Marge Cady
“Nana”
Marge Cady is my grandmother.
It’s been seventeen years since I could sit with her, but I feel closer than ever to her.
She was an extraordinary woman. Always ahead of her time. Always creative. Always learning.
The album cover image is a portion of this larger oil painting. While my Nana’s work was primarily pastels, she had this painting displayed in a special place in her home above her bed. Now it lives in mine.
Mystery
The image of the woman in the hat may be one of the earliest paintings we have of hers. I’m not sure she ever intended anyone to keep it or share it. But after accompanying a family member through end-of-life this painting resurfaced. Because it was so unlike Nana’s later work no one chose it. But I felt a deep connection to that mysterious figure. I thought of her as a mysterious older woman. But then my Aunt Anne Cady told me it was actually a painting of my Aunt who had passed away, painted when she was a little girl. It had so much more power after I learned that. She seems to be looking out to sea on a stormy day. I love her for her quiet. For her interest in the world. For the way she tilts her head. For her red rain boots. I love that I can see my Nana’s brushstrokes. I love that my Aunt had kept it all those years. I love that somehow, it ended up part of this album, this album that is part of the grieving and the honoring.
I also love it because it is a reminder of how it is never too late to pursue new creative paths. Nana did so many amazing things in her life, but it was really the last fifteen years of her life when her painting took off. The week she died at age eighty-nine there was a new show of hers up in a local gallery. She painted right up to the end.
This painting has a magical way of shifting throughout the day. When my bookshelf lamp is on at night the painting has so much warm gold and earthy tones. In the morning light it has so many silvers and blues. It always seems to be transforming, just as my understanding of grief, family, and creativity is also always changing.
“In Vermont, especially, it is a privilege to paint the sunset light, pink on the mountains, pale and misty on the distant trees... I love watching something appear, as if it almost grew out of the paper - a yellow field, a blue-purple mountain, a lake, shining in the sunlight.”
— Marge Cady
“Her curiosity about life stayed
sharp and fresh”
“Life is a gift and an adventure … a treasure - each day we add to that treasure, and what we put in adds up to what we’ll have when we are twenty, thirty, or fifty years old. Our treasure will be made up of the richness of our efforts.” - Marge Cady
November
The mountains, misty blue against the pale, pale sky
Behind November trees
And yellow field.
The garden, put to bed, stripped down to stubs.
Bare branches of the lilacs.
And from the birch trees, amber leaves, heart shaped, still cling, fall slowly in the morning breeze.
It’s time to say good bye,
To fold what tents we have. All things must end - a love, a season, a life.
We know we resist, hang on, clutch tight, hold fast, postpone the last farewell. In Africa a baby will be born. We have to wait for that, and maybe then another and another.
Life will go on.
We send blessings to them all
And love and grace and peace
When we are part of the Nowhere, the Somewhere,
The Everywhere.
Novembers will come and go
The mountain will still stand
Strong against the sky
And love and trust and hope
Like Spring, will always come.
- Marge Cady November 2005
Writer and teacher
“Once retired from teaching, she enrolled in classes with local Vermont artists studying watercolors, drawing, oil and pastels. She also initiated and directed the Writer’s Workshop in Middlebury that met for 13 years in the basement of the Ilsley Library, lovingly called “The Basement Bunch.”
Writing stayed very much part of Marge’s every day life and her poem “November” exemplifies what informed her life.”
“For years, around the edges of my career as a teacher of creative writing, I had experimented with oil and watercolor painting. Ten years ago, retired from teaching and recently widowed, I discovered pastels… They are a gentle, easy, forgiving medium … uncomplicated, because the rich subtle colors are all there.” - 2002
“ I love to paint in pastels. I can be so completely absorbed in the colors and the form, in the way the light falls, where it lands, that I forget everything else.”
“It was her generosity of spirit that led Marge to work within the community, serving in many civic organizations relating to health and education. Working with Hospice Volunteers Services was just one more extension of it.”