Drawing

So this morning I got to drawing. I scrounged up a fresh sharpie and got to work. First I did a drawing based on my great great grandmother Romla-- who fought in the Mexican Revolution. Then I worked back into my drawing of my Aunt Mary who recently passed on and I got her smile down and rounded out her hair and put a cross necklace around her neck and a nice velvet shirt. Then I looked at the first drawing I did yesterday of my Great Grandpa Isidro and I decided it wasn't quite there yet and it needed some color. So I went for it with the pastels. And it changed everything. I remember going to his grave one Memorial Day with my Aunt Mary, my Mom, my Grandma, my Aunt Lucy, my Uncle Dee, My Uncle Gene and his wife Didi and us all standing there in a circle around it. We planted flowers on top of his grave and I watched as everyone in turn touched the headstone and said their peace. It was something I'd never witnessed before. It was very moving and I found myself crying because I hadn't known him as well as everyone else who was there, and because I felt their grief and it touched me. Now I feel as though I understand him better looking deeply at him and thinking about everything I've heard about him and trying to put that feeling in this drawing I feel like I can picture him quite clearly can hear him singing Ya hey Ya hey Ya hey and thumping on the bed his own lullabye for children. Picture my mom as a little girl perched high up on his shoulders looking at the stars on the way to midnight mass. Imagine him smiling joyfully and appreciating every thing he was given every moment. Unwrapping his presents before Christmas and then rewrapping them because he just couldn't wait he was so excited, even though he was the father of 8, and grandfather of even more, and so on and so on. And I thought of Romla too having to learn to shoot to protect herself in the Mexican Revolution--- I never imagined how beautiful she was. But that's the first thing Stacey said when my Mom pulled out her picture. She was beautiful and she was, is beautiful. And whoever finished her portrait added painted on flourishes that are extraordinary. And finally my Aunt I can still remember her beautiful hair and the arch of her eyebrows and how she smiled at me, at everyone really. And how much I loved the sound of her voice and the thought of getting to visit with her. And how I carry around the last thing she said to me "I love you more than flowers Ona." And as I was drawing I realized how much she has become a part of me that I remember things about her, moments I was with her that I thought I'd forgotten. She was the type of person you couldn't help but love with your whole heart because it was clear that she loved you just that way. And now she is with her mother and father, and her sister Rose, and her brother Demetrio, and her daughter Lora, and she is with the God she believed in that helped her make sense of the world and informed her kindness. Of course I miss her and it makes me sad, and its unfair like so many things that are hard to accept. But I am finding a way to deal with it. I am finding my own way of dealing and acknowledging that even though there are people I don't know everything about in my history that I am still connected to them by ancestry and by stories I've heard about them that have been passed down to me, just as I will pass them on to my kids. So that they have a sense of rootedness, and belonging and are optimistic about the future with so many good spirits to help them along the way.