I started at the bottom of my framed composition and began with images of playing in the back yard with my friends, sleeping in a canvas tent during a warm summer evening. And, playing whiffle ball in the street and having to stop every few minutes as cars passed by. Watching as the yellow electric buses stopped by our house for the drivers to take a short rest. All of these images began appearing as symbols of my years on earth.
The canvas grew rapidly as a remembrance from each year and would be fixed permanently to my life portrait. High school friendships, college exploits, service to my country, marriages, children, grandchildren, all there for me to examine.
The early years were met with bright colors, sunshine, silent laughter. An occasional pastel would shade the brightness which I suspect indicated maybe a death, or an illness. Certainly nothing that
left a major bruise in my life.
As the portrait filled with my memories I felt myself concentrating harder and harder to keep focus, something that I have had to live with all my life, and even now with my mental thoughts, I asked myself if it was lack of focus or my resistance to a frightening past or an unsure future. I decided to simply fast forward and investigate whatever was causing this anxiety.
And then I had a shortness of breath when I saw what was causing my fear.
The canvas was almost complete. Only a small portion of it left for what I had hoped would be many years and memories to come.
Couldn't I just lengthen or enlarge the space giving me all the time I wanted? No, it was like elastic. and as I stretched the white background it pulled back harder only to show me then that this is it. This is all there will be.
I stepped back and took it all in. I saw a wonderful life. I saw happiness. I saw some sadness. I saw some anger. One thing I knew was that I lived life pretty much to the max.. I laughed and played and won most of my battles. I saw also that I had lost some battles as well, even a slight memory of when I thought I had died. Perhaps I had and was simply given that second chance.
Along the way I saw I had made mistakes. I broke promises. I ruined relationships. And for a time I spiraled downward.
I still have a little room on my canvas though.
Maybe I spent too much of my early youth painting with too big of strokes and that consumed too much of my canvas. Or maybe the memories just consumed me and all of those hours were truly wasted on a lost youth.. I don't know.
I plan on mixing my colors brighter on the palette though. I want to finish the portrait with brilliance. I want it to shine from the top down. Perhaps illuminating some of those darker periods.
What is important now is to leave the anger that has recently arisen. The hate that has dulled my mental picture. I want my life collage to reflect light, not darkness. I want the last parts of my collage to shine. It is not a cliche' when people say life is too short, it is just a fact.
Someday you will see my life's collage. Some of you will recognize those periods in time. Some of you will say, "I knew him when..."
All of this is not an expression of depression. It is a commitment to make sure my final images, my final acts, will shine the brightest. Life is to be lived fully until the last bit of the canvas is complete
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