“I know you’ve lost people too. I know we’re together in this amazing experience of risking to love.”

It was the bedroom light that first grabbed my attention. Then, a dream of a woman in white. I asked my friend Susan if I could paint her sitting in one of the chairs and she agreed.

As I painted, something peculiar happened. The window shade, which usually blows in, suddenly blew out. I felt as though the air was being sucked from the room while the light poured in from outside. And I was moved by a song I was listening to while painting—Where I Wait by Null+Void. It includes this lyric:

When I wake up my eyes are open. I can see.
I can hear you all around me. I feel free.
There is comfort here where I wait for you.
There is sunlight shining through.

I imagined these as the words of the woman in the chair. Or the words from the light, shining through, letting the woman know there is comfort and freedom in the light. All of these elements felt like medicine. But it never crossed my mind that this might be medicine for Susan. Until she shared with me later about the passing of her mother.

Jeffrey painted this painting when my mother was disappearing from view through Lewy Body Dementia. She was disappearing—losing her capacity to speak, her capacity to walk and to express herself. I would go to visit and used to have conversations with my mom, we would sit. She would reach over and touch my hair and I would hold her hand. So when I see the painting, I see there used to be somebody sitting in the rocking chair. And the person sitting in the rocking chair dissolved into light. Mystery.

The way that Jeffrey painted the blind, it’s lifted up so the light comes through, and it’s like when my mom disappeared, the light could come through. It was obscured in a way before when we were caught up in what we were caught up in. But towards the end it wasn’t, and so the light could come through. We could relate to each other in that light.

I also see the figures on the side that are like a bride and groom. This is where Jeffrey was prescient because I was not married yet. It’s striking, it’s moving to me that off my right shoulder in the back there’s a bride and groom who aren’t yet in the picture for me, but they’re in the painting.

Then the pandemic came and there were more disappearances. There were more people who weren’t sitting in the chair anymore. There are more things that weren’t like you thought they were anymore. So there was this question, how now to relate to this life that is disappearing and changing moment to moment to moment, like it always does. And somehow it became so much more apparent and poignant in that time.

One response to the pandemic was that Ted and I said, “What are we waiting for? Let’s get married.” So we did. That was a good fortune and a collective experience that brought with it, “Wait a minute, what are we waiting for? Everything can go away. Why are we waiting one moment more when everything can disappear, everything can change?” So looking at it, I see an evolution of love, from needing it to be solid to knowing it’s not. And that as it’s not, it shines through more and more.

I know you’ve lost people too. I know you’ve lost things that matter to you. I know we’re in this together and I hope you feel that we’re all in this together, this amazing experience of risking to love and hold on and hold on and hold on. And in one way or another, inevitably have to let go.

When people gaze at the painting, I wish for them that they get to settle into just being present. Without any expectation, without having to think of anything or feel anything in particular, but just let themselves pause for a moment to just stop, to be present with whatever’s present for them. That would be my wish for them.