"Roses In Vermont 2010"
© Nora Kasten 2010
Oil on linen (10"x10") For sale at The Brown County Art Guild, Nashville, IN
"The art world still seems so far away for me but I am not without hope. If this continued grief is self pity (and I think it must be), my heart will surely accept the loss of my Beloved Karl soon so that a new life without him can begin. He died nine and a half months ago and though I have some days without tears, they still erupt too often.
Last week I read (listened to on the IPad) Joyce Carol Oates "A Widow's Story"/March, 2011. Her beloved husband, Ray, died in February, 2008. I'm not experiencing guilt but other than that our lives and emotions during the first year of being a widow seem to parallel, even the things we've done. The book was very depressing for me to listen to but toward the end she firmly states "The value of suffering itself, physical pain, emotional and psychological pain, is there any purpose to it? Then at the end she says, "Though I am writing this memoir to see what can be made of the phenomenon of grief in the most exactingly minute of ways, I am no longer convinced that there is any inherent value in grief. Or if there is, if wisdom springs from the experience of terrible loss, it's a wisdom one might do without." Oates words inspire me to get on with the new life God has for me. . . . . but what is it?"
