With Love

03/10/2020

With Love

My wonderful mother, grandmother and artist, Constance Genevieve Brown Koefoed, died on December 29, 2019 as I was feeding her a spoon full of soap in the hospital. She was ninety-six and full of vitality right up to the last six months of her life. Having lost “the other gal in my life”, my daughter Christina Gabriella Milagro Koefoed, almost ten years earlier on February 15, 2009 at the tender age of twenty-two; I find the grief to sometimes be intolerable. Having your only child taken away from you too soon and now your mother, the next most important person in your life for so many wonderful years, challenges your will to keep on going. They were so simpatico and drew together for hours with love, their hands never leaving the sketching pad. When I was angry, my young daughter use to say “Dad, take a chill pill!”. Like her grandmother she already knew life was to be lived with love and not anger. And “Grandmama Connie” was there for all her grandchildren with love. She taught me the world was a better place if you lived your life with no regrets, realizing always that “less is more”. It was her mantra and I believe the best explanation for the reason why she lived such a long and fruitful life. By never saying anything bad about someone was her way of acknowledging everyone and accepting everyone with love. In a deeper sense being a natural artist with the pen, pencil or even the brush made Mom understand human nature better than most of us. Her art evolved in many directions but always came back to simply admiring humanity. This positive affirmation of life with love had to rub off on someone close to her and it did. On me. She always reminded me that everything comes from something. Like the deep love you have for someone comes from having grown up with love. There is spirituality within all of us. We are all like buds in a garden called life, waiting to be nurtured and caressed with love as our buds become flowers among a garden full of variety. I suspect my mother was the flower in that garden that was always a little bit different. No wonder my mother always surrounded herself with plants and flowers. She was that five year girl who drew wedding dresses on toilet paper because art was so personal to her. She was that thirteen year old tom boy who blooded a fellow male student for bullying her sister. And she was that twenty one year old art student during World War II, who was told by the dean that she would be “uncomfortable” dancing with soldiers from around the world, because of the color of her skin. I can only imagine she was the biggest flirt at that USO canteen, saying later “the tall Texans and Aussies were my favorites.” And yes she was on a roll by marrying a Dane in 1950 in America with love, where states like Virginia still made interracial love unlawful. This was a young woman who was deeply loved by both her parents. They taught her with love to follow her passions and dreams no matter where they would lead. When she became the mother of two boys they were hers with love forever. When someone roughed up my baby brother for innocently wiping snow off of his car, Mom tracked the man down and got an apology. When the public school system was failing, Mom found a better education for her “boys” with love. She sent the both of us to a private school. And paid for it as a single mother by holding down three jobs at once. We did not disappoint. Both of us attended Ivy League schools thanks to Mom with love. And when it was the early seventies and America was in turmoil after the challenging sixties, I attended my first antiwar demonstration with my girlfriend in Washington, DC in 1972. And of course with my Mom. She never lost sight of mankind’s suffering and gave to charities with love. The watercolor she created from experiencing that demonstration she named “DC PROTEST, 1972”. It was abstract and drawn with muted tones and shadows, suggesting conflict. But you cannot live to be ninety-six years of age and be full of hate and anger. Her last words to me were “Where do you think you are going?” Nowhere Mom, where you are not going. Only with love can you conquer all. And yes Mom you taught me that.

With Love,

Your Son Christopher