If My Grief Were a Painting

If you scroll social media long enough, you'll come across a prompt: "If your grief were a painting on a museum wall, what would it look like?"

That's an interesting concept.

First, I'm not sure I'd put mine up in a museum for all to see. But the premise stuck with me.

Mine would be dark. Like all of my other artwork. No frame — as if to say it's unfinished, still in progress. The canvas itself would be mostly black. But somewhere in the upper left, an eye, peeking into the darkness. And in the bottom right corner, the black gives way to raw canvas. You can see pencil markings — outlines of what's to come. Some lines clearly erased, smudge marks still visible. As if whoever started the painting knew something was supposed to go there but hadn't figured out what yet.

No one knows the pain I go through, and I don't know another's pain. Sometimes we doubt what others experience, especially if we've lived a similar pain. I'm told there's a reason for that, and right now I don't know what it is. But I think it's because what we feel is so intense that we can't imagine it existing in someone else too. Sometimes the stories people share seem so strong that they can't be true. How can we imagine that another human being can be so callous to another?

Life comes at us. And though we try to make it joyful, though we work and strive toward peace, God doesn't always allow us peace.

I was on social media again, as I often am, and I saw a video — the hardships we experience are for a reason. It seemed plausible. It made sense. Then at mass the other day, Father said something similar. There is a reason for all things. And I find myself in doubt more often than not. It feels like a way to escape fully explaining the pain we go through.

But he said further — that this is the stage, the beginnings of what is to be. First the quiet before the storm. Then the calm. And then you look around and everything seems destroyed. But is it really? Everything looks cleaned out. And for the faithful, we say this is God signaling us that change is inevitable — that this darkness is meant to help us understand that what's headed our way is valuable. That through the pain, we won't easily forget or take for granted what is to come.

My father is dying. The man I've always seen as the lighthouse for our family — that light is soon to be extinguished. And despite the number of times I tell myself I am ready, I fear I am not.

I already miss the man. I miss the man he was, even when he was scolding me for something I had inadvertently forgotten. And then it takes me to what he will no longer get to do. The sunsets he will miss. His evening walks through his garden.

This longing I feel — I realize it's not only about my dad's life. It is a very important reminder that even my light may one day blow out, and I will create sadness for those I love because of it.

I think we always think about us missing our loved ones. But it makes me wonder — what is he thinking? What does my Dad see in his mind?

If we put this together — that this painful process is preparation for something — then what is the forthcoming lesson? What is so important for me, for my family, that the good Lord deemed it necessary to call my Dad home?

I sit in a crowded mall at a table. Airpods in to drown out the sound. I see smiling faces. People in the midst of a meal, laughing. Few know or care what's in my head. Nor does it matter. It doesn't matter to them. It doesn't matter to me.

But I wonder — if my grief were a painting, hanging on the far wall where I see people passing, and they saw it — would they stop? Would they care?

Would it matter?