3. Increase comfort level with difficult conversations

4. Anticipate biological and spiritual aspects occurring at the moment of death

6. Understand and help patients apply strategies for coping with death


Unit 7Section 2Exercise 4Chawky Frenn

The artist Chawky Frenn’s work wrestles with the issues of mortality, resurrection, spirituality, eros, and the life cycle. You can visit his gallery at http://chawkyfrenn.com/portfolio/index.htm . Look at the following paintings.

The dance:




Creation:

Hope:


Apprivoiser sa mort:

Read Mr. Frenn’s reflective essay. Answer the study questions.

I admit that I have encountered a lot of death in my life: from experiencing war and violence in Lebanon before emigrating to the US, to the death of my niece, who drowned at 23 months in the pool and whose body was picked up by my sister, to the death of my cousin at 23 years from leukemia, to the suicide of my brother-in-law, to aunts and uncles who died young from cancer and heart attack…

Indeed, I have been dealing with the theme of death and dying for over 25 years. Death and dying are daily events in one’s life. We are not born once only and we don’t die only once; death, like birth, is a daily occurrence in one’s life. My work has become a meditation, a way to reflect and to comprehend the daily interaction of Life and Death in one’s life. One of the insights that I gained is that Love is far greater than Death. Another one is: Life sprouts from Death as much as Death is inscribed in Life. One of the ways of helping people cope with death is to accompany them and help them find consolation in love, so love will not be a source of suffering and pain but wings to transform Death into the very seeds of Life.

 

What do I mean? A friend of mine has gone through severe depression after deciding with his wife –yielding to doctors’ advice and family pressure – to abort his 8 months child because of very severe handicap. After a life-transforming crisis, he wanted the death of his child to be a seed for life: he quit his job and got engaged in helping handicapped children and their parents, raising public and government funds for helping handicapped people live independently, and finding the resources, support and means to provide better living for handicapped people.

Isn’t this extracting Life out of Death?

Death is not the problem. The problem for me is to understand how some people are completely devastated with sickness and death and how other transform sickness and dying into strength to live fuller and love deeper than they can ever do. Amrita, a student of mine that I met in the early nineties, told me that she had cancer in her chest since she was 19. At the time I met her she was 22. I became her student when she told me: “My life is not about the cancer, cancer is only a small insignificant part of my life.” My God! What a statement to make! I knew that Amrita had so much to teach me. Amrita considered her cancer a gift from God to learn what she needs to learn in this lifetime, a gift to make her fly higher and faster than she could without it. She used her cancer as a mission, a mission to go and talk to cancer patients, try to change the way they perceive their cancer and help them focus more on the life energy in them. She wrote to me: “I believe that we live many lives and choose in each lifetime the conditions most conducive to our remembering the truth of who we are in God. For me it has been the condition we call cancer (and it is not the only condition that fuels my healing process.)” She struggled with her cancer until her death over two years ago at the age of 33. After her death, I met her mother- who also has cancer- and her sister. They told me that Amrita’s last words were:

“I’m not coming back, I learned what I needed to learn, I reached the Godhead.” I wish I could say these words on my deathbed.

Study questions

  1. Apprivoiser sa mort means “Taming one’s death.” How does the title of relate to the painting?
  2. Relate the painting “The dance” to Eric Hampton’s “By the light.”
  3. What is hope in the setting of one’s own death? What does the painting “Hope” say about hope? What evidence of hope do you see in Frenn’s other paintings?
  4. Frank nudity, doll’s heads, tryptiches and altar-like frames, skeletons all recur in Frenn’s paintings. How do you perceive their meanings?
  5. What does Chawky Frenn’s reflection on death add to your knowledge of him? How do his words relate to his paintings?