pameladean: (Default)
[personal profile] pameladean
On the desk next to me is a dream-catcher that Reen Brust made for David and me on the occasion of our tenth wedding anniversary. There's a black crow feather, a string of three pearls of descending size, separated by gold beads also of descending size; a structure of tiny white beads alternating with beads that look black but really have a blue sheen, like a crow's wing. There are two rings of beads separated by a cobweb of thread. Depending from the top of the string of pearls, and hanging in the open middle of the dream-catcher when it's hung up properly, is a little golden charm, an open fan. It hung in our bedroom window in our old house on Minnehaha Avenue until we moved. Then David didn't have a permanent room for a while, and then his room was being built and in chaos, so the dream-catcher came to live in my room, where it still abides.

Reen said when she gave it to us that she knew it wasn't quite right, but the only name she had for the piece was "Lady, here's your fan."

Reen died in her sleep on Wednesday night or Thursday morning. I had not seen much of her for years; she was an avid smoker, and while I had sat through many, many smoke-filled gaming sessions, music parties, and dinner parties with her and her family, at some point I lost my tolerance for smoke and had to stay away. David had similar problems. But we still have the dream-catcher.

Everything that Reen did had layers and elaborations, multiple meanings; and it all reached both into the past and into the future. She excelled beyond measure in the making of connections, intellectual, creative, and particularly emotional ones: she was a poet who worked not in words but in time and thought. I'm glad David and I have a piece of one of her poems.

Pamela

Date: 2010-10-09 10:14 pm (UTC)
rosefox: Green books on library shelves. (Default)
From: [personal profile] rosefox
A lovely remembrance. I'm so sorry for your loss.

Date: 2010-10-09 10:18 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] inlaterdays.livejournal.com
I'm so sorry for your loss.

Date: 2010-10-09 10:24 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] casacorona.livejournal.com
Thanks, Pamela. That's beautiful.

I didn't really know Reen, but I've known so many people she touched. I'm so sorry for her loss.

Date: 2010-10-09 10:30 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sartorias.livejournal.com
She sounds wonderful. I am sorry for your loss.

Date: 2010-10-09 11:42 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] txanne.livejournal.com
I'm sorry for your loss. I wish I'd met her.

Date: 2010-10-10 12:00 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jackiejj.livejournal.com
I'm sorry, Pamela.

Date: 2010-10-10 12:50 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] honoria.livejournal.com
I'm so sorry.

Date: 2010-10-10 01:35 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] coffeeem.livejournal.com
This is the first I heard. My god.

Date: 2010-10-10 02:38 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] willshetterly.livejournal.com
I'm glad you have one, too.

Date: 2010-10-10 06:11 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mgs.livejournal.com
Thank you for this. I know Reen would have loved the description in the last paragraph. It sums up things that I would have had to use many more words and examples to try to sketch around without being able to really name the heart.

Date: 2010-10-10 11:45 am (UTC)
ext_6283: Brush the wandering hedgehog by the fire (Mrs Tiggywinkle)
From: [identity profile] oursin.livejournal.com
I'm so sorry for your loss.

Date: 2010-10-10 01:03 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] bunsen-h.livejournal.com
I'm sorry for your loss. I've been trying to remember if I'd have met her -- it's been a long time since my first Minneapolis cons.

Date: 2010-10-10 03:28 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ladymondegreen.livejournal.com
That's a beautiful tribute. She sounds like a wonderful person to have known. I hope her poems, whether unfinished, as she would have it, or not, continue to illuminate your life.

Date: 2010-10-10 10:50 pm (UTC)
ext_14638: (Default)
From: [identity profile] 17catherines.livejournal.com
I'm sorry for your loss.

Date: 2010-10-11 04:03 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mplscorwin.livejournal.com
I recognize her so well in that title. Thanks Pamela.

Date: 2010-10-14 05:06 am (UTC)

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