The Brave Little Willow Tree
The Brave Little Willow Tree
As I sat there on the huge rock and took in the scene, I couldn't help but notice the lovely willow with it's gentle yellow leaves both on the tree and falling into the lake beneath, until the waters were transformed by the golden leaves scattered on the surface.
When I returned from my travels in the last month of 1989 to take care of my aging mother, we finally landed in a mobile home I had mortgaged in West Claremont, New Hampshire. There she lived out the last nine years of her life. This was one of her favorite paintings. She had had it framed earlier and finally it was hanging prominently in her room where she could see it as she lay in her bed especially during her last days. In a way, she was sort of like that little willow tree. Bravely holding out till the end.
If it weren't for her much of this web site wouldn't have been possible that deals with all these examples of my earlier work, since she was the one that worked so hard to preserve the artwork all through her divorce and many, many subsequent moves. She had given so much to make this possible. A little while after she died, I saw her in a dream. She had brought Vincent Van Gogh along. So there you are. Death isn't the end. Soon the Spring will return and with it the new life in the Little Willow.
When we left, I still hadn't been able to afford the funeral. Though one of her good friends had lent me some funds, it helped to pay for the cremation. So mother's ashes came along with Jen and I in the cab of the rental truck we used to take what little we could along with us across the entire United States from New Hampshire to Southern California. So it is that she has finally returned to the state where she got started way back in the early years of the Twentieth Century. Now her little black box sits atop a bookshelf in our apartment until the day when, hopefully, we can interre her ashes in some little marked grave in San Francisco where she was born.
Marcelle Hall
ball point pen on paper.
I did this quick sketch of her when she was repairing a coat
of mine before I took off for my last trip to Australia and New Zealand in 1987.
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