Thirty Paintings-Day 8

Today I started to reorganize my studio because of some of the things that have cropped up since starting the challenge but had to stop and get ready to leave to attend a new session of a grief support group.  I have been to spouse loss support, three six week sessions offered by Home&Hospice of Rhode Island over the past year and also I see a grief counselor from the same agency weekly.  The new group is for those who are at one year and beyond of the loss.  I just hit the year.  This agency cared for my husband here at home then inpatient at the end.  When Richard died I  received support immeasurable through this agency.  Teaching me about grief and mourning,  to feel and get the pain out but rest when I could no longer work through it.  It has been a long road since Richard began in-home hospice care.  All this to say I was not sure if I would get to painting as I still needed to make my dinner after the meeting, make a book purchase that had been recommended to me, Man's Search For Meaning, then finally sit and eat and relax some.

But then I walked into my upside down studio, found an image of my Maggie I wanted to paint and began to dig in.  Music playing, and she started to appear on the canvas, I was present and the pain had subsided for the moment.  This image was from a few days after Richard's death.  I had taken Maggie and went to the ocean and just sat for hours.  Maggie was just looking out at the water and the sun was getting ready to set but was still bright.  Maggie was with me on the unit for eight days while Richard was dying and ultimately woke me very early,  between 4 and 5 AM to let me know he had died.  I did not know what she was trying to tell me.  I pulled her up on the little chair/bed I was sleeping on and tried to go back to sleep never thinking Richard was gone.  All I thought was I would have allergy eyes in the morning because she was near my face.  My brain was not functioning or it went right into denial because she never wakes me, never.  Shortly thereafter the nurse came in, checked on Richard, and took my hand to tell me he was gone.  When I got my wits about me I told her what Maggie did and she wanted Maggie's time as she believed Maggie was awakened with Richard's passing.  Still emotional to write about or even think about but I must do both.

So you see this little dog is very precious to me...and I am fully aware that she is twelve years old.  She is a very real connection to Richard on so many levels.  She was our dog with loyalty to us both.  She is somewhat more somber since his death and I realized our house had never been empty thus when I went out to do an errand in the beginning she was alone now and did not like it.  I would come home to her howling pitifully.  There use to be my husband, a teen ager who grew up and left, another beagle who passed away a couple of years ago, and my cat who died a year and a half ago from cancer.  So Maggie and I have suffered these losses together.  We have just adopted a five month old tabby kitten a month ago hoping to help Maggie's loneliness in general.  More about her later.

                                                                     Maggie
                                                                     9"x12", oil on stretched canvas