Endings and Artists

I heard an artist speak the other day about some of her work. She pointed to a couple textiles and said something to this effect: "I realized I would probably never have that particular experience again, so I gathered up pieces of things.  I wasn't sure what I would do with them, but I knew I wanted to keep them until inspiration arrived".

I am not an artist.  My only medium is this - words.  I am horribly unobservant generally - or to put the best possible face on it, I am highly focussed.  And maybe a tad literal.  I was struck by the artist's having a sense of certainty that she would never pass that way again.  I have missed far more of those than I have caught.  I see them only in retrospect.   With people, often I didn't see it until the ending had arrived and already gone.

Would it be different if I had that artist's sensibility?  That I saw in that moment that this was an ending?  Would it change the experience? Would I behave differently?  Would I have fewer regrets, more regret?  Thinking of the endings that are losses through death or some demise:   Relationships gone.  People gone.  Would I have wanted to know that day was an ending?

My medium is words; so in considering endings, I hear the last words spoken between us.   My Dad's to me were "everything is all messed up" and my response something like - well, yeah, it probably is.  My Mom's "Can I have more stuffing?" Mine - well, sure, it's Thanksgiving.  With a cherished uncle, one of us said "See you for lunch Tuesday".  A sister who died too young, I am horrified to say I don't remember.  And with a lost relationship: "I promise we will talk about this".  Relationship lost, promise lost.
In each, I didn't know those would be our last words.  I gathered no items to mark the time and space as the artist did; I just took the fallible memory of the words.  Had I known I was sitting in an ending, I don't think I would change the parents or the sister; those days had come.  With the uncle, I would say - no wait, Tuesday is too late, let's make it Sunday.  Silly, but true.  He would be just as gone, the hole he left just as big.  But I would have tried to change that ending.  Somehow.  Make it bigger, make it last longer.  Something.
And that lost relationship?  Had I known that was our last day, I would have tried something.  Probably the ending was as certain as the others, but the ensuing edges were more jagged than they needed to be.  Or so I think.  A little more thoughtful observation here, a little more sober courage there.

Final acts are on the mind these days.  Endings looked different to the artist, perhaps they can sound different to me next time.

With thanks to Fritzi Huber, the artist.