An artistic soul (a story of fiction)

                                                                                            

My death came as a surprise to me and, to a lesser degree, a disappointment.  

It was a surprise because I was only 23 years of age, and in excellent health, before my premature demise.  It was a disappointment because I could never become the person that my mother hoped I would.   

So, for that reason, I was disappointed.  More for my mother than for myself.  More for the loss of her dreams than for any of my own.

I stand now, a few days after my passing, among conifers on a shady patch of ankle-length grass. Summer flowers grow wild and vibrant around me. I am watching my own funeral; a miserable event for the young man that I was. Few people have come to mourn.  I'm not surprised. I knew few people during my life.  I socialised little.  Most of my time was devoted to study for the grand future of my mother's dreams.  

As I watch the figures in black standing around my grave - I think about my life.  I recall it in short vignettes.  Fragments of time which skip at intervals until my last disappointing moments:

I recall myself at five years of age.  My mother is walking me into the school grounds on my first day.  She marches ahead of me and drags me along by the hand.  I'm scared and excited all at once.  The school is a new world for me - huge and colourful and mysterious.  

My mother helps me settle into a small wooden seat at a white laminate table.  There are jars of coloured pencils in the middle of the groups of tables which have been pushed together.  A picture of a rabbit holding a carrot sits on the table in front of me.  I know that I am supposed to colour it in.  I look up at my mother.  Her eyes shine and she wipes roughly at her cheek with the heel of her hand.  She strokes my hair and she puts her arms around my shoulders.  

'I'll miss you, Harry.  I love you,' she whispers into my ear as she bends down over me.  I grab her legs.  I get out of my seat and I cling to her.  I want to go home.  Although, a part of me also wants to stay.

She gently pulls my arms from around her woollen skirt.  She walks from the room.  I watch her leave.  She turns and smiles at me and waves our secret little wave with her fingers.  She disappears and I am alone.  I'm ready to start a new chapter in my life.

I recall my life now at ten years of age. I'm sitting in my bedroom. At my study desk.  It's 4.30pm on a hot summer afternoon. I would rather be swimming at the local public pool with my mates. Well, with one friend. I'm quiet and I have few friends. I spend most of my time alone … or with my mother.  I have no siblings and my father is forever at work, or hiding behind his newspaper, or off in his own world of business affairs.  He finds me dull and annoying.

My mother walks into my room. 

'So,' she says,'have you started your homework yet?  You've had a good half hour to rest since you got home from school, Harry.'

I throw a maths book over my sketch pad. I'm not fast enough.  She's seen my clumsy attempt to hide my art work.

'What have I told you about wasting time … drawing!' 

She strides across the room and she throws the text book across my desk, knocking down jars of pencils and my desk lamp in the process. She grabs my sketch pad.  I don't dare to attempt to retrieve it.  I don't want to be deprived of television for another month.  My life is dull enough - even with the one hour per day of television privileges I currently have.

'Harry,' she says as she pats my shoulder, 'I do this for your own good.' 

She's standing beside me and looking out into the small garden beyond my window. I remain seated and staring down at my maths book. 

'You don't want  to be a useless good-for-nothing father and husband when you grow up, do you Harry?  You don't want to be like your grandfather?  He was an artist.  A good-for-nothing artist. He was always more of a child than I was.  He let his family starve, and live in rags, and feel humiliated by the neighbours, and the other children at school.  All while he chased his silly artistic dreams. His silly, futile and childish dreams. He didn't care one scrap about us. He wasn't a responsible adult … a reliable father, or a decent husband to my poor mother. He was a child, Harry.  An artist and a child.  They are the same thing!'  

She puts her arm around my shoulders.  She rubs my shoulder and then she tussles my hair.  I know that she loves me. I know that she wants the best for me.  She wants history not to repeat itself - in me.

She opens my maths book carefully for me, and she smiles as she pats my shoulder before she speaks again:  

'I only want the best for you, dear.  I want you to grow up and make something of your life - like your father. He's a hard working and responsible man, Harry.  I know that you get annoyed with him for working so much.  But he's a good man, and he's reliable, and he takes good care of us.  He loves us in his own way. He's given us a nice house to live in, and we have food on the table every night.  

When you grow up you'll see that I'm right.  You'll see your father for the good and  reliable man that he is.  Then you'll admire him - like I do.'

I watch my mother leave … with my art book.  

I know that she'll throw my art-work into the bin. But I want to make her proud. I want to be responsible.  Although, I hope that I will not grow up to be like my father.  I know that if I ever have a son - I would spend time with him.  I would talk to him.  I would  be so very interested in his life.  I would take him fishing, or I'd kick a football around with him. And, my son would know that I love him.  He would know that I am proud of him. My son would know that he is not boring to me. Nor is he a nuisance.

I recall my life at fifteen years of age.  My mother and I now live in a small two bedroom flat.  My responsible and reliable father has left us.  He's run off with his secretary. So cliche!  All those late nights that my mother and I  thought that he was working late in the office.  Well, he wasn't working. Or, at least, not in the way that we had thought he was working. 

He is now just another man who has disappointed and hurt my mother.  Another man in the growing list of good-for-nothing-men in her life.

I have decided that I will never let my mother down.  I am determined to become the man that she has always needed in her life.  Responsible.  Hard working.  Reliable. Earning a good income.  I promise myself that I will make her proud of me.  I must not disappoint her. 

If I paint and sketch now - which I find that I still need to do - I make sure that she never finds out about it.  I don't want to hurt her.  But I know that art is a part of my soul.  It is the air that I breath.  It is a part of my DNA.  My reason for living.  My life would have little meaning in it if I could not express myself on paper or canvas with my paints or my pencils. I see the world in colours and shapes and light and shadow.  My spirit soars when I paint or draw.  At those times I exist in a creative world.  A world in which I must live, at least some of the time, during my life.  A world that, for me, is filled with colours and sunlight and happiness.

Contrasting this, my heart feels heavy and my spirit feels dead while I study for endless hours at my desk in my tiny grey bedroom. At intervals, I look longingly toward the wardrobe in which I keep my art portfolio.  I have hidden my paintings and sketches under a pile of old text books.  My mother would never shift my school books.  Those books are sacred to her.  She trusts that they are as important to me. If she knew that I stashed my art work under them - it would break her heart.  I know that she would feel utterly betrayed by me. I make sure that she never knows.

I recall my life at twenty years of age.  I'm at university now.  I'm studying for a degree in Business.  I loath the topic.  I feel like I am dying inside while I study.  My soul feels suffocated and buried alive.  But, I do it for my mother.  I love her too much to disappoint her. I am sitting at a desk in the university library.  I am looking out into the courtyard.  It is a beautiful autumn afternoon.  The trees are a vision of gold and red and orange.  The scene is a lovely water-colour with a theme of reflection and peace and time passing. I watch the leaves float to the ground and paint the pavement in the same warm autumn hues. I long to be out there. 

I watch other students mingle so easily.  It is so easy for them.  I imagine that they have probably socialised with their peers throughout their childhoods. For all of their lives: during picnics, and summer afternoons in public pools, and playing cricket, and going to dances, and the movies with friends … They are well rehearsed in the art of socialising.  They are charming and witty and interesting.

I'm told that I am quite good looking now:  six foot tall, dark wavy hair, olive skin, green eyes, an athletic frame.  I can tell that girls like me - but the only woman I know how to speak to is my mother.  What would I say to these girls?  Seriously.  What do people talk about - socially? I wish that I could join them.  These young happy people out in the beautiful autumn afternoon on a university campus.  Not stuck behind the glass - imprisoned by their own social incompetence, and the overwhelming burden of their sense of duty.  

They are free - as I long to be.

My life ended three years after this last memory.  Before it had really begun.  Although I doubt that my life would have ever been my own. 

I recall my final day. It was last Wednesday. Four days ago:

I am sitting beside the university lake eating my lunch.  I am alone.  I've been studying all morning in the library. The final exams for my Business Management degree are due to start in a few days time. This means that once those last few exams are over - I will never  need to study again.  All those years of endless study and isolation - in my room at my study-desk, or in the library - are nearly at an end. 

The university is in 'swat vac' (study vaccation) - which means that there are currently no lectures, and most of the university students are either sitting exams, or at home studying for finals.  As such, the university grounds are almost completely deserted.   My own home is so tiny that I have stayed on campus to study in the library.  Also, my mother spends so much time fussing over me, when I am at home, that I actually get less work done there.

As I sit beside the water, contemplating many lists of business principles, and complex economic equations, I become aware of a splashing noise coming from the centre of the lake.  I'm a little short-sighted but it appears to me that someone is struggling to stay above the water. And they appear to be waving their arms about.  I stand up on the embankment and I call out to the 'moving arms': 

'Are you alright?'  

There is no answer.  The splashing noise continues.  I have unfortunately left my glasses with my books in the library. I squint towards the noise. 

I call out again: 'Are you alright?  Do you need a hand?'

There is no answer - but now the splashing noise is diminishing, and the 'arms' don't seem to be waving about as much as they did a few minutes earlier.  

No-one else is on the grounds that I can see.  No-one else can help whoever it is that seems to be drowning in front of me.  I know that I must do something to help.  Time is critical.  The waving arms appear to be slipping silently beneath the murky water.

I am all too aware that I am a poor swimmer.  My primary school  provided me with a one hour swimming lesson for a single week of each year for the first five years of my schooling.  That's five hours of swimming lessons in my entire life.  And those few lessons were taken within a crowd of 30 other school children - all mucking about. Suffice to say that all I have learned about swimming is how to blow bubbles under water, how to use a kick board, and how to make a very decent splash while dive-bombing into the water.  I have also learned that the latter water-skill will result in one's weeks detention after school cleaning blackboards.

My mother never arranged for any additional swimming lessons for me.  She saw no reason for any person to engage in  senseless sporting activities in which they might acquire some form of needless injury. She also thought that sports were a waste of time which might be better spent with one's nose in a  study-book. 

However, regardless of the risks to myself, I feel that I must do something to help this drowning victim.  I am sure that swimming can't be too hard.  And the lake doesn't appear to be very deep, anyway.  Also, I know that I am quite tall.  I consider that it might even be possible for me to simply wade out to help this struggling individual.

So, I take off my shoes, and my heavy woollen jumper,  and I proceed to wade into the lake.  Soon I am attempting to 'swim' - I use that word loosely - towards the location of the noise and the waving arms. I can feel my heart pounding in my chest as I realise that I can no longer touch the bottom of the lake.  I try to remember how to move my arms.  It is all harder than I recall.  I feel myself slipping below the surface of the water.  I am confused.  I am unsure if I should turn back. I wanted to help … Although, I am beginning to suspect that it is me who may be the one in desperate need of help. I  might now be the one drowning.  

The water seems to be sucking me downward.  Pulling me away from my life.  My trousers and my shirt feel like lead weights in the water. They are dragging me to the bottom.  My limbs feel stiff and useless. I gasp for air. Yet I am already below the surface and I can find no air.  My mouth and my nose and my lungs fill with muddy water.  I can taste the dirt.  I can feel the grit of the sand and slime between my teeth.  

I clutch desperately at the water in an attempt to climb to the surface again. I know this all makes no sense.  But it feels almost instinctive to try to escape my preditor swallowing me whole. 

My body shivers in the cold darkness.  A few shards of dark green light filter down into my watery tomb. The last colour that I will see in my life is green. 

As I drift away from my body and my life, my final thoughts are about my mother.  I  see her face in my mind. I see her disappointment  in me.

Worth mentioning here is that my death ended up being a rather sad little joke.  It transpired that I died in vain.  For the 'arms' that I had seen waving about - were actually only a few reeds on a tiny island in the centre of the lake.  The splashing noise that I'd heard - had been the splashing of ducks near to the reeds.  

I had to laugh when I became aware of this sad and ridiculous reality. Such a stupid mistake to make.

It is now time for me to leave this earthly place.   A part of me is relieved.  My life in a world of business would have been worse than death for me:  Dressed in a black suit - stifling as a straight jacket; confined to a grey office - suffocating as a prison cell; and seated behind a wooden desk - restrictive as lead shackles.  

I would have done it … for my mother.  I loved her so much that I would have done the whole 'business-thing' for her.  And my artistic soul would have been pushed aside.  Buried beneath the surface of my life. Left to suffocate and then slowly die. 

I watch, for a few moments more, my mother standing over my grave. The other dark figures at my funeral have now gone.  She is wiping her cheek with the heel of her hand.  She bends down toward the flowers on my grave and she whispers softly: 'I'll miss you, Harry.  I love you.'

I watch her walk away - but before she disappears from my sight she turns once more and she smiles back at me - one last time through her tears.  She waves our secret little wave, from so many years ago, with her fingers.  And it is like I am five years old again and she is leaving me in a new place - without her.  I am to enter a new world - all over again - huge and colourful and mysterious.  I am scared and excited all at once.  

I wave to her - although I know that she cannot see me.  I send her my love.  I look about  at all the beauty and the colours around me.  

My artistic soul lives on - alive and happy once more.

I am free to be my true self finally:  An artist.