by Sandi Amorello

One of the worst things that happened after Drew died was that as the days and weeks and months dragged on…I realized that I no longer wanted to do any of the things that used to bring me joy.  Art…antiquing…nothing appealed to me.  It was like suffering two deaths. The death of my husband…and the death of the part of me that was passionate…and joyful.

I am an artist.  Drew was an artist, too.  We loved antiquing together…searching for silly, quirky things that we adored.  We were both extremely creative…that was something that was woven into our everyday lives.   I cannot describe the sadness that overcame me when I realized that I had lost all of that, as well as Drew.  I felt an ache inside of me that came from a deep, deep place.  A place that just belonged to me.  My creative, artistic spirit had been killed.  It was gone, and the tears that flowed from my eyes came from a well so deep, there was nothing…not even an echo of hope.  Because the thought of losing that part of me was like losing my own soul.  Not just my soul mate, but my soul.  I could not imagine how life would ever be worthwhile again if my own passions had been taken from me, along with my husband.

I suddenly and unexpectedly found myself grieving two losses.

Then one day, something miraculous happened.  I woke up on a particular morning in June…about half a year after Drew’s death…and I could literally smell oil paints…and turpentine.  I remember waking up, seeing the beautiful early summer sunlight streaming into my bedroom…and smelling oil paints.

I could not get to the art supply store fast enough.  I needed to start fresh and buy everything new…a new beginning…new paints, new brushes…and new turpentine.

I hadn’t painted in oils since I was in college.  And even then, I hadn’t used them much. I had, however, spent most of my teenage years working in oil paints.  My very first painting, done at school in the fifth grade, was in oils.  The painting that caught the principal’s eye and inspired him to request that I do another similar one for his office.  WOW!  Talk about an ego booster.  Then my teacher mentioned to my mother that I had some apparent artistic inclinations…and, voila’, my art career had begun. For the next half dozen years, I took art lessons and spent much of those Saturdays painting with oil paints, exclusively.

They may have been messy and not particularly environmentally friendly, but they made me happy.   Apparently, that feeling was still deep inside me, waiting to be rediscovered.

That August we were invited to a friend’s guesthouse on their idyllic farm in Vermont.  My children rode off to camp on the minibus at 8:15 each weekday morning.  Meanwhile…I spent 8 hours each day, child-free and unfettered…drinking really good French roast coffee…eating pints of freshly picked raspberries from the local produce stand… hiking…reading…and listening to the birds sing.   Best of all…I could paint.  And paint…and paint.   I painted outside, each day.  It was my heaven on earth.

The first day… I set up my easel on the back porch.  I picked glorious white hydrangea from the front garden…arranged them in a vintage pottery vase I had purchased the day before at an antique store…and placed it on top of a wonderful cotton, checkerboard blanket. It was a recent purchase also.  Vintage.  I had the feeling it was once used as a beach blanket…or was spread on the grass under a beautifully laid out picnic dinner…under the stars long, long ago, but that was probably just the romantic in me.  I also plunked down some luxuriously ripe, downy skinned apricots that I picked up at the local farm stand.

I remember picking up my brush.  After that, I lapsed into some sort of trance until about mid afternoon.  I think I stopped once for ten minutes when I realized I had forgotten to eat all day.  By the time I needed to re-enter reality and pick up the children…I had a finished painting. I remember bringing it inside of the house and propping it up against a wall.  I stood back, looked at it…and promptly burst into tears.

Looking at the painting I had just spent the morning working on…in that beautiful Vermont early August light…I was completely overcome by a feeling of joy unlike anything I had experienced in a very long time.

I will never forget that feeling.  It was a feeling of renewal and rebirth.  It was as if I had come alive again, in a very important way. I had reclaimed a part of myself that I thought was lost forever…dead.   But it wasn’t!  I wanted to not only cry…but dance and sing as well. In fact, I am sure I did just that.  I also thanked God, the universe, and whomever else I thought deserved honorable mention… for giving me back that piece of myself.  For giving me a sign.  A sign that my life wasn’t over.  A sign that maybe it was just beginning.  A different life from the one I had planned…but, my life, nonetheless.

I looked at that painting with tears of joy rolling down my cheeks…  mixed with tears of sadness…because I so wanted Drew to see it.   I wanted him to smell those oil paints…and that turpentine.  But it was not his life anymore…it wasn’t our life anymore…it was just mine.  And suddenly, it seemed imaginable that a life that was just mine could one day be enough.  Maybe more than just enough.

© 2007 Sandi Amorello/Silver Crayon Studios, Inc.  All rights reserved.
The Irreverent Widow, Silver Crayon Studios and the SC Studios mark are all trademarks of Silver Crayon Studios, Inc.