4th of July

 July has arrived, on the 16th of this month a year will have passed since Rick died.  It seems like yesterday, it feels like forever.

The Fourth of July was our last holiday to celebrate, who knew in 12 days he would be dead?

His sister, Mary Lois invited me to her daughter's house for the holiday.  My nephew Haven invited me to his house.  I chose to stay home alone.  I got up that morning, feeling a kind of sacredness and a realization of the difference between lonesome and loneliness.  For me, I will always be lonesome because I miss him so much.  But I am not lonely.  Keeping this farm going, friends calling and visiting, daily chores,  still sorting out my life has kept the loneliness at bay.  But missing him...how I miss him.

On Monday, the 4th I decided to take a leap of faith, a giant one.  I got out my paints and canvas and started to paint.  Other than my cards, I had not painted since his death.  Deciding on a subject to paint was easy, I had taken a photograph of flowers in the kitchen window a couple of months before he died.

He loved the photograph and kept asking me to paint it.  I did do a small water color card of the image, but me being my usual self critical self did not believe him when he told me he liked it.  I wish that I  could have bottled his confidence in my art and drank a sip every day.

So with a prayer to Rick, I sketched out the canvas with the image from the photo, but I added something that I did not capture with the camera.  I added my broken heart.  Tears and paint cover that canvas, but something happened to me as the salt and acrylic blended.  I felt at peace with myself and love from Rick.

I knew that for creativity to come back to me,  I couldn't push or force, it would come when the time was right.  I still have not picked up the guitar, but I now know, that too will come when the time is right.

This grief process is  not for the impatient.  Sure you can push it to the bottom of your soul, but I can assure you it will fester and come out in ways you never expected or might not recognize.  I didn't deal with the grief of my parents or my brother and my body and heart taught me how powerful and destructive unrecognized grief can be.

So in a very unusual way,  Independence Day brought me my independence and started the loosening of the chains on my creativity.  My celebration was not the average one, but it was the celebration I sought and needed.

There are two photos with this blog this morning, the original one I took of my kitchen window and the painting.  Fireworks of my own making.