Farewell to an artist…

I wanted my next blog post to be a positive, happy one… And finding a suitable topic would have been easy – I am surrounded by good things and am a father to the two most awesome young men/boys I have ever met who delight me daily with their sporting and academic achievements, their wise-ass-sense-of-humour and their bravery in hard times.

But this is a hard time. And not a happy, positive blog post. And sometimes I wish I was as brave as them.

I come from a large family. My father is the second oldest in a family of seven boys and one girl. To say the family is blessed with lots of in-laws, cousins, uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces, children, grandchildren, boyfriends and girlfriends is an under-statement… It is a crowd. A shopping mall crowd of the most beautifully unique and strangely individual people I know. It is a tour bus full of people that have all had the normal bumps and bruises and near misses but we have never lost anyone other than my dad’s parents and even that seems to have happened before this bus got really full. And fun.

But we will be losing someone shortly.

My dad’s oldest brother Trevor has been battling with cancer for as long as I remember and it is time for him to end this adventure and to start a new one.

I wish I could be that person who rounds up the masses and asks for prayer believing that if we all prayed hard enough he would be cured. But I live in a real world and I’m way too honest with myself to know that any extra time his treatment brought him has now come to an end. I also know that everyone has said their goodbyes in their own little ways and the only reason we don’t want to see him gone is because we are scared of the bus becoming a little darker without him.

And darker it will become. For sure. Because my Uncle Trevor is a beautiful, beautiful man. What he is as a father, husband, grandfather and brother is beyond the need for expression. What he is, as a soul and to me, is a collage of colour. I wake up every morning with the joy of knowing that, in my own little way I will be doing something to make the world a little more colourful and I think a large part of me wanting to do that is because of the influence of people like Uncle Trevor.

I put myself in Uncle Trevor’s place and try to imagine what it must feel like looking down at my collection of paints at the start of every day and seeing my all my brightest colours turning to black and knowing that nothing I do will bring the colours back. I know I’d want to move on to a new place… with new brushes and canvasses and colours. I know I would be looking forward to it.

I don’t, honestly, know what I believe about heaven. I know I like the thought of it. I love thinking that Uncle Trevor will be seeing his mom and his aunt again… two people he loved with all his heart and has missed every day since they got off the bus. I do believe in guardian angels, though. And I have a lovely peacefulness knowing that there will be another one looking after me.

I have a weird picture in my head that our guardian angels spend each day negotiating for us… Making deals with other guardian angels to ensure a kind of fairness. “okay, tell you what… If you let my guy get the parking bay at the door, I’ll make sure your guy gets the green robot…”

And I have come to peace knowing that soon there will be someone else to hold the hands of those who have got off the bus and are standing on the side of the road. Looking at us going past. And smiling.

A guardian angel who holds the hands of a thousand scared souls in his one hand and uses his other hand to fill his new world with a thousand brush strokes of colour, love and laughter.

I’m looking forward to seeing it.

Hamba Kahle Uncle Trevor.

~ by Norm on September 30, 2010.