Loss is a big deal to me....
10 years ago, I suffered the unthinkable. I woke to my newborn daughter, still warm but she was not breathing and there was blood under her head. I jumped up in hysteria and tried to revive her. I yelled to her father to call 911 and he scurried around, trying to find his phone. The paramedics came as I was administering CPR and whisked her away. I was half naked and scared beyond belief. I struggled to get my head together and put some clothes on and we jumped into the car and drove to the hospital. The doctor met us as we entered the building.
She was gone.
I can't even begin to tell you how that day affected me in every part of my being. The coroner said it was SIDS. I still don't believe him.
I remember going home numb. I would look through her pictures over and over again. I finally picked up a piece of lined notebook paper and drew a picture of her, I had not drawn anything in years. And once it was done, I put the pencil down.
6 years later, it was not a loss that provoked the urge to draw, I just wanted to see if I still could. I saw a picture in a magazine and I really liked the lighting they used in the photo so I drew Leonardo DiCaprio. When I was done, I was surprised to see that my skills had improved during my hiatus and maybe since I was suffering with chronic pain, I should try and make a go of it. At the time, I was on disability from my job as a stock broker and ............well ............I never really even LIKED math!
When someone tells you that they wish they were an artist, they have this romantic notion that it is all about painting or drawing all day. The reality is nowhere near that. If it were not for the love of what I do, I would give up. But there is real joy in being able to create an emotional response in someone out of a work of art that you create.
So here we are back at loss is a big deal to me..........
I met a gentleman a little over a year ago. He is a lonely older man who wears his heart on his sleeve. When I first met him, he spoke reverently of his dearly departed wife of almost 42 years of whom he had lost about 4 years before to cancer. You could see the war in his eyes between devotion and such sorrow. I thought about it for a while and then I asked him if he would honor me with the task of taking his favorite picture of her or the 2 of them and let me recreate it for him. He broke down in tears when I asked him. It took 2 attempts and his wife told me when it was finished, just a whisper from the other side. I brought it to him and, as tears rolled down his weathered cheeks, he asked what he owed me and I told him he already paid....
With a broken heart.