Painting You A Picture Of Memory Loss

I stepped back from my masterpiece, feeling quite pleased with myself. The foliage I had brought back from my walk had proven a good source of inspiration. With the brush still dripping with color, I hung my painting in my studio to dry.  

It was weeks before I went back into the studio.  Things got busy and life got in the way. Regardless, I had looked out of my bedroom window many times during those weeks and thought things such as "I need to get in there and straighten up", "When the weather is nicer I wil move the gardening items in there", and "I am so glad I have such a lovely yard."

One sunny afternoon, with a few minutes and a garden shovel in hand, I found myself cracking open the doors to the studio. To my surprise, I found my painting hanging by clothes pins.  The humidity from the rain coupled with the fact that the paint was not set when I had finished weeks earlier had caused the color to slip off the page. All that was left were some brightly stained outlines where an image used to be. The rest was puddled on the floor.

I kneelt down to recover what was lost and realized that my attempt to salvage the colorful mess was fruitless.  Why had I not remembered to go into the studio earlier? Why had I forgotten so quickly? Why did I feel that memories were slipping away, just out of grasp? 

I sat on the floor with the garden tool still in my hand and fresh tears in my eyes.  Regret of what my life had been was simply illustrated by the splatter marks on the plaster floor.  Each color represented a different time that had since slipped away.  Like efforts I had tried before, it was clear that reclaiming memories by trying harder to recall them only made them slip further and faster.

My faded memories were like the paint that had slid off the canvas, slowly dripping out my awareness, leaving only a suggestion that an image, a time, a person had once been there.