Muse 5: Shock & Flowers

This was an unexpected musing. And an unwanted one.

I have a goal of making all my personal birthday and event cards ahead of time, in the previous month, ready to be sent. 52 Muses is part of reaching that goal. Here's something I don't do. I don't make sympathy cards ahead of time. 

Partly that's just superstition. As morbid as I can be in my humor and TV choices, it would just be weird. But more importantly it is because I feel a handcrafted sympathy card should be personal. It should reflect the person who has passed and who they were. 

Now, don't get me wrong, ANY expression of condolence no matter how awkward or brief or generic is a good one. And if you can get a small memory or piece of what they meant to you across, all the better. And that's easier to do at my studio table then face to face with a grieving loved one, so I try to put my all into it. 

A little over a week ago I came home in mid-afternoon to find several police cars near my condo unit. We have many elderly neighbors so a rescue vehicle is not unheard of. But this was 4 or 5 squad cars. As I pulled into my space an officer asked me not to park there as they had rescue units coming. It suddenly occurred to me that they were in my friend's home. She is older but an active and independent woman who had surgery a few weeks ago. I immediately got scared and asked if she fell. The officer said they had just come to do a welfare check because a friend of hers had called them and then he said a terrible, horrible thing. And the bottom dropped out of my brain.

The EMS came and went. The police asked questions. There was shock, there was guilt, there were neighbors milling around. I handed over the emergency numbers of her children that she had written in her scrolling handwriting. I had these in case she started to run a fever, or she needed a grocery run. Not this. Never this.

I know now there was absolutely no indication to me or anyone else who walked by her door that morning that help was needed inside. I don't have exact details but it seems to have been fast and nothing anyone could have done. But that doesn't make people feel any better.

Everything in my friend's home is white with touches of yellow and green. White carpet, walls, furniture. It looked like a magazine spread. But you weren't afraid to touch anything, it wasn't cold. There were family pictures and flowers. Her children were very important to her. Her husband had passed years ago, before she moved here.

When I sat down to make her card, I started with white. White base and white liner and white front. Then I punched a butterfly border along the front vertical edge and placed it over the cut edge, allowing the interior to overlap and the interior edge to show. I stamped green flowers on the front and inside. I stamped a sentiment on the front and inside. Then, using watercolor markers, I hand colored each flower yellow and added vines.

It was my tiny tribute to the woman she was.

This was made with Stampin' Up stamps and markers and a Martha Stewart punch.