Still life

It is one of the most well-known still life paintings of all time – Vincent Van Gogh’s Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers. And, yet, it is anything but still. The vibrant yellows are warm and lush. The leaves seem in motion. The vase sits jauntily on the table.

I can see that the flowers are in various stages of decomposing. Some are still perky and clearly still drinking the water in the vase that has become their life force. Others are beginning to droop, and some seem to be moments away from beginning to drop their petals. I want to check the water level in the vase and add more to keep them alive longer, but I know that if I were to disturb them, they would drop their precarious petals, and I would destroy the natural beauty of the arrangement.

No, they are just right as they are. Even as they are moving steadily toward their inevitable death, they are beautiful and still have much to offer. There is still life in them until their final decomposition.

I know there is something more happening here, if I can but accept it. We each still have life as well, even as we age. This has been a hard realization for me, that we can lose our youth and still have value. I knew I would age, or at least I hoped I’d still be around to age. I didn’t know that my value would be questioned, even by myself and even more by others. I knew my husband would age. I didn’t expect his mortality to become questionable at so young an age, and I didn’t expect him to change. I guess I thought that we’d get older but that otherwise our lives wouldn’t change. Naive, I know.

If I can hold onto this image of Van Gogh’s fifteen flowers, I can better accept that we each are different and are going through stages at our own pace as we move from this life to afterlife. We can still be vibrant and warm, even as we begin to age. We are still life forces, stubborn individuals, a little frayed around the edges and about to drop some petals, but beautiful all the while. It would not do to try to change us. We fit into the picture just fine as we are. Still here, still life, not so still after all.