This painting, unfinished, is much like the life of the woman captured within its dimensions. This woman, unfinished, began her imperfect existence in a small town in upstate New York named after the Shakespearian scholar Edmund Malone. The village, an hour from Montreal, surrounds the Salmon river that flows through it fiercely with water the color of liquid amber, dark like frothy root beer gushing down a parched man’s throat. And although the town is made up primarily of people from French and Irish descent, the woman’s mother who carried the name Gibeau, looked more Sicilian in relic black and whites as she stood dark and proud with arms crossed in some certain stance of resolve. In San Antonio, the unfinished woman was often called Mexican.
The Japanese are oft to believe the number 9 an unlucky one, as it sounds so similar to the word for “distress” and “pain.” Strikingly, when this woman incomplete reached 9 years of age, her mother unwillingly abandoned her and caused her life forth to be tinged with kunrei ku. With two developing simultaneously inside her womb, the woman’s mother went to hospital one day and never did return; unbeknownst to all, the blue babies had been carried dead for too long and had poisoned her with a decaying toxicity from within, causing symptoms very much like pneumonia. Our child of ennead years never trusted doctors again (and later found herself to be poisoned too by her own body from within; but that we will come to a in just a bit. As the story of distress grows some).
To ease his pain, the father of our disheartened youth quite soon took another wife. And this one was mean to our beloved incomplete. Forcing and ripping, pushing and mistreating. Our broken soon moved to be with elder aunts, sisters of her mother dear. And life went fine for awhile. She grew austere, then moved to Texas to feel the sun.
Here she let her teasing self loose and chided and chimed some; and laughed and loved some. She married and found a house and set to making a life for herself. And 13 years down the line, she herself had a child. But by then her marriage had disintegrated into yells and screams, pointed fingers, and disillusioned dreams. She divorced and set to raising her daughter alone; though she got much helped by the father and the father’s own. But even so, going at life alone can have a heavy toll. And this she did, but she did too well.
For many years passed, and after much internal struggle and outward struggle with those around, she herself fell ill; poisoned from within. Her mind went gone, without rhyme or reason; in fact, it was reason that had gone. And the days became too bare, as by then every thing had become suspicious. Every thing that her eyes saw, and her ears could hear became a source to question.
You see, when the mind no longer trusts that which surrounds it, the mind then rejects it, everything, even itself. For the reality of disappointment is often too much. And this is what happened to our one who lived with too much distrust. She rejected until death took her back. This woman, my mother (1944-2006).
If this seems unfinished, it is; just like the life of the woman depicted here. If there seem to be too many outstanding questions, there are. And if you are left feeling cheated, then you feel exactly as this woman and those who loved her did. For an unfinished life is a sad one to bare. There are no answers that better explain the life that she lived. It was one of question and concern, as illness of the mind takes everything one has earned.
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