Art became medicine for grieving mother
She seems so cheerful. And yet Shirley Levene has lived the nightmare that most parents struggle to imagine. Ten years ago, the Waterloo mom took her 18-year-old son, Leejay, to have his wisdom teeth taken out under general anesthetic. But no one saw, until it was too late, that there was a kink in the tube supplying him with oxygen.
Leejay couldn’t breathe. Doctors tried to revive him, but failed. He was taken off life support the next day.
“I felt like I had a hole in my stomach,” says Shirley.
Her father had died the year before. The rabbi had given her some advice to overcome her grief. “You tell the story, every single day,” he said. She did that, in her own way. Leejay had produced mountains of art since early childhood. Shirley had saved it all. Soon after his death, she threw herself into the project of turning that art into calendars, cards and prints which are sold to earn money for charity.
The very first calendar featured Leejay’s self-portrait in black-and-white photography, paint and collage on the cover.
It raised $13,000 for the intensive care unit at Grand River Hospital, which used the money to buy a blood fluid warmer. It’s a device that makes blood transfusions safer by preventing hypothermia.
Leejay’s warm and sensitive personality shines through in his work. There’s the whimsical humour of a jogging cucumber, or a carrot yelling “Don’t eat me!” as a cat gleefully clutches it. There are the thoughtful pencil and pen-and-ink drawings, and the brooding, colour-saturated landscape paintings.
Shirley gets companies and organizations to sponsor the production costs of the calendar, so that when they are sold for $10 each, every penny goes to the charity. It’s a different beneficiary each year; Humane Society, Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery,
Meals on Wheels. Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been raised.
Levene adds value by getting celebrities, from the mayor of Waterloo to CBC personality Rick Mercer, to contribute words of support for the calendars. (Our interview Monday ended on a thrilling note for her, with the news that actor Colm Feore had sent her his quote and photo for the 2019 calendar.)
The 2018 calendar, supporting the Child Witness Centre, can be bought at leejaylevenecalendars.eventbrite.ca
Shirley says many people congratulate her on taking her misfortune and turning it into something good for society.
But “I don’t look at it like that,” she says.
Rather, these calendars are her therapy, her way of holding onto Leejay.
“It keeps him here still,” she said.
“It’s more than a memory. It’s a real, physical thing.”
Sometimes, she wonders if he can see what she’s doing, from wherever he is. She fears he might be embarrassed that she is showing the world his childhood work. Perhaps he would disapprove. She can almost hear him saying, “What the heck!” to her.
But Shirley has a husband and two other sons. She can’t collapse. She must get out of bed every day and put one foot in front of the other, the best way she can. The calendar project helps her cope with the pain that has dulled over time, but will never be gone.