Reflections - cover2

Epilogue
In August 2016, I spent a week at home with my father in Santa Fe. It had been exactly one year since Mom died. The house, full of all of her
books, pictures, quilts, throw pillows, bits and bobs, retained her aura despite the absence of the physical person. I was grateful that this remained
the same on each visit home. I had very few physical mementos of Mom and in the months since her death I had begun to worry – panic really –
that she was slowly, but perceivably slipping from my memory – her smell, her voice, her laugh.
It was this sense of panic that delivered me to the corner closet of Mom’s room where all her precious artefacts were stored – plastic tubs
overflowing with loose photos and family albums, shoeboxes full of old newspaper clippings featuring various Lillard family triumphs, Mom’s old
art portfolios, and much more. It had become my habit over the previous year to spend my evenings sifting through this closet and it was on this
occasion that I ran across something that I hadn’t seen before – a black three-ring binder which contained an assortment of Mom’s handwritten
and typewritten stories, diary entries and letters. (At this point I could say that I was surprised to find this binder after so many previous
rummages through the closet, but that wouldn't really be true. Even after thorough examination of a box, I would find a new photo, sketch, or
letter upon the next inspection. I often wondered if Mom were haunting that closet, adding new bits and pieces to keep me coming back. I
wouldn't have put it past her!)
I stayed up most of that night reading Mom’s stories. It struck me how easily this binder could have been lost for good. It struck me harder how
little I knew about this part of my Mom - the writer side. By the time I left that week, I was resolved to curate all of her writings and artwork and
put them into some form which would secure safe passage to the next generation. Thus began the journey of this book.
I had at least three more visits to Mom’s closet over the next year and each visit yielded more lost treasure. It was an Aladdin’s cave! I arrived in
Santa Fe in October 2017 to find the closet empty – all except the portfolio folders had been removed to the garden shed. I can’t lie here. It felt as
though the discovery phase of my journey had ended and I had a good cry over it. I spent my mornings that week rummaging through the shed,
rather than the closet. The irony is that I found eight more paintings in there that I wouldn’t have found at all had the closet not been emptied.
Mom’s spirit at work again!
I experienced many emotional highs and lows putting this collection together. I am the same age now as Mom was when she wrote many of these
stories and I connected with them more deeply than expected. I had to walk away from this project several times because it became too depressing
or too all-consuming. There were days when I wished Mom were standing in front of me so that I could shake some sense into her and other days
when I just wanted to be able to give her a hug. And then the overriding doubts that settle in when attempting to assemble a retrospective of
someone else’s artistic life, especially when that someone else is your mother – Should I have included this piece? Should I have left that one out?
Would Mom approve of this or that change? It was hard to know when to stop editing, correcting, adding and subtracting - when to put a period at
the end of the sentence once and for all. I still don’t think I am ready for that.
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