The Light of the World: A Memoir

To love and live with a painter means marveling at the space between the things they see that you cannot see, that they then make. White canvas, blank walls, his vision.

I think of all the books I will never know about because you will not show them to me. I think of the loss of knowledge, all the things I will never know because you are not here to tell me.

In all marriages there is struggle and ours was no different in that regard. But we always came to the other shore, dusted off, and said, There you are, my love.

I never once doubted him, because that is how he made me feel. So I walk forward knowing I was loved, and therefore am loved.

friendship in marriage is its own thing: friendship in a cup of tea, or a glass of wine, or a cappuccino every Sunday morning. Friendship in buying undershirts and underpants. Friendship in picking up a prescription or rescuing the towed car. Friendship in waiting for the phone call after the mammogram. Friendship in toast buttered just so. Friends

Art replaces the light that is lost when the day fades, the moment passes, the evanescent extraordinary makes its quicksilver. Art tries to capture that which we know leaves us, as we move in and out of each other’s lives, as we all must eventually leave this earth. Great artists know that shadow, work always against the dying light, but always kno

Now I know for sure the soul is an evanescent thing and the body is its temporary container, because I saw it. I saw the body with the soul in it, I saw the body with the soul leaving, and I saw the body with the soul gone.

how can we be so happy, when we have been through so much? The forest is not denuded. The trees are standing tall.

It is genuinely shocking to be jolted out of the world of our common culture into the world of our different worlds, and rituals around death and dying. He is no longer here as the ultimate medium or translator, the one who selected what mattered. There is only unalloyed culture, and no one to negotiate the treaties.