This week on Arizona illustrated medieval fencing in theory and practice It is so, so much fun being like, yeah, I'm the chick that sword fights A passion for painting saves the life of a Tucson artist I painted water and contrast, and it was healing.

It was soothing.

Surviving suicide loss There's still the edge of grief, but yeah, you can experience peace and a Memorial Day parade We're just celebrating them today.

Those who sacrificed their lives, you know, for our freedom so that we can be out here.

welcome to Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

We're back here on the University of Arizona campus, which is now mostly vacant.

We're in that period between the sheer joy of commencement and then planning and maintenance ahead of the summer sessions.

You know, for most people, community revolves around common interests and goals for the Ironwood Historic Swordsmanship Club.

Well, it's a love of medieval fencing and practices that brings them together.

We spent the day with them to find out what fascinates them about this period of time and how it imbues their lives with purpose and meaning.

Here are the Ironwood swordsmen HEMA is historical European martial arts.

We take existing manuals, translate them if need be, by the community, and then clubs like ours will go through those manuals, decipher what they're trying to tell us, and turn to competitive fencing.

Your fencing partner is going to be advancing into one of the biggest emphasis that we have here at Ironwood is just active sparring.

It's an individual sport, a physical sport, but it is also an intellectual sport.

And so it's almost like for me, a game of chess.

Being able to outsmart your opponent and outmaneuver your opponent is kind of what drew me to it.

A lot of these don't talk just about fighting, but they talk about how to view any sort of athletic activity, a mentality, how to interact with people in different ways but also just represent various European cultures through various time periods.

This is one of the main treatises that we study.

He talks about fencing with the German long sword, knife fighting, wrestling, fighting with staff.

This is the Royal Armories manuscript.

133.

The oldest European fencing manual that we have.

fighting.

This is actually a collection of fencing masters Very nice illustrations depicting early 14th century I'm the founder of Ironwood Historical Swordsmanship Club.

And historically, women didn't really sword fight too much.

But like modern era and HEMA having women and people of other identities and all backgrounds are totally welcome to sword fight.

I was kind of shy, little bubbly, and then as more time has progressed, I've settled in more to the leadership role because it is empowering.

It is so, so much fun being like, Yeah, I'm the chick that sword fights.

Understanding what they were talking about and how they approached fencing is probably the most important thing to me personally.

We do highly encourage people to give it a try, put some gear on swing swords just to really see how it feels because you're engaging with the texts in a physical way.

It's probably the best way to learn.

A lot of the principles of how you move your body is to generate force and find motor control, they all translate to various other sports and various other aspects of life.

I'm actually a woodworker originally by trade.

And the way we handle tools and the way you approach woodworking and it's the same thing as fencing.

It's safe both in the dynamic of the club and also in sparring.

The health benefits, the mental benefits that come from martial arts, it's just it's a great resource for so many people.

Do you have a special interest, skill or hobby that you cherish?

Something that gives you peace of mind and a sense of satisfaction.

Most people do.

Now for Tucson resident Maryanne Chisholm.

Her interest in art led her to becoming an acclaimed painter and illustrator And she says it saved her life My name is Maryanne Chisholm, and I'm an artist.

I paint and I also create NFTs, which are digital JPEGs, but often I add elements to them that you can't find in my traditional art, so it's always fresh and something kind of new.

I also do collage work and I write poetry.

I got started in the art world when I went to prison.

I spent 14 years in prison on a wrongful conviction.

I was not allowed to present my mental health as a defense and I'm diagnosed bipolar type 2 and OCD.

At trial, the prosecutor was asking the jury if a reasonable person would do this, and I wasn't a reasonable person.

I was really angry with the world when this happened.

I didn't understand how it came to be.

And I felt like I had nothing left to contribute at all.

I don't want to live.

I had nothing to live for.

Art gave me something to live for.

When I was in jail and ultimately prison, I created to pass the days and the days became paintings.

So each painting would be a representation of how I coped with that particular day.

Bright colors are reality.

It's life.

When I was there, I didn't really see a healthy tree or a real tree with leaves for years and years and years.

You could see them when you were walking into an office, but you would not see them.

It was dirt, industrial, orange and gray.

So I painted water and contrast, and it was healing.

It was soothing.

Since I got out of prison, everything changed.

my priorities changed, and I realized nothing is more important than love and compassion and helping other people.

It changed my entire directive of the way I think about everything.

People resonated with my art and I was surprised.

I was surprised at how popular I became.

I was surprised at how many people wanted my art.

I have 51,000 almost 52,000 followers on Twitter.

That's where the majority of my time is spent on social media.

I like lifting up other artists and helping promote them.

I relate to people who are artists because I think the best art comes from human suffering.

And I've been so blessed to come in when I came in.

The laws of attraction work, sometimes they're really slow, but they work.

So while everyone else was saying to me, You're never going to hold your husband again, you're never going to see your grandchildren.

You need to accept that you're going to die here because I was sentenced to 30 years.

I said, I'm so excited.

I'm going home.

I'm so excited that my husband and I are laying together.

I'm so excited that I get to see my child, my children, my grandchild, because I do not believe worry attracts better things.

I believe worry attracts more worry and more reasons to worry.

So even in your darkest hour, if you force yourself to think in a positive light, you will notice positive things begin to come, they are attracted to you.

And that's why I was determined not to leave bitter and angry.

The loss of a loved one by suicide can be shocking, confusing and painful.

Loss survivors, the close family and friends left behind may not be sure how to navigate their grief.

Next meet the Goguen's who share their experience of loss and how they found support and emotional healing.

The biggest thing when we realized that Paul had died from suicide was Absolute shock.

My whole body reacted to it and I lost track of time.

It left me in a feeling of of not feeling comfortable in my own skin.

I was gonna say you can feel like the rug is pulled out from under you.

But it's more than that.

It's like the floor has been ripped away too.

You have no foundation.

You have nowhere to stand.

And all you feel is you know, the pain and the grief.

I think that certainly the first six months were mostly just a blur of just making it through the day.

It was a lot of roller coaster emotions of like in some ways feeling more alive because everything felt so intense.

But then the lows were really, really low and it felt like sometimes this just up and down.

And I felt so raw and vulnerable and exposed.

Paul was great.

Paul was he was smart.

He was talented.

He was funny.

He was contemplative.

He was sensitive.

And he had no tolerance for B.S., though He always had this really cool sense of humor, a almost a kind of a dry sense of humor.

He takes after Dave, my husband Dave, in that regard.

We had the traditional dynamic of big sister, little brother kind of.

I thought he was annoying and he always wanted to hang out.

But definitely as we got older, we really started to connect more and just like really certainly had, you know, we really like music and got to talk about that and had more serious conversations and really had a good relationship.

Sometimes Paul could be moody.

There were times I worried about that a little bit.

Sometimes more than a little bit.

But a lot of the time, I really felt that he was going through the normal teenage relationship stuff and and that he was ok.

Which is one of the reasons it was, you know, really surprising when he did take his life by suicide.

I didn't know.

Is this typical teenage behavior?

Is it severe depression?

How do you how, how do you distinguish between that?

He was not super communicative about some of the things that were going on.

There was no like diagnosed anything that was happening at that time, though.

So in retrospect, can see maybe there's some deeper stuff that he was actually willing to really share.

But it's not that he didn't have the opportunity to share.

It's just I think he didn't know how to.

What I wish is that We talked about mental health issues.

We make that dinner table conversations.

We would talk about suicide.

I would ask questions, maybe not in relation to Paul, but ask questions about his friends.

Does he see is anybody experiencing any kind of depression and hopefully lead that.

13 years ago I was of the belief that if you talk about suicide, then you put the idea in a person's head.

And I've come to absolutely know that that is such a myth.

So after Paul had died, those days and weeks and really the week leading up to his memorial service.

People kept coming to our house and they wanted to do whatever they could, and it was wonderful.

Fortunately for us, we had people that were very supportive and knew how to be with us and knew how to support us and not necessarily try to fix us, just be there with us and be there within our grief.

We had friends and family that neighbors even that were very supportive that way.

And that's one of the things that helped us a lot.

When he died, I actually had just, it was my first week of college and I had just moved to Oregon a few weeks before that.

So I ended up flying home the next day and was here in town for a while.

I did end up deciding to go back to school and finish out the semester, which I, I don't know, that was a good choice or not, but it was definitely something that just kept me occupied.

I felt like I was going to go crazy if I stayed here and didn't do anything.

So after the initial shock and that flurry of activity that it happens with with you know, with a loss, with death, then you're left with the challenge of how do I put my.

How do I put my life back together again?

And it's... it's hard.

I think, for me, I think the thing that was most meaningful and most helpful for me, at least early on in that process, was to see that there actually other people have been through this and survived it and were living their life and finding meaning and were able to find some joy and stuff to do.

That was, that was helpful you know, that it can be done.

The challenges that were there for me specifically was that I felt like I should have been in this.

I'm starting college, I'm in the best time of my life.

Everything's new and exciting.

But the challenge was that I did feel this aloneness of I'm going through something that feels like everyone else around me has, you know, there the carefree hanging out and having fun and going to college where I didn't I felt like I was missing out on that and felt like I couldn't really talk to people about it either.

And it was a bunch of new people too.

And it's not like that easily comes up in conversation like, Hey, by the way, my brother just died.

For me that guilt and the coulda, shoulda, wouldas What did I see?

What didn't I see?

What should I have done?

What could I have done?

I felt that that guilt kept me prisoner.

I heard a person talk about reframing that word, guilt into regret.

And I have to tell you it just took away I mean, I remember, like, just breathing, saying, yeah, we all have regrets.

I regret that I didn't speak of suicide.

I regret that we didn't talk about mental health issues.

These are things that I regret.

As a family.

We definitely did grieve in different ways.

I think my dad and I tended to be a little more quieter in our grief, wanting a little more solitude.

I think my mom wanted to talk with more people and be more engaged socially, and I think there were certainly some.

I'm sure there was some conflict.

I don't actually remember a lot of what it was.

Chris and I did grieve differently.

And we were able to recognize that and realizing we weren't grieving the same.

There were some challenges along the way.

It's hard.

There are many times that I looked at Dave and Dave seemed to be so much more together than I was, and I was jealous of that.

And so I was comparing I was comparing his grief to my grief.

And there's no right or wrong way here.

It was a few years after after Paul had died, we were finding that the two of us, Paul's parents, the closest people to him, couldn't talk about Paul.

Like Paul was that elephant in the room.

You know, I would go to my support groups.

Dave would do what he needed to do.

But we couldn't we weren't able to come together until we made the decision to go to counseling.

And it was the best thing that we could have done.

I think the the uniqueness of sibling loss is that it it feels even more invisible of from like parental loss.

I feel like we don't hear about that as much.

And there are just unique challenges with especially being, you know, going from being a sibling to an only child and just some family dynamics in there.

I think I felt like I kind of had to hold my whole space for my parents, too, and like watching them go through that was heartbreaking and there's a lot to it.

And I think that, you know, I would get questions a lot of like, oh, how's your mom?

Or these things are like, well, I mean, she's not good either, but also I'm not good.

Like, I have my own loss in this too.

And yeah, I think it's just harder for younger people going through that to even have the spaces to talk about things.

I will remember Paul throughout the day, you know, still and there can be a little things that remind me of that and it still and there's a joy to that when those moments come.

You know, and that's one of the ways I think I still experience a relationship with him.

I mean, there's still the edge of grief, you know, underlying all that.

But but, yeah, you can experience joyful memories You can experience peace after a loss.

Yeah, so the grief definitely has evolved over time.

I think what makes it easier is that I really for me, like I got accustomed to, oh, this is what it feels like when like a wave is coming.

It's what it would feel like, the wave of emotion.

And instead of resisting it, I would just like accept that it was coming and it was going to.

I've been through it before.

I'm going to get through it again.

And that made it a little more palatable.

And I think just over time, that softens for me.

Paul's life may have ended here on Earth.

13 and a half years ago, but his story continues with my being open and talking about suicide being open and talking about mental health issues.

And that has brought much meaning into my life.

For information on finding a support group for survivors of suicide loss.

Visit EMPACTSOS That's EMPACTSOS.org Next, we revisit the sights, sounds and emotions of 2019 Tucson Estate's Memorial Day parade (upbeat marching band music) - This is our annual Memorial Day parade.

We have over 40 entrants, everyone is welcome to our community to come and enjoy this, we've done it for several years now.

I believe we're the only Memorial Day parade in Tucson.

- Memorial Day was started by Civil War veterans after the Civil War and that's part of what we're here to do is honor our ancestors and those who gave their lives to the country.

(horse hooves clopping) (engine roars) (marching band music) - Good morning!

God bless you!

- Well, I'm here because my mom is being honored in the parade.

She's a 99 year old World War II vet, the first captain in the army.

And she oversaw 200 cadets, she was a tough son of a gun.

(Jeff and woman laugh) It not that often you get to honor the people that fought for our country.

So to be in the only Memorial Day parade in Tucson, which is pretty cool.

And it's in our own backyard.

Or my mom's backyard, (woman laughs) I should say.

(Jeff and woman laugh) (engine roars) (crown member whistles) - [Man In Crowd] Yes!

Great Memorial Day!

- [Crowd Member] Whoo whoo whoo whoo!

(crowd members yelling) - [Man In Crowd] They're right behind-- - This was my first time out at the parade, actually and I'm really glad that I made it.

It's just people coming together to the community and to thank each other and to lean on one another and to enjoy our beautiful weather.

It's really good for the family and again of all ages, everyone enjoys it.

- I live here in the park and I'm always working, I'm usually on the road working.

And it's my first time home here.

It's great to see this kind of support for our country.

It is the greatest country in the world.

(triangle chimes) - [Man At Microphone] Robert G. Bethel, U.S. Navy.

(triangle chimes) Richard A. Follen.

U.S. Army.

(triangle chimes) (bugle plays "Taps") Edward J.B. Keylaco, U.S. Army.

(triangle chimes) - My daughter, my son, my stepfather.

My uncles are all veterans and so we're just celebrating them today, those who sacrificed their lives for our freedoms so that we can be out here and enjoying ourselves.

this year marks the 49th annual Memorial Day Parade at Tucson Estates.

It starts at 8 a.m. Monday, May 30th.

At Memorial Park.

5900 west Western Ways Circle in Tucson Estate's Like what you see on Arizona Illustrated.

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Thank you for joining us here on Arizona Illustrated.

I'm Tom McNamara.

We'll see you soon.