for you. 
In 1999, one month after my mother passed away, we began to attend a small start up spiritual community in Douglasville, a suburb of Atlanta, GA. We loved the teaching of the Science of Mind by Ernest Holmes and began classes. In August, 2002, let’s just say I had a personality conflict with the staff and we discontinued our membership there. We went forward, or so we thought, and had our own spiritual group for a short while. But we had no idea that we were headed for a life changing and challenging period.
The end of the year there was a big trauma and we closed our business. There was a lot of pain and sorrow. In January, we decided to give what was then called the Atlanta Church of Religious Science a try. We had attended various metaphysical thought centers and we knew it was a larger community. I walked in to the lobby in a state of tears and vulnerability. I met a lady named Nancy and she introduced me to the assistant minister, Chuck. It was a frequent occurrence for people in crisis to turn to the ACRS for help. Many people have turned away from traditional churches. But when the life events are hard, it isn’t unusual for seekers to turn to some sort of alternative way to get through the challenge. It didn’t take us long to decide we had a new spiritual home.
We joined a business support group and started going to classes. We attended faithfully every week and made a lot of new friends. They didn’t care what our issues or problems were that brought us there. They strive to practice being in the now and not judging anyone. There were no dogma rules and a lot of warm and loving people.
The year 2003 was the worst year of our lives. We saw two different psychologists and had some sessions with Chuck and the senior minister, Paul. In February, we lost Grandma Eva. I pride myself for my knowledge of my pets and other animal communications, but I miss interpreted what my little Sheltie, Joseph, was trying to tell me in May. He had a problem that could have been corrected if we had caught it two days sooner. When we finally discovered what was wrong, it was too late. We had to euthanize him. A Couple of weeks later, Doug had to “take care of” his sick pet chicken.
We were struggling financially and going through an incredible amount of personal growth while paying bills and raising 2 of our 3 children. The events of 2002 had more stuff in October and it was more sorrow. Then in November, when we were on the way to recovering again, a most unexpected tragedy occurred. Doug’s younger sister had a brain aneurism. Although, the surgeon was able to correct the blockage, a week later she started having strokes. The doctors determined that she was over 50% brain dead. They made the decision to take her off life supports the day before Thanksgiving. She was 48.
According to one of our psychologist, we had gone through what is considered major life events. What most people have is one at a time. We had six in one year. But we carried on. We considered the alternatives – keep on or die. We chose to live and find a better way to do that.
The classes as well as the friendships we had formed at the Spiritual Living Center of Atlanta (the named changed) had given us a new way to see things. I know I was stronger and so was the rest of my family. In May, one year after we lost our little Joseph, we knew we had to euthanize our dog George.
George came to us as a stray, a rescue. He was a red-orange, mixed breed of Chow Chow, Retriever, and maybe a little German Shepherd. He came to us with his own little stuffed monkey security toy and a world of personality. George developed skin allergies after a few years at our house. We had to keep an E-collar on him to keep him from itching himself bloody and feed him masses of Benadryl daily with a few cortisone shots. Several times we thought it was so bad that we needed to euthanize him, but he just kept saying, “Not yet.” In May, 2004, his condition worsened. It was time.
Perhaps because we had done everything we could to alleviate his problem it was a little more expected than Joseph’s death. But I was stronger and my consciousness had changed. It hurt and I cried a lot, but this time I didn’t have the guilt and regret. And somehow, the changes in me made it easier to cope with what had to be done. It hurt but it was okay.
SEVEN PAINTINGS - the story
Sometime in 2004 or 2005, I had this urge to paint one day. It was like a really strong inner push and it had to be done. I got out my watercolor block and paints and brushes. “What am I in the mood to do today?” I pondered as I sat down with brushes, pallet, and water in my hands.
Painting for me is usually inner directed. I just let whatever wants to come out go on the paper or canvas. Most of the time it is abstract and frequently I don’t know what or why I am painting.
I sat by our pond and watched the gold colored koi swimming around in the clear water. The one that is the most obvious is a big butterfly koi with a long flowing tail. They don’t hold still long enough to paint them as they are, and what captured my imagination was the end of his tail swimming away.
Now begins the symbolism and as the paintings emerged, the meanings and messages became more and more meaningful. Water is the symbolic seat of all emotions. A golden fish is a symbol of prosperity but in this case, it was more the movement away from me and the end of a particularly emotionally deep time in my life. There had been so much confusions, pain and sorrow – and growth. I began. I painted the first painting.
When I haven’t painted for a while, it usually takes me a couple of paintings to get the creativity flowing and to get the feel of the brush again. After I painted the simple koi fish in the water, I just cut loose. There was an explosion of color, of all sorts of chaotic emotions bursting through my hands. It was time to go deeper and I was ready to paint.
Then I heard a faint whisper inside my head. “Paint another.”
The sunrise on a hill with a tree emerged. First there was the green. Then there was all the yellow. I looked at it and saw the green was a tree swaying in the wind on the side of a hill. I had painted a sunrise of a new day of my life journey. The hill appeared because growth is an upward journey. The new energy was coming to me as if in the wind.
“Keep painting,” the inner voice whispered again. Okay, another picture is trying to emerge. I began to have a feeling for certain colors. There were ocean blues, a blue evergreen tree, and a blue sky that was more like the water in the bay in the Florida Keys. It wasn’t like I set out to paint an evergreen. It was that one appeared. Then a couple of shapes appeared in the sky part of the painting. One was shaped like a turtle and the other was shaped like a seashell. “A turtle, a shell and a beautiful shade of blue tree,” I said to myself as I looked at the almost finished watercolor. “What’s this one mean?” I knew and tears began to fill my eyes. My sister-in-law’s name was Deb. Her color was that brilliant shade of ocean blue. And her favorite thing to collect was turtles and she always had seashells around her house, inside and out. She lived in the Florida Keys surrounded by her colors and turtles and shells and fish. I thought, “This is about Deb.”
I heard a voice again. Deb in spirit form was there with me. “Don’t cry. You need not be sad. I’m okay. I’m here. Everything happened the way I expected it to happen.” I could feel her saying that the painting before me is where she is now. I knew it was the truth. I knew she was there with me talking to me. “Tell Mom and Dad not to worry. I am really happy. It is really pretty here. I love you all but I had to go. I wanted you to show them this place. It has everything I love. Tell JoAnn (she called her mom by her first name) to stop feeling guilty. It wasn’t her fault. She did all she could do.”
I sat there sobbing for what seemed like a long time until the tears began to dry up on my face. “So that’s why I had to paint today. Deb wanted to make an appearance. I had some unfinished grief to let out and it wanted to come out in the painting.” I sat quietly satisfied that I had done some needed healing work and with the messages to share with my in-laws.
“Keep painting!” There was that inner voice again and this time it was even stronger. “What, haven’t I done enough? Surely the painting where Deb is was enough.”
“You are not finished. Do another.” The inner voice answered determined for me to continue.
“Okay. What colors am I in the mood for this time?” The background was a neutral shade of light yellow – kind of like a golden light that surrounds something or someone that is just special. There were these pairs of shapes in different configurations. One shape was a combination of oranges and reds. The other was a mix of purples. At first, it didn’t seem to be anything but some of my favorite colors in a simple abstract painting.
I sat looking at it. Why did I have to paint this painting? It took a while meditating on it and feeling a little tired. Then I saw it. I thought I had cried out all my tears on the last painting, but I had only just begun.
The night before we carried George to the vet to receive “the shot”, he was suffering so much that I could take the E-collar off and he didn’t even have the energy to scratch. He lay outside our back door on the concrete having difficulty breathing. I put an exercise mat beside him and lay with him on the cold cement. He usually had so many sores that he didn’t get petted very much. We would touch his head but not his back and body. It was kind of yucky and probably a little painful for him as well. We had decided that we couldn’t put it off any longer.
I gently stroked his entire body. I felt tumors all over him. The vet and my husband said that they were cancer and had grown into his lungs. They had grown very rapidly, possibly because of the steroid shots and the allergy pills, having taken over his body in a short amount of time. He was lying still because he was having a hard time breathing. Tears fell down my face but I didn’t want to lie there with him to cry. It was just my way of saying goodbye. I knew it had to be done this time. I just gently massaged him to try to make him comfortable.
George was reddish orange when his hair was healthy. My favorite color has always been purple. These little shapes on the painting were the positions of my body and George’s that last night together. In most of them I was touching him in some way. But the last, we just lay side by side and I let him go. I had painted the last night. “Oh my, this is me and George!” I didn’t just sob this time. I cried and I cried hard. I am crying now as I type.
I had handled his transition very well. I didn’t’ have regrets or doubts. I missed him – still do – but there was no other choice. We had given him all the love we could give and all the medical attention we could find. We fed him and loved him dearly, so much that we could not make him suffer through a long dying process. But here was this inner urging to paint this little painting, to grieve, and to heal. There wasn’t any denying it. I had to grieve and remember George and my last night. “I love you George.”
I cried a while. I took a breath and sat there feeling drained. “That was quite an experience,” I told myself.
“You are not finished.” The inner voice again was urging me on.
“No! You have got to be kidding. I am tired. Haven’t I grieved enough today?
“You are not finished. Don’t think about it. Just paint. Just paint!”
I painted #6. I had no idea what I was painting – just painting. When I finished, I looked at it. What I saw was an adult shape in a fetal position surrounded by a green vine – signifying growth or new growth or a birth happening. I was going through a re-birth process. I felt the tragedy of several deaths, not just Deb and George, and was ready to emerge as a new person to new beginnings and fertility – green new growth.
The inner voice was probably about to tell me, but I didn’t wait. I was ready to finish this journey and take care of the every day business of living. I opened my hands and my heart to a rainbow of new life and new colors and painted one last picture that said, “This self-exploration is complete for today. It began with the end of an emotional pool of hard life experiences – the tail of the fish in the waters of emotion – and ended with open hands releasing energy in all the colors of the rainbow. I felt the vibrancy of the rainbow coming from my soul and going out to the world.
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