Telegram to My Dead Mother!

The following is a creative FANTASY message to my Mother – in heaven – on Mother’s Day 2020:

“Dear Mom, hope you’re doing OK up there in the great beyond. I know you and me had quite a rough relationship that is too complicated for most people to fully understand. But today is Mother’s Day and I thought maybe I could put this piece of a painting on Facebook. You would have really really liked Facebook! You could have taken spy activities to a whole other level, ha ha! So Mom, I had a really rough year and at one point in the cluster*** I found myself in – at one point last summer – I had a small breakthrough. I actually imagined you looking down from heaven in some perfected eccentric condition and seeing all the details of my ordeal and being like some great Apocalyptic Mother wielding some bizarre heavenly guardian angel action and saying ‘WTF?’ Yeah, in my imagination you were both beautiful and bizarre and wearing that pink dress in that knock down gorgeous photo of you from the 1940’s. This fantasy image brought me great comfort and I imagined someday when it is all sort of kind of past I should paint myself a painting called ‘Gang of Women’ – a caricature of all the women and only women who helped me through my ordeal, and YOU would be the awesome gang leader. So here I am today – and by the way today also marks 41 years since my dad – ‘Rodney Slifer’ as you called him – passed away. I’m back in Newark, DE from Sweet Home Alabama and I think I’ll take a drive into PA today and drive by about 10 houses for sale…because in case you didn’t see from up there, we’re having a pandemic here and people are making offers on properties in PA sight unseen. I know you were always terrified I was sick, don’t worry, I’m OK…so far! So I started my Gang of Women caricature painting for MYSELF recently – I started with you and am planning on slowly adding in different women friends and others, probably nearly 40 will be in my “gang.” My process is to do it from my imagination, let the painting be primitive and childlike in some respects. Your grandson saw it yesterday and said ‘Why does she have a mask on?’ I said, “that isn’t a mask, those are butterfly sunglasses.” In the painting I dressed and caricaturized you as the elderly woman I last knew wearing that turquoise sweater and rust polyester pants day after day…but I put those 70’s “Elton John” style butterfly glasses you bought at Wilmington Dry Goods or somewhere in the 70’s and used to wear. I was so embarrassed – you had me when you were nearly 40 and I was an only child. My friends’ moms were young enough to listen to pop music yet they weren’t wearing Elton John style sunglasses. I remember you had Apple Glasses too. Anyway there’s a lot I will never fully understand – why you did all you did – but in some strange way during this past year of my ordeal – my ordeal that only a Gang of Women could help me through – I learned to embrace just a bit of your weirdness that may be in me slightly, too! I suppose I owe some of my best qualities to your genes – intelligence, creativity, attention to detail – qualities that expressed themselves in better ways in my own life. Hope you are getting to do some painting in Heaven! Too bad you didn’t get to do that on Earth. I hate to say it…but I love you, too.”