The first time I see the painting that I consider my father’s finest work is when I visit him to check how he’s doing, a month after my mother’s death.
“I’ve painted a pentaptych to represent the five states of grief,” he tells me as I follow him through to his studio at the back of the cottage.
“I see,” I say. This isn’t what I was expecting, but I know that grief can express itself in many ways. I’m pleased that he’s painting again – as far as I know, he hadn’t picked up a brush since Mum’s diagnosis. As soon as I enter the studio, I can see it’s his best work in years. Standing on easels positioned around the room are five large canvases. Their surfaces are divided into neat geometric patterns of identical squares, each in a different colour, with maybe a hundred to every painting. No two colours are exactly alike.
“So each of these paintings represents one of the stages of grief?”
“Exactly,” says my father. “After I complete the stage, I’ll burn the painting. It’ll be – what do they call it? Cataclysmic?”
“Cathartic.” I feel a pang of regret at the thought of Dad destroying the works. Each would fetch a couple of thousand, money that he desperately needs. He could replace the bathtub with a walk-in shower, now that he’s not so mobile. But there’s no point talking to him about money, not where art is concerned.
I examine the paintings, trying to figure out which emotions they represent. I point to one dominated by reddish hues. “Is this anger?”
“No, that’s unsettlement,” Dad says, as if the answer is obvious.
I don’t remember unsettlement – is that even a word? – being one of the stages of grief. The Kübler-Ross model has denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and another emotion that I can’t recall. I’m about to say something but Dad’s showing me the other paintings. “This is loneliness, this one is grouchiness, and here’s resentment.” He gets to the final picture, which is my favourite, with its multiple variations on blue. “And this is grief.”
“Grief is one of the five stages of grief?”
“Yes.”
I can’t bear to argue the point. “It’s a beautiful painting, Dad.”
I visit my father several times over the next few months and watch the paintings disappear one by one. I don’t actually see him burn any of the canvases, but he keeps the ashes from each work in its own jar on a shelf in his studio. Finally, only the grief painting is left. I keep waiting for it, too, to disappear, but it’s always there. On the anniversary of Mum’s death, I ask Dad when he’s going to burn it.
“Never,” he says. “Because I’ve realised grief never ends.”
Dad left me the painting in his will. It hangs on my living room wall, next to a photograph of my parents.
