The following is a statement of love that I delivered at a memorial service for an artist in the fiber arts community of Los Angeles and the United States as a whole. She was a teacher, a traveler and an inspiration to all who ever met her. Estelle Carlson was an internationally exhibited artist who died with courage and grace of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) better known as Lou Gherig’s Disease on October 27, 2005.
This blog comes from my desire to document my art and the great gifts of inspiration and looking at the world through new eyes that Estelle gave to me throughout her days of dying and upon her death in the bequeathing of her extensive textile reference library and looms to me. A gift I still am amazed to have.
For those that don't know me, I'm Kristine Brooks. I met Estelle only two years ago, as a student in a Shibori in a Jar workshop she taught in San Diego. My fiancé Phil and I helped her move to San Diego to be near her sister Cathy in October 2004, brought her back to Pasadena to visit Alfred (her ailing husband) many times while he was still with us as she was unable to drive any longer. Phil and I were part of her primary care giving team until she passed.
What always struck me about Estelle was her indomitable spirit. She never let her illness or difficulties break her will. Even as she lost the ability to do many of the things she loved to do, she didn’t dwell on the past, or mope. She always had plans.
A few weeks before she passed, she looked over the schedule for the Symphony season, and asked us to get her tickets to some upcoming performances, including up to next March (2006). One of those was for a performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, the Ode to Joy, which started at 2 P.M. today (December 11, 2005). If she was still with us, that is where she would be right now, listening to Beethoven at San Diego Symphony Hall with a rapturous smile on her face no doubt.
She was always about what is now and what is next, right up to her very last day. We spent the day before she died with her, and as we left that evening, she said to me one of the very few things she was able to clearly get out that day. She said "I will see you ... tomorrow." Estelle said this with that well known flourish of her hand that those of us who knew her have seen many times when she was happy.
She met every day with grace and optimism, and did what she could, and let go of what she could no longer do. That level of courage is, and has always been, rare. We each can only hope to be as strong when it is our time.
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