My artist daughter, Sheri, recently presented me with an invaluable gift. It’s a brilliant renderning of a breath-taking scene and profound experience from August 2020. The story behind the painting compounds its beauty and meaning.

It had been ten months since the death of my wife, Linda. She had lived with the ravaging losses of dementia for at least a decade. Still adjusting to the loss of her presence, I was spending time at our home at Lake Junaluska, a place filled with joyful memories.

All the stages of grief were still in play, with varying degrees of intensity. Those who have experienced the loss of a spouse know that the grieving doesn’t follow a clear linear path. It zigs and zags, dips and spikes, ebbs and flows, with shattering sadness always nearby.

On that August morning five years ago, sorrow jarred me awake before dawn. It was one of those anxiety dreams, the details of which dissipated as I awoke. After drinking my morning coffee, I headed for a predawn walk around beautiful Lake Junaluska. As I walked westward peering into the fading darkness, the first glimmers of the new day began to peek from behind the hills behind me.

I turned toward the emerging light that began dispelling the night’s darkness.Gradually, bursts of brilliant radiance pushed through the fluffy clouds and greeted the mists gathering over the serene water’s gentle waves. The lingering shadows of night receded and the emerging light and beauty pointed toward the promise of a new day.

Awe snapped my grieving soul to attention. The haunting grief from a lost yesterday was wrapped in a new garment of pervasive beauty, relentless love, and renewed hope. Though loss and grief lingered, I felt part of something much bigger than personal loss. I was reminded that I am a participant in creation’s rhythmic dance of darkness and light, holding on and letting go, death and resurrection.

Wanting to capture the experience, I snapped a photo with my phone camera. The picture became the background for subequent blog posts. However, something was missing from the photo. It couldn’t capture the LOVE and belonging that accompanied the experience.

But the LOVE absent from the photo permeates the painting done by one birthed and nurtured by Linda. Sheri and her sister, Sandra, embodied that LOVE as they accompanied Linda and me on the “long goodbye;” and they continue to generously share that LOVE with me and others.

The painting has become a constant reminder of the LOVE, BEAUTY, and HOPE to which creation itself testifies.