Harvinaisen Kaunis Elämä: May 2021

Saturday 29 May 2021

Forevermore

I have lit a candle. It is a tiny, flickering light for a friend whose funeral is today.

I asked my children to bring me some fresh, graceful lilies of the valley that are beginning to bloom, and when they heard the flowers are for Taru, they thought a bit of bright rebelliousness is needed and added a bunch of dandelions in the bouquet.

And I cried and I laughed, as I couldn’t have thought more perfect combination If I had planned it for weeks. Not only they are as bright and happy as my friend, but also the dandelions represent sun and moon and all the stars, healing and reminding of the power of the sun rising, even in grief. And of course, it also symbolizes joy and happiness. Lilies of the valley, those wonders of nature, the national flower of Finland, are a symbol of not only rebirth, but return of happiness.

So, I lit my candle and placed those glorious symbolism of hope beside it and smiled and cried and laughed through my tears, as for a moment I was certain I could hear her laugh. My children combined impossible things together, just like my friend always did in her crafting; made art out of impossible.

And I thought that although today is a sad day, it is also a day I must smile. The sun is shining, the whole nature is celebrating the beginning of a new summer, I have lilies of the valley spreading their wonderful, pure scent, and I have a yellow, sunny dandelion explosion on my desk.

Then I thought that although I am a very, very typical Lutheran Finn, feeling matters of faith are to be privately treasured, today of all days I want to share a story with you. It is one that I originally wrote to be part of My Story (the 10 posts in my blog) but then decided to leave it out as irrelevant at that point. But after Taru’s sudden death I have been thinking about death often and I think now it is time to talk about it.

You see, I am not afraid of death. I have seen it. Years ago, on a Christmas Night.

Our daughter decided she wanted to be our very own Christmas Star and was born a little early, on Christmas Eve morning, with a snowstorm accompanying her. At that time, nobody knew that something inside me was horribly wrong, that myasthenia gravis was creeping inside me, destroying the connections between my brain and my muscles.

(You may or most probably not know, that myasthenia gravis is a neurologic illness that kind of mixes the map between brain and muscles, so that the messages do not go through and when tired, exhausted, after exertion, they simply do not know the way. It’s all right if your feet forget suddenly how to function, but when your lungs do it, it’s not quite so funny.)

The Christmas Night, with a new-born in my arms in a hospital bed, at about midnight, when the sky was full of stars and the nature hold its breath for the Christmas Miracle, I had my first myasthenic crisis. Everything in me suddenly forgot how to do their work. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t ask for help. Inside my head I understood this, but my body couldn’t do anything. Over 8 years later I still find it difficult to talk about. I saw myself laying there, in my bed with our new-born Christmas Star in my hands, escaping further and further away from my grasp, and the light was so… indescribably bright … To the end of my life, I can remember the moment I was sent back and I remember how I managed to take a deep, hovering breath and started to cough blood and woke our Star who started crying and I hid the bloody napkin from the nurses (and never talked about it) and I was feeling so, so, so… I cannot describe it. I couldn’t get any sleep for the rest of the night, so I spent the Christmas Night with our Star, singing hymns for her. To this day Handel’s Rejoice Greatly, O Daughter of Zion reminds me of that silent Christmas Night years ago.

That I saw the Light, I saw the Beauty, the Goodness, the Indescribable, has carried me through all these years. I don’t care if anyone believes me or not, if they think this is a theologian talking here or if they think I must have dreamt it. I don’t care. I know. I felt it. I saw it. I saw Him.

I have told this, beside my husband, years later, to the two MDs that I have ever trusted enough to do so. Another told me it was just the hormones and tiredness and told me that our body does not function that way, that it never “forgets” to breathe. (Except, he was wrong. I was later diagnosed with myasthenia gravis, which is the one illness where exactly that can happen.) The other MD, he did something I am forever grateful him for. Because of what he did, I started to understand something about myself.

He simply asked me, quietly and wistfully “How was it there?” And maybe, most importantly, he realised to ask me something else. “Do you miss it?” “Was it hard to come back?”

It was the first time ever I actually stopped to thought about it that way. It was Everything in there. And maybe it is the paradox of life, but although I am more grateful than any words could describe for the fact that I am still here, with our children and with my husband, there is this immeasurable longing inside me, to go back. I have seen something I carry inside me every single day, in every single breathe of life I take. The Indescribable Light.

Last week I stumbled upon a song that took my breath away and I have listened to it a lot since, as the lyrics captures my thoughts and feelings so accurately.

Heaven’s Shore(Forevermore)

by Jeremy Camp

The final rest on that day

When I lay my weary head on heaven's shore

The final breath is not the end

It's just the start of all that I've been living for

On that day when I am welcomed home

I will run like a child

To the arms of Your love

I will sing with tongues of angels

With those who've gone before

When I look upon Your face

The very moment I have craved

In Your presence forevermore

On heaven's shore

To leave this place is to leave my fears

And step into the light of the glory of my King

I'll see in full and bow in awe

In the presence of my Savior's majesty

I can't wait, no, I can't wait

I will run like a child

To the arms of Your love

I will sing with tongues of angels

With those who've gone before

When I look upon Your face

The very moment I have craved

In Your presence forevermore

On heaven's shore

Singing Hallelujah

I'll sing forever and I'll sing forever

Hallelujah

I'll sing forever and I'll sing forever

Hallelujah

When I reach heaven's shore

***

I am not afraid of death. I have seen it. And when the time comes, I will run like a child to His arms. But how come, I still am crying for my friend’s death? It is the paradox of life, that precious gift given to us, that even if we are grateful for the one life we are given, even if we are not afraid of death, it does not mean we wouldn't miss our friends gone.

Dandelions and lilies of the valley, those wonders of nature, maybe tell it best, symbolising hope and happiness and eternal life and love. The final breath is not the end. It's just the start of all that I've been living for.

Taru, I will miss you forever, but I hope that you are happily crafting and laughing forevermore. One day we’ll see again.

Tuesday 18 May 2021

Vintage Style Curiosity Cabinet for Finnabair

I’ve wanted to create an old-fashioned curiosity cabinet (or I’d rather say memory box) for years and years, since childhood when I read how Jo March had one in the Little Men. I loved the idea of collecting nature’s treasures, lovingly store them, and carefully taking them out for looking every now and then…

I thought that now or never, it really is time to do something about it – and hopefully, to give you some inspiration to create your kind of treasure memory box, now on the brink of summer. There’s still time to search for a cabinet or box of your wishes and then prepare it for the treasures you’ll collect during the coming summer…

For my own memory box, I have used precious treasures from our family vacations. There are seashells, driftwood and sea glass from Britain and France, even from the Lofoten (which are, by the way, the islands up, up, up in the Arctic in Norway), I have included a ranunculus from Nice flower market and even a vintage rubber stamp found in Nice antique market, a coin I found on my birthday in Copenhagen… There are fossils from Lyme Regis and feathers from the D-Day beaches of Normandy, even one pottery piece from archaeological excavations in Tel Kinrot, Israel, over 3000 years old… Not to mention some lovely vintage buttons I got from my grandmother. You see, you can collect any kind of things that matters to you, and then create your kind of beautiful memory box. It doesn’t look like mine, it doesn’t have the same vintage colouring, but to preserve memories to cherish, that’d be a lovely summer project.

It really is an easy project to do, even if you do it my way and distress the box looking vintage. (If you happen to find a real vintage curiosity cabinet, consider yourself lucky and just skip the painting parts and move happily on to the collage making!)

I had a white, wooden box (originally designed for teabags, I think) measuring 30cm x 30cm, each individual box 7cm, to give you the idea of the size. I wanted it to look vintage, so I cut pieces of vintage book pages for each individual box and attached them with Soft Matte Gel. After drying, I primed the sides with white Heavy Gesso, also giving a light whitewash to the vintage papered background.

Because I wanted a light but still really, really distressed and tattered vintage look, I did not left the box without some painting. First, I mixed acrylic paints, Impastos Snow White, Dark Chocolate, and Pitch Black and painted the whole thing, wiping most off with baby wipes but leaving traces of paint and colour especially in the corners. This gave the box a whole new look. But I wanted more, so I then applied a generous amount of Clear Crackle Texture Paste to the box and all its sides and let it dry for several hours.

After that, I mixed Liquid Acrylic paints Ink Black and Burnt Sienna and did the same I did with the Impastos: painted the whole thing and wiped/dabbed most off with baby wipes. And then the curiosity cabinet / memory box was ready to welcome the actual treasures.

At this point it’d be maybe wise to stop for a moment and think where you are going to store or keep the curiosity cabinet. You see, if you intend to put it on the wall, you need to arrange your compositions differently from the option of storing it flat. I decided to go for the option of storing it on the wall, so I needed to arrange the compositions keeping in mind they are actually looked not from upwards down, but horizontally.

For attaching the treasures, I used Heavy Body Gel as I knew it will make the compositions hold fast and last forever. I added (Victorian and Edwardian) vintage laces on some boxes to give a bit more dimension and break the rhythm of vintage book pages clearly showing.

I also collected moss, lichen, and dry hay from our garden to use as props. (Please do keep in mind that it might be illegal to take lichen or moss from the woods – you need to check your country’s regulations. In Finland it is illegal to collect moss or lichen still growing without asking permission from the landowner, but it is ok to collect some that is fallen from trees etc. In my case, I asked permission from myself and got an answer that it’d be ok just this once to rip some moss out from our lawn…) My idea was to add some natural elements to complement and underline the general, very natural look of the box and its treasures. I added just a tiny pieces of moss or lichen or hay among the other treasures, and I also used dried flowers a lot (all from our journeys, of course).

I wanted to add some tiny notes here and there but I am a bit silly in a way (well, yes, in more ways than one, but, you know) that instead of going for the most obvious choice of labeling the items according to the years and places for example (which is, by the way, completely normal and sensible and perhaps the best thing to do), but I wanted to add some poetic notes in there. So, I chose a poem by Emily Dickinson, to underline the whole idea of collecting moments and memories and treasuring them and appreciating them and making most of our lives, and typed it using my vintage typewriter and 200gm paper dyed with strong coffee.

And that was it, really. It is just as easy and straightforward as you make it to be. I tried to show with my own curiosity cabinet that you can add just one fossil or stone or a seashell to one box, or then create a whole composition if you wish, creating true mini art capturing your moments to remember. But the main thing is to enjoy, to walk with your eyes open, to stop and admire, to treasure, to breathe, to see the beauty and wonder all around you, and preserve it.