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Sunday, June 29, 2003

ART IS FOREVER: LIFE IS…

We are here to celebrate my fathers’ life. First may I say, he had a wonderful life, as long as Mom was beside him. He was the kind of person who put all his eggs in one basket when it came to loving someone and that, for him, was JAN, my mom. Sixty -four years of togetherness is quite phenomenal. I hope my sisters and I have the same opportunity with our mates.
My hope is to share some gifts that my father gave to us girls.
It sounds strange to say, but his dying was a gift. Mom,Arja,Ann and Fre, held his hand throughout. Although he was in a coma, we were nurtured by the sight of our parents together. Fré came from Victoria the same night he went into the hospital. Arja and Ann were already by his bedside. For the three days and nights he was in the hospital, we sat around eating donuts, date squares, brownies, chocolates and some fruit. The latter to appease our conscience. We were loud and laughed a lot, telling stories about our father, talking with mom and having our husbands, our kids and their families give us support.
My father would have wanted me to say first, a heartfelt thank you to Arja and Ann, for looking after him while Mom was recently in the Grey Nuns’ Hospital. I know he didn’t like being separated from her, but he also could not look after himself. Your families are included in the thank you.
And you both didn’t stop being Mom’s support when he went into the hospital. At this time I will add all the sister’s to his thank you.
Well, I don’t know if he would have thanked us for talking about him but we remembered stories told to us and shared with each other the things about papa that we remembered. When we ran out of steam we looked in the photo albums. My father didn’t know, when he had a headache that morning, that he would be terminal by the end of the day. As much as I understood my dad, this was for him a good way to die, surrounded by his girls.
When I think of the gifts that my papa gave his daughters I think of Fre, taking her children for a weekend to the ocean, where she is comfortable… just to stare out at the horizon. Love of the out of doors and just sitting there doing nothing….my dad was very good at that. This gift may not be appreciated by all, but you, Fre, appreciate it and you have that part of him.
When Fre, who was born in Alberta, was small she would say, “When I lived in Holland…” She had never been to Holland. But today her home is in Victoria, a city by the ocean. Not unlike the place where my father was born, in Amsterdam. Fre also knows how to make people laugh, just like papa, she often says, “ That was a joke” because not everyone understood that kind of humour.
Arja received the gift of trust. To tell the story of this I go back to when I left for Europe at age 21. My Dad turned to me and said
“If you don’t know it by now, it’s too late.” There is a world of meaning to those words, but I believe he was saying, “I trust you and am not going to worry about you. Have a good time”. Arja has trust in her children, that they may make their own choices in life. And FAITH both is equally committed to their beliefs, Arja to her church and my dad who would argue vehemently his faith, Atheism. She also had a great love of being with my dad, at a time when he was in need of help, trusting that it was simply the right thing to do. That would have been very difficult for me.
When dad was still living in Holland, he participated in organizing youth groups. He put on plays with the young people. The gift that Ann received is the love of organizing and teaching…I sometimes think that her class at school must be like a play. I know at one time she enjoyed participating in drama in high school….. Organizing everyone, whether you wanted to be organized or not, that is one gift.
The other is the very sweet trait of looking at a person in silence and giving them a wink. Ann has passed that on from papa to her kids.
O yes, Ann also received the ability to maintain a slim body size, just like dad.
So my father’s gifts, love of nature, trust in people, organizing…. I admit in his later years mom did all his organizing… but at one time he did love to lead.
My gift…. I learned never to finish anything. In my art this is a good thing, because those spaces in a painting that are unfinished, the viewer can finish. In my home renovations… well thanks, dad. I am still renovating and fixing things that I didn’t complete a few years ago, OK. Twenty some years ago. When my mom and dad built the cabin, it seemed that he was constantly repairing things to make them better, but also with the sense that if he finished it he would have nothing to do. This is also with the gifts he made. He had wonderful ideas but the item, whether toys or children’s furniture, usually needed to be fixed soon after. You knew that the broach, this broach dangling here, he made would have the back pin fall off because he used tiny nails instead of glue. And you cannot throw it out because papa made it.
My father knew right from wrong… but not left from right, another gift I received from him. Names…. Oh, how hard it is to remember a name, when it disappears the second someone is introduced. Thanks a lot, dad. Quips… making people laugh, not always appropriately… but still laughter was more important to my dad than saying the right thing, or should that be the left thing. That was a joke.
People who are here today will remember the times he made us laugh, and that’s what I hope we will take as one of our best memories. Some of you probably still have plants he foisted on you.
He was a person who liked being alone, but I think he was not lonely. As long as he had mom.
The last gift he gave, in an indirect way, was to Christian, David, Ron and Dan. A gift to his girls that if we saw the man we wanted, they were royally caught. You have to admit that once a Bergstrom girl finds her man she will not let him go. This leads to my series of thanks that papa would say if he knew he was leaving life. The thanks are to the husbands who believe, every one of them, that their wives are beautiful, wonderful, smart, funny…like he did. Of the grandchildren, he was always amazed that five of us came off the boat and now there are too many to sometimes remember their names. As he looked at photos of our granddaughter Tori last Wednesday, the last day I saw him alive, he said, “Who is that?” …. Was it a joke? …. With my dad you didn’t always know.
He had great life and a good death…. I hear him now say to me, “Look after mom”.

posted by Christl at 10:34 AM

Tuesday, June 03, 2003

Every morning I make myself a two-cup pot of espresso coffee. This goes into a large bowl and I add equal amount of milk. It is rare that I reverse the order by putting milk in the bowl and then the coffee. When this occurs the coffee does not taste the same. I don't understand why. It just isn't the same. So when I think about art , these miniscule moments of life feel very important. This describes clearly, at least to me the meaning of art. You just can't put the milk in the bowl first.
It used to bother me that I saw a subject to be painted everywhere. It was a look in a person's eye, the beauty of a flower, the landscape as one drives along a familiar road. It used to bother me that I would have all these unfinished canvases in my head zigzagging around never to be started. But I have learned to work in themes of portraits, landscapes, still life, and a series of studies. I can almost say that I need only to make a list of work to be done and thus relax and continue to paint.

posted by Christl at 8:25 PM