When you died I decided to paint a picture of you, I don’t know why but I somehow thought that by filling in each of the contours and lines of your face I would be able to capture you forever. It was a way to always remember. I thought that by placing each tiny dot of colour, by looking at you more closely than I had ever looked before, I would find something beyond the familiar face already etched so deeply on my heart. I thought that it would help me to know you better- some could call it a desperate act of catharsis I suppose, I needed closure, and I thought I would find it. I love to paint, generally it is in these moments that the world goes quiet, and I can finally silence the voices in my mind, but painting you was different. I chose a picture grandpa had of you, from your early days as a student in Cape Town. You look so young, the lined, aged face carved from age that I knew so well is hidden, a human promise, behind the smooth, pink- flushed cheeks of an innocent and playful twenty year old. You have a slight smile, and the tiny raised edges of your lips bare testimony to the naughty glint that those that love you can immediately see in your eyes. Your eyes are blue- they remind me of the blue- grey sky that illuminated the crop fields, a green- golden haze in the latent lazy days of Summer. Each time I see your eyes I drift back to my childhood- a scrawny little figure, running up the hill that was the airstrip and home to termite mounds, moles, snakes and a host of other little creatures. I remember the vivid flushes of red, the fiery dragon- tongue petals of your favourite flower, the flame lily, that we would pick together, adding the long- stemmed dried grasses that you loved as well. Your eyes are my comfort, my childhood, my heart. They told the story of who you were, when I look at them I see home, and I feel my own eyes, the same shape and colour as yours, well up with unwanted tears. I paint them with extraordinary care, I look so closely, I feel as if I have been pitched forward into them, I try to do justice to each tiny fleck of grey and blue, with some white and pockets of gold, but it is impossible to capture them all. I want to find you so desperately, and to hold on to you tightly forever, but I am not skilful enough, and the eyes I paint can only be a tainted version of the real thing. When I paint your young twenty year old eyes, I can see the aged, lash-less, eyes I knew so well, which told a testimony of hard work, a few of life’s knocks, the African bush and burning sun, the cool feeling of squishy mud oozing between your toes, your hand running through the tall grasses of the vlei lit by the sun’s last light, the sound of children jumping on giant seed pods, the taste of the season’s first lychees, the first scream of your first baby, shedded snakeskin in the morning glory, fresh strawberries, and a soft lap and a storyteller. What I see is a love letter, to your husband, to your children and grandchildren and to Africa, your home. In your young eyes I see what is to come, I can see the burning passion of your love, your determination and phenomenal joy. The colours in the photograph are bright and vivacious, the picture has been hand coloured as all photographs were in those days, and the man who did it, found the blossoming promise of your youth. When I paint you, unconsciously the colours change, they darken, and become more sombre, your face becomes paler, more washed out, less present but perhaps more eternal. Why I paint you in these ghostly shades I cannot tell, but the paleness of the purples and blues and red oxide shades I choose to fill in your skin, are given life by the highlights I place so lovingly in your lips and eyes. No you will not be dead in this picture, perhaps a part of you has gone from me, but not all of you. Your hair I keep in the photograph’s shades of honey gold, with lighter highlights, which take me hours- each strand is a different colour. I never saw you with hair these shades, when I knew you, your hair was white with tones of dove grey. How beautiful you were. I add in your pearls, lighting up each one, with dots of white that complement the highlights in your eyes. I remember your pearls so well, every morning when we were staying at the farm, we would pile onto your and grandpa’s bed, and demand a story. After that I would clamber onto a chair before your dressing table and spend hours playing with your multiple strands of beads and curlers, and you would play dress up with me, telling me about all sorts of fascinating fairytale characters. You took me to other lands, and I would listen, absolutely spellbound as each tale unfolded. They were your grandmother’s stories, your mother’s stories, your stories and now my stories, for I remember most of them, although I never tell them so well as you did.
When the picture is finished I stand back and look at it, and I am deeply unsatisfied. I tried so hard to find you, and I can see glimpses of you in every feature, but none of them are quite your own- I made your young face old or your old face young, you are there but also not there, I am left only with my interpretation of you. It is not you. I have failed. I realise also, as I stand there looking at my version of you, that I do not know you so well as I thought. I painted your face to get to know every tiny dimple, every scar, every pore, but in doing so I realise I do not fully know how you came to be this way, I do not know how you transitioned from the young innocent girl to being my grandmother, I don’t know your story. Perhaps that is what is missing. I close my eyes and remember the papery soft feeling of your hand, like a moth’s wing, stroking my hand and tickling my face gently. I would give anything to feel your hand on mine again. When you love someone so deeply you assume that you know them intimately, you assume that if you shut your eyes, you will be able to clearly see their face, you assume that to paint their picture you will need no photograph to copy from. I assumed I knew your story, you and grandpa had shown me the pictures before in the grand, leather- bound family albums that keep our treasured past, I knew the rudimentary details, but I didn’t really know, I didn’t really know you at all, I only knew my version of you.