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Welcome
. . .
These paintings were done by artist Eric Fitzpatrick during his
father's illness and death. They illustrate the phases many of us
go through in our grieving. It is hoped that you will come spend
some quiet time alone with the Self Portraits and the Crucifixions
to help you with your own grief experience. In these works, you
can see in visual form the feelings of helplessness, anger, sadness,
fear, and renewed faith that often accompany the time of mourning
. . .
Mourning
is "grief gone public" -- the way we show on the outside
what we are feeling on the inside. Unfortunately our society is
not comfortable with outward signs of grief, so we try to falsely
avoid the process or keep it hidden. We must realize, however, that
grief that is held inside cannot properly heal (There is no "right
" or "wrong " way to grieve.). Rather than avoiding
the experience, we must learn to confront it in our own unique ways.
As one expert said, "You can grieve now or you can grieve later,
but you must grieve."
Although
grief is one of the most difficult of all experiences, surprisingly
it can be a rich time of learning. As long as we must walk this
road of mourning, we would do well to try to be fully present to
it and to see God's hand in it.
Life
in this "tangible world" ends for all of us with the death
of our physical bodies, but the spiritual part of our existence
lives on. We cannot fathom this any more than we can peer into the
night sky and truly understand the infinity before us. We can only
know that we are part of an existence that is full of unseen dynamics
that we can only faintly perceive . . . that this world of our five
senses is not all there is.
Our
closeness to the experience of death can be a time of renewed awareness
of the Creator. It is our hope that you will draw upon this place
and these works to facilitate your grief process, and that you may
sense in the depths of the experience the presence of one who walks
with you, and will always accompany you . . . even unto death.
*Special thanks to Sue Moore of Good Samaritan
Hospice for her help with the text. |
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".
. . from suffering into beauty"
Elizabeth
Levang, Ph.D., wrote, (“When Men Grieve,” 1998) “Men
can become prisoners of their own experiences. Taught to adhere
strictly to a narrow range of behaviors, conditions, and elements
befitting their gender, men can come to believe that they lack permission
to do the work of grieving.”
Eric
Fitzpatrick has shown us that, at least for the man who finds an
artistic medium and is a risk taker, Dr. Levang’s observation
is not universally true. In his crucifixion series, Eric has courageously
done his own grief work, thereby preventing many of the emotional
difficulties that can arise when men can not effectively grieve.
But he has also facilitated the grief work of others, men and women.
As we view his paintings, we grieve, we participate spiritually
and emotionally in an honest look at two men in pain, the dying
father and the grieving son.
In
an interview with Eric Fitzpatrick last year, I first learned of
the very strong and positive influence exerted on his life by his
father, Judge Beverly T. Fitzpatrick. “My father really was
the good and caring person he was believed to be in this community.
I loved and admired him with all my heart,” he told me. Second,
I learned that Eric began his grieving during the months before
the Judge’s death, as Eric and his family visited and cared
for his father. The courage and dignity the Judge maintained throughout
his life was matched only by the constant concern he showed for
his family, even as he was dying of cancer. “He never stopped
trying to give something to us, no matter how great his pain,”
remembered Eric.
It
is this admiration and love for a father that I see as the primary
sources of energy in these paintings. These feelings are so strong
in the artist that they transform suffering into beauty, even in
the midst of a dark and heavy journey from life to death and back
again. The paintings began as quite ordinary expressions of feelings,
within the confines of artistic control, by an painter accustomed
to using this outlet. Only later did Eric consider sharing them
with a few friends. I was honored to see them early on and quickly
discovered their healing capacity. First I shared them with some
grieving clients in my counseling practice, and later I presented
them to other pastoral counselors at a national workshop. I soon
learned of their capacity to give people permission to grieve and
their potential for causing a room filled with professionals to
fall suddenly silent..
When
I reported my experiences to Eric, the idea of helping others in
grief immediately excited him. Clearly, his father’s compassion
for others is not dead. Personally, I find these paintings to be
a spiritual medium for strong feelings of my own. In my work with
chronically and sometimes terminally ill persons, and now also as
a seminary professor, I cannot turn away from the reality of death
or from the pain that it leads to in survivors. No one wants to
say a last good bye, No one wants to consider for long her own future
pain, his own future death.. But Eric has portrayed more than pain
and death -- he has reminded us that the force of life is always
stronger than death, and God’s love is always more powerful
than fear.
Thank
you for sharing you vision of hope, my friend. Thank you for sharing
what you have seen so that I and the many others who will view this
web site may look and be reminded of the love of God, the new life
we have been promised, and the place where there is no more pain,
where we do not have to say good byes, where we must no longer weep.
--
Jan Ramsey
Associate Professor of Pastoral Care
Luther Seminary |
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