La Pietà, Sofonisba Anguissola (1532-1625), Pinocoteca di Brera, Milano 2016
There is a girl. She stands in front of my painting. Looking in. I’ve been painted in. She stands holding quiet space and reverence for my grief. I tell her, ‘Let me explain you my sentiment.'
'I hide here, hidden away, taking refuge with my divine and profound sorrow. In my heartbroken submission to this sorrow, in this place hidden away, I am granted peace. I allow. I breathe. The fusion of my love and my sorrow and my tears consumes my whole being – the blood in my veins, the ether around me, the essence of my soul.'
What does she know, this girl who stands before us. What does she know?
Can she smell the damp earth that I now smell, that will soon consume my son. This earth at my feet - cool, silent and patient - its silvery, invisible arms softly reaching out to inevitably prise him from my own. Can she know my thoughts, my wish to be buried there beside him in that soil remaining eternally awake to watch over him and comfort him? Can she know this pain, this paralysing agony that is yet to come when they lay him in that ground and yet truly, I cannot go there with him? How can I, how will I walk away from that grave? How? I cannot know.
Does she know the hours upon hours, days upon days of relentless sorrow that will consume my physical being – the heartache that ensues as the very difficult task of release must be done? Does she know how days will come where I will retch and retch, begging this despair to leave my body. Has she heard the sound of the deep wailing which arises from the deepest caverns of the earth and expresses through my body? Has she heard this sound? I think not. Does she know that I will now, year after year after year, bear this sadness and need to find the private space in which to allow it to rise and wash away?
...
And does she know that with every passing day of this agony that my heart will also soften, and I will see the light again, in such exquisite gentle beauty, that light that lies beyond, as it does now, as it always does, and as it always will.
What does she know, this one? What does she know of grief?