Happy Birthday, Mom

Yesterday, July 20, my mom would have been 71. I struggle to know what is the right way to celebrate someone no longer here. The last few years, I’ve spent it in Michigan with my dad, but this year that wasn’t possible. It’s interesting to not be bound to corporeal birthday traditions, worrying about what type of frosting the person likes or if the birthday card strikes the right tone.

This year, I decided to celebrate things she liked and taught me to like. We both really loved arts and culture and museums, so, I grabbed a photo of my mom from the mantle and off we went to the VMFA. 

The museum is under renovation and many of my favorite galleries–art nouveau and 20th century art are closed off to the public. This meant I got to venture into rooms I normally walk past. I found myself in the early European arts area, stumbled into a Rauschenberg cardboard box exhibit, and wandered through the American section.

How she saw the world was so unique, what she noticed and how she expressed it, so rather than trying to engage with the art in a formal sense, I went with my gut. Meaning: I read a lot of descriptions and let my thoughts wander into sidebar thoughts.

Here is the plaque to a room from a Gilded Age mansion that once belonged to a classic three-named Richmond woman. Notice the curious gap in her bio between losing and gaining everything.

Here is a chandelier, “No Way But This,” the first EVER made from black Murano glass, by Fred Wilson, an interdisciplinary artist born the same year as my mom. “The title of the chandelier is a quote from Othello, referencing the play's exploration of prejudice and power.”

Here is a Dutch painting–notice the dogs. (Especially the dog peeing on the pillar in the bottom left corner).

Here is a beautiful Japanese box gifted to a politician from Lynchburg in 1860 who was one of the first Americans to visit Japan. So, of course it has Masonic symbols. 

Last week, we lost a powerful poet and activist, Andrea Gibson (born the year I was born, 1975), and her poem “Love Letter from the Afterlife” echoed through me as I walked through the museum.

Dying is the opposite of leaving. When I left my body, I did not go away. That portal of light was not a portal to elsewhere, but a portal to here. I am more here than I ever was before.

I honored my mom’s memory by spending it alone, inspired by her travel journals from when she was 19 and traveling through Europe. I harnessed that spirit: observant and mildly judgmental, eavesdropping, annoyed with the volume and proximity of others blocking beautiful works of art, and, of course, making sure to exit through the gift shop.