Jo's Artistic Transition

I have been thinking about my mother's best friend Jo Ann Russau lately. She was a great friend to my mom, who does not have very many close sister-friends in her life. She is a bit of a loner at times, and Jo helped pull the life of an artist out of her. My mother, like Jo, is an artist but not until recently did she truly tap into that potential lying dormant on the inside of her.

Jo herself was a great painter, living in the art district of San Pedro, California and teaching art at LACES High School in Los Angeles. She lived the kind of life I could only dream of living at this point and am truly pursuing now that I am making some poignant changes in my life to fully embrace the dual calls on my life of writing and creating artwork.

Jo died of breast cancer in May 2008. My mother and I had quickly flown to her side when we heard the news that she had started a rapid decline in her health. I remember the day Jo's sister Bev had sent a message through one of our cousins that Jo was dying and was asking for my mom. I walked into my mother's house all prepared to carry out the plans we had made for the day and found her sitting on the couch sobbing.

My heart dropped into the pit of my stomach because I knew that something horrible had happened. When my mother choked out the explanation, I sat down on the arm of her leather chair and just stared at her, unable to believe that this woman who had clearly made a major impression in my mom's life was leaving it so suddenly. I had heard that she was still going through chemotherapy for the cancer the doctors thought had returned, even after her mastectomy. I thought she was doing better, but apparently, she wasn't and the cancer was spreading into her brain.

My mom and I boarded a plane the next week at Detroit Metro so that she and Jo could have one more opportunity to be together. I did not want to believe she would die; I wanted to believe that God would miraculously heal her and stay the hand of death. But that was not to be. A couple hours before we were to catch our return flight to Michigan, Jo departed this life. She had spent some time with my mom during the two days we were there in her beautiful artist's loft staring into Mom's eyes mostly and not speaking many words, as we surrounded her with prayer and love and songs.

About an hour before she died on that early Sunday morning, I awoke from my air mattress positioned near her hospital bed and got up to check on her. Her humming and singing in her sleep woke me as it had the night before. However, Friday night she had been singing "Hallelujah" in such a jovial manner that though our sleep was broken we all quietly listened to her praise of God in rapt attention with tears streaming down our faces because although she was physically dying, her spirit was quite evidently alive and filled with adoration for God. Her cancer was not the most important element in that room. That early Sunday morning her songs of praise were not entirely discernible to my ears. She was not evoking praise through clear, understandable language; it was if she was humming only for God alone. It was also as if she were already in this magnificient place of praise and worship. You could see it on her face.

I stood next to her bed and watched her in the dim light of the lamp a few feet away, turned down low so as not to disturb our rest. But as I took in her form, listened to her humming quite expressively, I realized that she could never have been disturbed. She was consciously not there anymore. She was leaving; her eyes were closed and focused on a place I could not see. I paced the room praying, asking God what was going on. I stood across the room, stock-still and listening deeply to what was really happening in the spiritual realm. Then I returned to her side and gently rubbed her face, letting her know that someone was there.

She stopped humming momentarily but did not open her eyes. I knew that she recognized the touch and I smiled. When it suddenly got very cold in the room, I battled with staying near her or returning to my air mattress and covers. Returning to the air mattress won out, so after I covered her with a thin quilt, I laid back down.

I told others later that I had not been tired, had not been sleepy. It was 3:15 California time but 6:15 according to my body's clock. I was definitely accustomed to waking early for work. But for some reason, not even five minutes after I covered up with the blanket to shield out this otherworldly cold, I fell back to sleep. When I suddenly opened my eyes, my mind telling me that I did not hear her hum as my lullaby anymore, I sat straight up.

All the lights were on, and my mom and Bev were standing next to her bed. They both turned to look down at me as I stared up at them horrified. I knew what the silence meant. I knew what their silence and shocked looks meant.

I leapt up from the now nearly deflated air mattress and went to check Jo's vitals as my mom called her name over and over, patting her chest and rubbing her face. There was no response, no answer, no hum, no song, no breath...no life. Jo was gone - utterly and completely. Apparently, she had slipped away with her God between the time I touched her face for the last time and when her sister came downstairs to check on her, finding her very still and not moving anymore.

I thought it very significant that Jo left before my mom and I did. She left this world to be with her Heavenly Father. The artist that she so brilliantly was departed to be with the Greatest Artist of all.

I have been thinking of that weekend in May more as I talk to my mom about how she feels now that her friend is no longer here. She told me the other day that she still doesn't understand how God could take her best friend, how God could take Jo away. They had made so many plans for the future, and it would seem that those plans disappeared the moment Jo disappeared from sight. I did not know what to say to my mom; I did not have an answer for her. But what I could do was hug her because I was there when my mom had to say goodbye.

I will never forget the way my mother cried as she knelt beside Jo's body. I will never forget the fragility and brokenness I saw as she poured out herself before God, inwardly asking God what she was supposed to do without Jo and also who her true friends were. There had really been only one, and now she was in another place that felt so very far away.

I still have no answer. We have both lived through significant losses and still there is no answer as to why separation tears us apart internally. But every once in a while, I think back to the life Jo lived and the paintings she birthed and the portraits she produced and the place where she artistically lived and the students that she so evidently touched. And I also think of the ocean I got to see - the one she loved to walk near, breathing in deeply the smell of the salty air and watching intently the crash of the waves on the shore.

When I think of those things, I know that the essence of Jo, her truest form and richest expressions live on, just as surely as God's Presence lives on eternally. And though we must endure broken hearts, God has promised that He will fully mend and heal. He has promised and because I know someone as wonderful and artistic as Jo cannot just cease to exist - her spirit was just too vibrant - we will see her again. There is no other option. I choose today to believe that; I choose today to know that.

The beautiful thing about art, I have come to realize, is that even though we may have to leave this earth, that which we made remains as evidence that not only did we once live here...through our art, we still do. The painting above is Jo's proof of that.