It was the last painting.  I didn’t see it until it was done.  When Gary finally unveiled the long canvas, there were no words.  I hoped the tears in my eyes communicated the beauty I saw in the piece.

He named it One With the Universe.  It was like his reconciliation with God…his embracing of everything in his life…the love, the creativity, the illness and whatever was to come.  There was power and peace in the colors and the image.  A quiet strength…the kind it would, I imagined, later take to hide from me the fact his cancer diagnosis was terminal.

For the first time since he’d starting painting in Vancouver, the canvas was filled with rich, vibrant life.  It was an exclamation…I am here, give me what you must because no matter what I shall embrace it.  The rolling skyline contained the wisdom of the ages, or so it seemed to me.  The contours of the baldhead were familiar.

There are so many ways we lose parts and pieces along the path of chronic illness.  One of the first things to go was Gary’s hair…victim to the chemotherapy that had flowed through his veins every two weeks for six months.  Its target…fast growing cells.  As much as he dreaded losing his beautiful thick hair, Gary made me promise to tell him if the day came when the thinning effects of the drug became obvious.

For weeks there were no signs of follicles giving up to the toxic effects.  Then one day, about three months into treatment, Gary rose from bed and left a halo of dark tufts on the pillow.  I quietly followed him into the bathroom and reached into his drawer.  As I pulled out the clippers he’d used for trimming his artiste style goatee, he glanced over at me.

“It’s time, babe,” I said as I gently slid behind him.

“It’s getting too thin?” he asked.  I could tell he was hoping for a different outcome.

I leaned him over the sink and began.  It only took one swipe of the blades before the tears rolled down my cheeks.

“Don’t worry. You’ll look great bald.”  It was the last time I cried about his baldness.  He wore it with incredible dignity and style.  Thankfully the goatee somehow managed to stay put when eyebrows, eyelashes and other body hair did not.

He’d captured the best parts of him in his self-portrait.  When we returned from Vancouver, we hung it over our fireplace with a shared pride. For him, it was a testament to his journey.  For me, on days when I felt small or scared, it was a reminder we are all connected to something beautiful, something great and something divine.

Gary’s memorial service took place in a chapel with high ceilings and glass wall that looked out into a garden of greenery.  A halo of white flowers surrounded the urn that contained his ashes kept company by a collection of photos that captured the special times in our lives.

His friends carefully placed One With the Universe on the stage nearby.  One by one, people who loved him stepped up to the podium to speak.  Finally, his agent Jon, began to share about his experience of knowing Gary.  Jon was a relatively conservative and private person, though we’d had the pleasure of getting to know he and his wife well over the years.  So I was surprised when he began to share about a dream he’d had the night before in front of a room filled with top industry players.

Jon explained that in his dream, his office phone rang and when he picked it up it was God calling to inform him that while Gary was doing a great job painting heaven, he wasn’t quite following the directions given by God.  God said to Jon that Gary had gone off and created his own color scheme, one of bold oranges and purples just like the colors in One With the Universe.  God assured Jon he was happy with the work, he just thought Jon should know.  “That,” said Jon, “is the Gary I knew and will always remember.”

Though Gary’s body of work as a fine artist wasn’t vast, the healing experience of expressing himself during the most challenging time of his life cannot be measured.  Each one meant something different to him, just as they did to me.  Over the years since he’s been gone, many of the canvases have followed me on my own healing journey.  Sometimes they have filled me with a sense of sadness and loss.  Mostly they have comforted me, given me a point of connection with him and inspired me to go on and live a powerful and inspired life.