In grief, art can help transcend time and space

Readers relate cultural experiences that helpes overcome despair

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By Vesa Sirén
     
     "My wife came down with schizophrenia. The depression that followed was short, but deep. She committed suicide", says an artist who had been married for 25 years.
     He is one of the readers who answered a request in column from February 2nd, asking readers to describe how art helped in the grieving process.
     He was left alone with two children. "The marriage was the happiest that I know. The blow was a terrible one."
     The Kuhmo Chamber music festival helped in coping with the grief.
     "During the next ten years I would cry till my shirt got wet. Two to three concerts every day."
     The feeling can still surge again, sparked by a the right tune or word.
     "But music has carried me through, and given strength to go on.
     
For many readers, art gives shape to feelings that they carry inside them. There is comfort in knowing that someone has felt the same way, beyond time and space.
     Out of dozens of respondents, many mentioned the composer Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750).
     "In the grips of anguish over the end of a marriage of 20 years, I was listening to De Profundis, recorded in Notre Dame", says respondent MK.
     "It was stunning that hundreds of years ago Bach has felt just like I did in my pain, and that the composition is based on a text that was written hundreds of years before that. The writer of the text had the same emotions. How very strange."
     Similar feelings were expressed by respondent MM over W.A. Mozart's Piano Concerto no. 23.
     "The adagio seemed to be completely in tune with my feeling of grief, and listening to it always brings peace and clarity to my feelings, no matter how chaotic they might be."
     Rauni Mattas had lost her husband, when she saw an exhibition by painter Kaija Mäenpää, who had also suffered personal tragedy.
     "She painted her grief into these paintings. When I left that exhibition, I was free of everything. I had been cleansed."
     
There can also be comfort in the permanent character of art and nature.
     "The stars in the sky help in seeing one's own problems in perspective. I do not think that the universe had been created so that I might feel bad", one reader writes.
     The Book of Psalms and Japanese tanka poetry also bring a perspective of the eternal.
      "Ultimately we are all the same. Thousands of years ago or today, nomads or urban dwellers; the same pains, sorrows, and joys."
     There is also escape from reality. The Egyptian by Mika Waltari brought one reader to another place after the reader's child had died.
     
The small column sparked memories from as far back as half a century.
      Harriet Nurmi, 85, remembered the death of her husband. How she had identified the body after the accident, how she had put the children to bed, how everything seemed to be over.
     "On the radio they were playing (Georg Friedrich) Händel's Largo. The music opened blocked channels inside me. It was as if I were at the gates of heaven - separated from everything that was worldly", she writes.
     "I did not cry, but a tremendous tension was released when I listened to Largo. When I went to sleep, I fell into a deep slumber for the first time since I heard the news. The next morning everything seemed easier. My husband's life continued in our children. I had to be strong to work on their behalf.
     Now the children are grown up and the grandchildren are also on the verge of adulthood.
     " Largo raised me from the abyss to dry land. Does art help in grief? It helped me."
     
I never imagined how close to me some of the stories might come.
     A colleague from a neighbouring department sent me an e-mail. Journalist Katri Kallionpää told about her throat cancer diagnosis, for which the statistical likelihood of survival was less than 50 percent.
     This mother of three wondered how she might preserve a mother's love. She took the children to music class. Much more valuable than stock portfolios is to give the children "the ability to express their feelings and share them with others".
     As the cancer treatments were going on, a gastric tube was needed, but the music lessons continued.
     "My fear was alleviated by the thought that death might be something similar to falling asleep. I also took comfort in the idea that death is the state in which I had been before I was born. Something similar might have been going through the mind of Johann Sebastian Bach when he composed the final chorale of the St. John Passion: Ruht wohl - Sleep well.
     Then the youngest child started to play the cello.
     "There was some defiance there. I knew well, that playing the cello means a transportation commitment of many years for the parent. I thought that I simply do not have the time to die, now that I have to keep hauling the cello around.
     This has been going on for more than three years.
     "But I have a bad habit of being moved to tears whenever I hear them play in a performance", she writes.
     "I am completely recovered."
     
It is nice to read about happy endings, and to pass on the praise of the readers to let the artist know. Satu Toukkari saw a painting by Pekka Vuori in the window of an art gallery.
     "It was simply a chair made out of twigs on a meadow: a strong green colour, and elsewhere, a warm yellow light. I saw nothing else, even though the walls were covered with paintings."
     Toukkari bought the painting and looked at it for weeks on her home sofa.
     "I felt like I was sitting on that light chair. The warm yellow light coming from behind the chair felt like it was warming my back. In the painting a few large branches were growing out of the chair. Those branches gave me hope."
     Toukkari wanted to thank the artist, but she had the wrong address. Now the greetings have been forwarded.
     "This warms my heart. I can't help it", the artist said. It is clear that Vuori was commissioned for the main illustration for this article.
     
Grief can be expressed in many ways, including the production of art. Art courses, poetry, and choir singing, when "focusing on a difficult score helped me forget about sad thoughts for a moment".
      Pirkko Suppanen was caught in a cycle of surgeries after breast cancer. She illustrated her experiences in a cartoon course held by Katja Tukiainen. The feedback was helpful. "I felt that I was understood, and that I left some phase of my grief behind me.
     
Solace can appear into a person's life in unexpected places.
      Rakel Hyvärinen's husband, who was injured in the war, died in 2000. The next day Hyvärinen was picking nettles near the Mankkaa landfill in Espoo, when she heard the sound of a flute.
     A young boy was practicing next to the landfill, and Hyvärinen, who was nearly 80 years old, sat amidst the junk to listen.
     "Could you play me something? My husband died yesterday."
     The boy played two tunes. Hyvärinen felt "a blessed calm" for the first time in a long time.
     "A real nostalgia concert, at a familiar landfill. There's nothing to worry about. A boy like that - we still have that kind of youth."
     
But what if the comfort does not come?
     When the son of Kyllikki Pitkänen died, the grief was "total", but "life must be lived - days have to be brought to evening".
     Six months later a trio was practicing Christmas songs at her home, and when the room was filled with the sounds of White Christmas she noticed that she was feeling joy.
     "I had to say it right away to the player", she writes.
     "It felt amazing. I had thought that I would never be happy again."
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 14.4.2006

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VESA SIREN / Helsingin Sanomat
vesa.siren@hs.fi