It has been one month. I promised myself to post what Ruth's close friends said at her memorial.
Bob and Jim Kempster
I had the honor of offering reflections at the memorial
service for our dear friend Ruth Van Erp yesterday. I first read the following
reflections from Bob (who to our surprise had known Ruth longer than anyone
else in the room other than her family) and then followed them with a poem I'd
composed over the three days since we'd gotten the news of Ruth's death.
The day I
first met Bob at NYU 23 years ago, he told me he was excited for me to meet his
friend Ruth. He spoke of her like they had known each other forever, a year or
two already. Turned out it had only been a week. But the first day they met
they had spent seven hours together talking and had became instant friends.
Here are
some of Bob's memories of Ruth:
She was
always driven to make her art, even when no one else would be. She'd be the
last one in the back of the studio, using the collar of her white T-shirt to
rub the clay from her face. It didn't matter to her whether she would become a
famous artist, she just needed to do her work, and continued to do so, for as
long as she could.
My best
early memories of Ruth were visiting the polish restaurants in the East Village
for banana pancakes, where we would try to out-eat each other, while we
discussed the bad artwork being made at the time: the wordy conceptualists that
these two very intuitive, visual, sensual artists couldn't relate to. But then
we'd ask for extra butter and syrup and all our problems would dissolve.
After the
tearful day Ruth moved from Brooklyn to Massachusetts, our time together
consisted mostly of phone calls, and she'd tell me of making jam, reading a
book, working in the garden, playing with Bennett, making dinner for Pat,
working on stained glass. I wouldn't realize until the end of the conversation
that she'd done all of that in one day.
I watched
her evolved from a youth with a lot of hidden secrets of pain, to an amazingly
open person who was very giving and insightful.
I will
always remember the many times Ruth and I walked arm-in-arm through the streets
of New York City.
She was
more like a sister than a friend.
She was
my hero.
Not Ruth
Ruth was
not a woman.
She was a
mother goddess in Vulcan's work clothes,
a
fashioner of flesh from clay,
the
gardener and the garden all at once.
Ruth was
not beautiful.
She was a
majestic mountain range,
the vast
blueness of a rolling ocean,
the
entire sky at dawn.
Ruth was
not a friend.
She was
the seat of wisdom comfortably upholstered,
unconditional
forgiveness smiling softly,
a warm
embrace coming from six feet up.
Like with
anyone larger than life,
it's
sometimes easier
to say
what was not
than to
grasp what was
completely,
and
attempted definitions
dissolve
into poetry,
into
silence,
bigger
truth.
Our
beautiful
woman,
friend
Ruth,
mother,
wife,
sister,
artist,
garden,
ocean,
mountain,
sky,
wisdom...
love....
I want to
say I'll find her in the landscape, the sea and the sky.
Buy a
book at the Strand or eat a Polonia,
and
recognize her in the book or the breakfast.
Or see
her peering through her stain-glassed panes in our home,
or hear
the lilt of her voice in a passage from her blog,
or catch
a glimpse of her in her daughter's smile.
But I
know the absence will be truer,
the
silence
more
honest
and vast
enough to hold her being,
and to
teach me how
to know
her
when I
need her most
when I
feel her
most
not
here.
Julie Pokela
My good
friend Ruth van Erp died last week, leaving behind her 4 year old daughter,
Bennett, her wife Pat, and many grieving relatives and friends. This is the
remembrance I read at her funeral.
Ruth van Erp was taken from this earth much
too young. She had so many
gifts that the world could use. With her passing,
how much more important it
is that we pay attention to what Ruth brought
us.
For me, one of the biggest gifts from Ruth came the day I met her. My
wife
Liz and I were at an event at Snow Farm and Ruth and Pat came up
and
introduced themselves. It was in the spring of 2007, and Pat was
very
pregnant. Ruth told us that they didn't have any relatives in the area
and
they had heard that Liz and I loved kids. Ruth asked us if we would
be
aunties to their baby. Without a second's hesitation, we said yes.
Then Ruth
asked if we would like to take Bennett one day a week. At that
point we
hesitated. Not because we had any concern about spending a day
each week with
their baby--we knew we'd love that-- but because we didn't
know Ruth and Pat.
Liz had taken welding classes from Pat at Snow Farm
and really liked her, but
we knew that having their baby one day a week
meant committing to a
relationship with Ruth and Pat, and we didn't know
them. But it was such a
generous offer, we threw caution to the wind and
said yes.
Whenever I've thought
about that day, I thought the gift was being able to be
Bennett's auntie.
Everyone who knows me knows what a gift that is. But in
retrospect, another
gift of that day was the example of Ruth's courage. The
courage it took for Liz
and I to say yes was small compared to the courage it
took to ask us. Ruth
didn't know what our parenting styles were--for all she
knew, we could have
spent every Sunday filling Bennett with junk food and
teaching her to swear.
But Ruth was committed to creating nearby family for
Bennett. And like families
of birth, families of choice can be filled with all
kinds of characters. But
aside from our individual idiosyncrasies, what a
child needs is a foundation of
love, and Ruth created a world in which
Bennett gets unconditional love from
lots of aunties.
Ruth's courage also showed with her biological family. Ruth
had had longstanding
breakdowns with her biological family. Liz and I have
taken
courses with Landmark Education, and when Ruth saw how we
were
reconciling with our families, she wanted to explore that, too. Ruth took
a
course and through it, chose to take responsibility for the breakdowns
with
her family. It takes incredible courage to call members of your family and
to
apologize for creating the distance between you. At the time Ruth made
those
calls to her mother, sisters, and brother, no one knew how precious
those
relationships would become in the very near future. How different
today would
have been if Ruth hadn't made those calls. Janna, Joanne, and
Mary--you know
how much Ruth needed you and your mother's words,
prayers, and love through her
fight with cancer. Each of you provided
something precious to Ruth and helped
her through her hardest days.
But Ruth's greatest courage was in her battle
with cancer. I don't mean to
imply that Ruth wasn't afraid. You don't need
courage to face situations you
have no fear of. Courage is what you display
when you move on through
your fears. And Ruth spent the last year and a half
doing that, and giving the
gift of sharing it with us through her blog. In
reading Ruth's blog, I could see
how much of what I fear has to do with the
future: after breaking my arm,
leg, and back in the past couple of years, am I
going to keep breaking
bones? will I be able to keep my business afloat through
this rough
economy? What will my dinner guests think of the food I'm preparing?
When
I get caught up in worrying about the future, I think of Ruth's words:
the
future is in God's hands, we need to live each precious day, present to
what
that day brings. For Ruth, part of living each day was traveling: to
England
and California, to New York City, on a final vacation to Saint Lucia.
But
mainly, it was about being present to ordinary days--going to
the
playground, to A to Z, getting ice cream, giving Bennett baths and
reading
her books.
How difficult it is to live in the present--how much we take
our short time on
this earth for granted. I hear myself and others saying: I
can't wait to go
home tonight, I can't wait until this week is over, can't wait
until I go on
vacation, I'm worried about next week, next year. In her blog,
Ruth reminded
us that hours and days of our lives slip like sand through an
hour glass, and
while we act like we have all the sand in the desert to waste
and take for
granted, none of us knows how much time is allotted us--we need to
take
stock of what we want to do with the short, precious time we have on
this
earth, to feel happiness and grief, and sorrow and joy; to laugh and to
cry;
and most of all, to love the precious people who are in our lives. To have
the
courage to live in the present. To make each day count, as if it could be
our
last. It could be.
I have been looking at Ruth's amazing art with new
eyes--seeing it freshly,
appreciating it more, knowing no more will be created.
And thinking about
her fascination with wings: how much of her art has wings,
including the
wings she had tattooed on her back. As if at some level of
her
unconsciousness, Ruth knew she would soon need those wings to carry
her
from this earth.
And now that that has happened, look at the world Ruth's
courage has
brought. A strong web of family of choice and family of birth, with
Pat, the
love of Ruth's life at the center, pulled together to hold her
precious Bennett,
to give her the base of love from which she can grow and
explore the world,
and prepared to gently catch.
Sandy Diaz
All of us here knew Ruth from different parts of her life
and each of you has your own special memories of how you knew and loved Ruth. I
was probably Ruth’s closest ‘mom’ friend. I was sitting at Sargeant Street Park
with my then-infant daughter when this big woman with a big smile and a little
baby in a Snuggli approached me with a friendly hello. We discovered we had a
mutual acquaintance and Ruth would soon join a weekly baby and toddler group
that met over the course of two years.
Ruth and I were the same age—older moms in a universe of
mostly younger ones—and perhaps because of that I think we shared a certain
perspective, which is hard for me to define. Maybe it made us a little
mellower, more accepting, less likely to be competitive. I know that it was
easy just to be with Ruth.
Over time, our
little group disbanded, but Ruth and I continued our friendship, which was
largely centered around being mothers. As Bennett and Avy grew, luckily for us,
they became friends, too. BFF’s, as Ruth liked to say. Raising young children
can be alternately exhilarating, inspiring, frustrating, and sometimes,
downright tedious. Sharing this parenting journey with Ruth made it so much
easier and even more important, fun. Ruth was generous on so many levels: She
sometimes picked up dresses or little things for Avy when she was out shopping
for Bennett, which she loved to do, and she seemed to revel in Avy’s emerging
personality and development nearly as much as Bennett’s.
We spent many days together in what seemed like simple,
mundane activities, but which now, in Ruth’s enormous absence, seem anything
but. We met at the park and ate cookies or sandwiches while our daughters
climbed on the play structure. We pretended to be monsters and chased them
around the park. We went to Music Together classes and then out for pancakes,
burritos, or noodles. We poked around consignment stores and went to Nick’s
Nest for hot dogs and ice cream—with Ruth, ice cream was often involved— and
took walks with the girls. We went snowshoeing a few times with Avy and Bennett
strapped to our backs. We sat on the beach while our daughters splashed at the
water’s edge and later waded with them when they learned how to swim, first at
the beach and then at a local swimming pool. We picked berries and tomatoes
together at the farm we belonged to, while Bennett and Avy raced barefoot
between the rows of raspberry canes. We often sat in Ruth’s kitchen and chatted
over tea— about our lives, local politics, schools, people we knew, our hopes
for our children—while Bennett and Avy, dressed as Princesses, danced around
and fought over Calico Critters or who had the biggest cookie or the prettiest
cupcake. Ruth was always much better than I at gently defusing these little
squabbles.
Anyone who has been in Ruth’s house knows that she had a
rich life. She was an amazing artist and her house is filled to the brim with
stained glass windows, pottery, prints, sculpture and other art that she
created. She loved to cook, make homemade pickles and jams, read, garden, and
knit. I am sure some of you, or your children, have hats or sweaters or socks
knit by Ruth’s able hands. But I think her greatest creation and probably her
biggest joy was the family, the home, and the life she created with Pat and
Bennett, clearly the great loves of her life.
Ruth delighted in showing the world to Bennett and she
strove to make sure she had good experiences in life, from travel to music
classes to organic vegetables from a local farm to a great preschool and
afternoons spent outdoors at the park, Canoe Club, or farm. Recently, she was
excited about the possibility of sending Bennett to a circus arts program. In
Ruth’s absence, I know that she would want all of us to continue to show
Bennett that the world can be an amazing and beautiful place, despite the pain
and suffering that it also contains. I know Ruth’s three sisters and her great
friends, Aunties Ruth and Theo and Liz and Julie, and others, including myself,
will take up where Ruth left off, helping Pat and Bennett to not just make
their way in the world, but to live life the way Ruth did: fiercely and with
love.
Ruth had such generosity of spirit. She helped me many times
with struggles much, much smaller
than the colossal one she ultimately had to face. For that, I will be forever
grateful. But mostly, I am just thankful that she was my friend. She showed me,
again and again, that the best kind of life is a life shared with others. Thank
you, Ruth, for all that you gave us. I love you, I miss you, and I will never
forget you.
Me
Thank you for making Ruth's memorial worthy of Ruth. All I can say is that I love Ruth more than anyone I have ever met. She made me whole and broadened my world.
I will try to deal with and share some of my loss in a blog 1000 miles for the next year. thanks Pat
http://runaway1000miles.blogspot.com/
