Last week I discovered that my 62 year old aunt is dying of cancer. I can't keep up with the politically correct phrase du jour so, knowing that I'll offend someone, I'll just say that she is mentally handicapped or challenged. Sheila is like an upbeat six year old, having successfully completed public school, married a man with similar challenges (who has since passed away) and has held a job (albeit subsidized by the government) for her entire adult life, rightfully proud of her accomplishments. Her social worker, group home staff and Hospice worker told me that she was well aware of her illness and the expected outcome. But when I visited her, she told me that she was going to "fight this thing" because she had a lot more living to do. For her, living has been simple, but enough to be content. Other than her job, she has never had any hobbies or any friends outside of work. Life has been pretty much sitting and looking out a window, but that has been enough for her to be very, very happy. I wish life were that simple for me sometimes.
I started thinking about how happy she's always been, just sitting in a room and listening to people chat (chiming in every now and again, but that was rare). You could see her mind start to wander when she was no longer able to follow the conversation, just sort of tuning out and looking away. I thought of how much time I've spent tuning out and not really doing anything to make myself happy when I have the luxery of the time and the means to do something about it. I don't want to wait until the big tick-tock of life's clock is gonging louder and louder with the alarm about to go off, too late and wishing I had done more. I told Sheila about how I had quit work to pursue more time with art, which she thought was just great.
I felt like such a big phony and realized it was time to kick myself in the behind, stop talking about it and do something.
Today I picked the colour for my studio. I've made some lemonade, put on ugly clothes and am going into the room that had housed my youngest one for so many years and I'm scrubbing the walls so I can paint them this week. The internet provided a lot of motivation as I was able to see the studios of a number of other artists, and I'm ready to go. Yeehaw!
Then, I'll make something for Sheila.
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