Renee

Today is the second anniversary of my wife Renee's death.  She passed away from kidney disease at the age of 52.  I loved her more than words can describe or feelings can comprehend.  I miss her very much.  I believe that since she has been gone it has been like living half-a-life.  It has been very different and very difficult.  The loss is something that you don't get over.  You try to live with it like  other forms of chronic pain.  The pain of a broken heart is excruciating. Memories are like  fresh knives coming into the wreckage of the heart and twisting through it even more.  I live on each day, however, with the hope of someday, some moment, of being reunited with my wife.  I do have the faith that this will occur.  It would be selfish of me to wish for Renee to come back to me; to the difficulties of this life.  Where she is now, there are no difficulties only peace, rest, and joy in the presence of a loving God forever.  No, I don't want her to come back.  As God wills, I look forward to going to her and to him.

A silver lining is beginning to emerge. When God closes a door he opens a window.  My new window has opened up into the world of art.  The window opened in a somewhat peculiar way.  I won't go into it all in detail.  It pretty much occured from seeing someone else's art.  This was a unique style of art that up to then I was unaware of.  It was uncoventional, but a great beauty shone through it that really moved me.  It moved me in such a way that it awoke a passion inside of me that I never knew I had.  It inspired me to become an artist myself.  It has only been a short time but I am already more into it than I have ever been to anything in my life.  This is what I want to do and intend to do for the rest of my life.  I will have do other work, of course, to earn a paycheck, but I will always from now on think of art as my career.  This unconventional art style I have since learned is called mixed media.  It is unconventional, because there are no conventions.  This style is different, because every artist is different.  Art in it's most honest form should be and expression of who a person really is.  Mixed media allows you to do that.  When I am involved with art I am in a good place, a better place, than I have ever been.  It sounds contradictory, but it allows you to get out of yourself by really, truly being yourself.