brings, <i>combined with a desire to put “things” in order</i>, resulted in my forever friendship with mosaics.  I grabbed onto this art medium as a life<br>preserver in the spring of 2003.  That was when my father, Jim, went into the final stages of prostate cancer.  Since my parents lived in a rural part of California (with limited medical services), we had them temporarily move in to our home to be close to Seattle Cancer Care Alliance.

Jim was a happy person; imaginative, playful, joyful. <br>The hardest part of facing the end of his life, was watching him give up on everything he enjoyed; that which gave his life meaning.  I watched as he gave into his fate and was getting ready, to get ready, to die.  This was not the man I knew and loved.

Throughout Jim’s life, he had always created.  He dabbled<br>in woodcarving, stained glass, painting, and writing.  I, on the other hand, had never even attempted to draw and had no desire to learn.  <i>(BTW I also have no desire to cook – but that’s another story)</i>.  Jim needed “something” – he needed his hands, and mind, busy - he needed a reason to connect with the life happening around him.

I asked him to help me make some mosaics for our garden and THAT was exactly the nudge he needed.  His eyes lit up with a very familiar twinkle and he came out of his downward spiral. We couldn’t hold him back; couldn’t get him to rest, couldn’t flip the off switch - he was happily and completely obsessed with mosaics!  We set up a table in our sunroom <i>(which is now my studio)</i> and we proceeded to buy the wrong tools, the wrong glue, and broke china plates and ceramic tiles. We did a few atepping-stones, but quickly moved on to ugly turtles, and an even uglier alligator <i>(don’t ask -</i> <i>I’m still not sure what’s holding these pieces together besides moss.)  </i>After a few intense weeks of gluing everything to anything, we stopped to do a little research <i>(what a radical idea)</i>.  I bought the right glass tiles, the right glue, the right tools, and a couple of good instruction books.  We were armed and dangerous...  Jim filled every waking moment mosaicing and the glass shards were flying!

I worked by Jim’s side each evening.  As I sat down and picked up my nippers, I could feel all of the days tension wash away.  Creating mosaics was feeding an empty place<br>in both of us.  I was discovering a part of me that I never knew existed and Jim was my guide.  I look back on that time and wonder if this was his intent – to turn on this hidden talent in me.  I wonder if he was giving me the gift that I thought I was giving to him. 

Jim went home to die in the fall of 2003, but not without his art supplies.  He worked until the week he passed away and made a sun – a sun that lives on our rock wall just outside my studio.  Thanks, Jim, you know that I’m spaffeling*.  

<b><i>*Spaffeling – a word made up by my dad to describe a person at their happiest..  A moment when a face<br>lights up with a glow that says, “life can’t get ANY better than this”!</i></b>

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