My Story
Over the course of three years, leading up to the Covid pandemic, my husband, Jeff, and I lost three of our four parents unexpectedly. His mother died about 30 years prior. Those three years brought a lot of change to our lives, as we adjusted to life without our parents and retired the companies we had started together 20 and 30 years ago. Amidst all that grief, I found myself navigating an elusive chronic illness. Through all the change and challenge, I have found joy and resilience, and now I paint, inspired, from that place of hope and agency. So, this is a story of hope and beauty in the wake of loss and change.
Some of that change and loss also garnered love and joy in my life. When my father was diagnosed with a terminal blood disease precipitated by pneumonia, he knew he didn’t want to suffer nor drag out the anticipatory grief of his wife and his children. The last 26 days of his life were magical and transformative for our relationship.
As I faced the first anniversary of his passing I wasn’t sure how I would cope. I found myself dreaming in images. They were clear, visceral. After a week of such dreams, I bought some paints and canvases. I came home and let my brush bring those images from my dreams to life, and I quickly found myself doing well at art shows. And then I got sick.
I spent most of 2019 in various hospitals, a horrid nursing home, and finally, in the best rehab unit ever. Jeff prepared and sold our home, and when I was discharged from the rehab unit, I moved into our current home, and began finding a new rhythm. Having lost the use of my arms, I was unable to paint for the better part of a year, and had to relearn gross and fine motor movements. I transformed from an avid writer, to someone who found herself asking her husband and caregiver for help finding my words.
Painting is, perhaps now even more than when those dreams initially inspired my brushwork, a deeply emotional, spiritual means of communicating my deepest thoughts and feelings. When my mind can’t conjure the words to tell a story, to take in and process data, or articulate the way it did when I earned degrees in language, my brush, my hands, and my soul, say more than ever before.
