I got the call at 9:30 in the morning that E had died. After 9 days of no food or water, her spirit and body parted ways. She has left a void and we will miss her. This painting is dedicated to her.
In the afternoon I emailed Eva for the dance theme for tonight. Eva wasn't sure where she was going with it and called to chat. I felt honored to be included in the conversation and discuss the important matters of life: breathing, grounding and being witnessed. How our body defines inner and outer space. She began with the core. It can be hard like a mountain, flow like the ocean, be wide like the sky and warm like the sun. Or it can be nothing; emptiness, nothing and everything. In the studio, I started with a circle in the center that came out squat like an egg. I painted around it, and as the surrounding colors and images evolved, I came back to the center void. It needed to be bigger and as I painted it become a round shape of nothing, all white. No boundaries. I thought of Elaine, who after 88 and half years, left her body on the surface of the earth and dissolved. As I painted ripples in the water and shadows on the mountains, I thought of Elaine leaving behind the material world that we still enjoy, the vistas, colors and beauty. I really wanted to keep painting and I was running out of time. 7 o'clock was creeping closer and I have to allow travel time to get it to the alter. It was 6:48. What more did the painting call for? A boundary around the white circle? a line to define it? or let it just be?... I went for it. I quickly outlined the circumference using different colors, two thin lines each, and then regretted it.
Looking at it after K and I pinned it to the wall in the space, I saw those outlines representing the what we use to define our being with; our mind, our emotions and our physical body. The line is the definition of our presence here and now Elaine is not. I guess I wasn't ready to accept that she is gone. Maybe I'll go back and paint the outline out when I am ready.
Today was also my last radiation treatment. Sixteen doses. Whew. The Dr. told me the side effects peak a week or two after treatment ends, the gift that keeps on giving, but nonetheless, I felt a milestone had been reached. Beams of radiation have been aimed into a specific area of my body with laser precision. It has left a burn patch on my skin with a clearly defined tan line, distinct boundaries, but it doesn't match any bathing suits I have and the color is more orange than a dark tan. All the fast growing cells in my left breast and surrounding chest have been killed. The healthy cells have been struggling for their lives and have increased my appetite with their demand for nutrition, feed me! The cancer cells are history, hasta la vista, sayonara, kapoot, being dismantled and re-absorbed as I write. Thank you high tech modern medicine.
I celebrated by dancing. I found a scarf in my dance bag that I used after surgery to reign myself in and tie my arm to my side. I used it to blindfold myself and create a boundary between my inner attention and relating to others. I let the music move through my body and breathe into each muscle one by one. I tune in and find where my breath is needed next. In the dance I can feel the delight of my body, moving, beating, shaking, swaying. It is nourishing, the opposite of empty, it is a refueling.
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