Hands

My dearest Daughter,

I went to the Van Gogh museum this morning. Since you left, words and images comfort me in the most intimate way. Since you left, I look for rafts and boats, steps and stories, hands and arms that soothe my broken heart. Often, I just need to get out of myself and dance somewhere else, somewhere where I can breathe and be, even for just a few moments. Your absence some days can swallow me whole. Today I went looking for beauty, and feelings, and life. I found it as I walked the crowded hallways of the Van Gogh musem in Amsterdam.

Thousands of people walked by these beautiful colorful paintings. So many people, Elira, wanting to learn more about the painter, his life, his craft. And, I couldn’t shake the feeling of his sadness. The multitude of self-portraits with hats, his sad eyes looking for purpose. I wondered how many of these eager visitors make room for sadness in their fast lives. Vincent Van Gogh only sold one painting while he was alive. Often, he ran out of money to even feed himself. I wondered how many of these thousands of people make room for the hidden genius in each of us, often cloaked in poverty and scarcity. I wondered why we can’t provide comfort and space for people while they are still here with us physically. I walked around the beautiful museum, knowing the man who completed all of this amazing work, couldn’t handle the pain and the despair he was living in. So many people adoring the colorful sunflowers and cherry blossoms, buying magnets and notebooks, pencils and t-shirts. No one was seeing the despair right next to the beauty.

As I made my way through the crowd, I sought out the hands Van Gogh so carefully penciled in preparation for his masterpiece “The Potato Eaters.” He believed the hands, like faces and feet, were a person’s most expressive features. I have been seeking hands since you left, Elira, hands to hold mine, when things are hard, when mine shake so uncontrollably. I have been searching for hands to gather my bony fingers, to hold them tight. A few days before I went to the museum, you came in my dreams. You took my hands in yours, you held them tight. As I stood in front of the beautiful hands Van Gogh drew, I wondered how I ever let go. I clearly remember holding your hands. I don’t remember letting go. I used to think that hands are made to just hold and keep but somehow since you left I am learning to let go.

I am sorry I only saw the sunflowers and the cherry blossoms, Elira. I am sorry I didn’t realize your deep sadness in “your self-portraits.” I am sorry I didn’t see the despair that overtook your beautiful spirit. I didn’t hear the desperation in your beautiful piano pieces. I couldn’t imagine you in the dark. You were the reason I lived. You don’t question the existence of your existence. I am sorry I didn’t acknowledge and honor your pain. I know “I am sorry” means absolutely nothing because I myself told you that “sorry” doesn’t do anything, just don’t do it again. So, here I am, my love, with no second chance to be a better mother or friend to you. But, somehow I am still here, in the world, with an aim, a goal, to honor your beautiful life, your sacred sadness and despair, your dark cloud. The gift you left me behind is to see the darkness in this world, the struggle, the pain, to honor it, to make place for it, to welcome it as part of our human experience. I am here to hold hands and to let go when I need to. I am here to be broken yet somehow still whole.

In one of the letters to his brother Theo in 1878, Vincent Van Gogh writes: “Love is the best and most noble thing in the human heart, especially when it has been tried and tested in life like gold in the fire, happy is he and strong in himself who has loved much and, even if he has wavered and doubted, has kept that divine fire and has returned to that which was in the beginning and shall never die.” I will love you forever, my beauty. I will love on your behalf for as long as I have breath because you taught me, even in passing, love is all there is!