family – Mara Blom Schantz https://mbsgallery.com Fine Art Photography Sun, 19 Jun 2016 22:21:00 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.1.1 https://mbsgallery.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/cropped-M-32x32.png family – Mara Blom Schantz https://mbsgallery.com 32 32 Remembering my Mother. https://mbsgallery.com/2016/06/19/remembering-my-mother/ https://mbsgallery.com/2016/06/19/remembering-my-mother/#respond Sun, 19 Jun 2016 22:21:00 +0000 https://artisticimpressionsbymara.com/dev/2016/06/19/remembering-my-mother/ Continue reading Remembering my Mother.]]>
My mom with my boys a few weeks after she was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. She died about 11 months later. My goodness they look too young to watch go through something so sad. And, she looks so beautiful here, not sick. This is how I hope they remember her.

Today is Father’s Day. Today I celebrate my own father and my husband for their commitment to my boys and to me. But it is also the day my mother died. Last Sunday was her 70th birthday and today is the day she died. One week apart, a week after her 63rd birthday. Sometimes I forget she is gone. Even now, after seven years I will wake up in the morning and have to remember that my dream isn’t real, that she is not living and we can’t talk and laugh and cry and drink a margarita or some wine together and we can’t hug each other. But, most days I remember. It doesn’t hurt so much any more to be a motherless daughter.

I don’t usually cry anymore when I talk about her like I did in the first years. My sadness is more a dull ache, like the place where I cut my hand a few months ago and had stitches and healed, but still hurts sometimes. It is not the slice and throb that it first was when the glass sliced my hand and the stitches were new. The ache is more an abstract longing for her being able to see Nick graduate and her excitement that he is headed to Florida for college and new adventure. It is more the yen to hear her raucous laughter as she told something she thought was utterly hilarious. It is the hope that my boys will remember her voice as she told them something was “disgusting”. It is remembering what fun we had together when she came to visit me when I was studying abroad in Spain and we traveled around together, and knowing that we will never take a trip together again.

I often look at the photograph of my own grandmother who died when I was nine. I wonder about her. I wonder what she loved, what made her happy, and sad and angry. I wonder many things because I never knew her. But I feel like I know her through the portrait I have on my wall. I feel like I know a little something of her. I hope that my boys will remember their Gram through the image of the three of them together. I hope they will remember her laugh and her voice and the special things she did for them – like get Nick 11 scoops of ice cream on his 11th birthday, a few months before she died. I hope that Johnny will remember her because he was not quite nine when she left, the same age as I was when my own grandmother left me.

My mom and me on my wedding day almost 22 years ago. She was 48 years old – just a few years younger than I am today. It is still seems crazy that she is not here anymore.
]]> https://mbsgallery.com/2016/06/19/remembering-my-mother/feed/ 0 The end of an era https://mbsgallery.com/2012/05/03/the-end-of-an-era/ https://mbsgallery.com/2012/05/03/the-end-of-an-era/#respond Thu, 03 May 2012 18:44:00 +0000 https://artisticimpressionsbymara.com/dev/2012/05/03/the-end-of-an-era/ Continue reading The end of an era]]> My Dad, John Blom, just sold the building that has housed his studio, John Blom Custom Photography for 25 years. He told me it was a done deal yesterday and today I am feeling a little melancholy. Don’t get me wrong, I am so happy for him as he has been trying to sell for a while now. But, that studio was such a huge part of my life, I feel like there should be a memorial service or something. I remember when my parents opened their new “dream” studio in 1988. I was a sophomore in college and couldn’t be there for the grand opening which really bummed me out. I had worked for them in their photography studio at the old location all during high school and the summer after my freshman year of college. I felt like it was a part of me and I so wanted to be there to support them. I think I sent flowers. That dream studio supported all of us for so long. So much has happened there! I worked there every summer home from college and after graduation while I was waiting to start law school. I can’t even count the number of brides that I met with, number of weddings I helped photograph, and number of wedding albums I ordered during those years. I worked there during my first two winter home from law school and when my husband and I had our engagement session done. I worked there during my first summer home from law school when I was dating my husband. I used the bathroom at the studio (I had my own key) when I would secretly come home to see my husband and stay with him. I didn’t want him to know that I had to do things like poop! I remember calling there from my apartment in San Francisco incessantly the day that the Laguna Fire was spreading over the hills, only to be told that “all circuits were busy.” I remember my dad telling me how his clients called him after their houses had just burned down asking, hoping, praying that he could print their treasured family portraits for them once again. I worked there the summer my mom got sick with cancer and did all of the sales appointments that she would have done. I flew over and worked there a few times each month while my mom was sick. Every client that I met with was so kind and sensitive, always asking after my mom and telling me that they knew all about my boys and me from her telling them over the years. Each day I was there, my dad and I would go out to lunch together and drive home together. It was a hard, sad time, but also very comforting to be in a place that I knew so well. After my mom died, I came back every so often for a short time to help my dad out at the studio. It was sad and comforting all at the same time. But, it had lost some of its sparkle that my mom had brought. After she died, I used to sit in my mom’s office and look around and imagine her talking to me as she had on those many days that I worked there. I know that it was hard for my dad to be there after she died, hard for him to take on her role as well as maintain his own, hard for him to run the business alone that they had built together. So, it didn’t come as a surprise when he said he was selling the building and would go back to working out of his house. I know it is the right thing for him to do, but it will be sad to visit this summer and not be able to stop by and walk to Rose’s with him or drive by and see the familiar display windows and his logo. It will be hard to realize that part of my life is gone forever.

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