I gave this painting to my uncle when he was battling lung cancer. I was in America and he was in Taiwan. I went to visit him when he was diagnosed. It was fall in Taiwan. He was still healthy and seemed carefree. He took me to eat panda shaped donuts. He took me to the markets in the city to find pomelos, my favorite fruit. He took me to classes that he taught at his university. Bright students all around. He still smiled and still sang his favorite tunes from youth … when time was infinite and life was limitless.
“…Bye Bye Miss American Pie…”
One day somewhere in between the rhythm and the blues, he said to me one of the most meaningful compliments I’ve ever received. He spoke to me in Chinese, “Even though you may not look like much on the outside (to the Chinese there is always something wrong with the way you look), there is something special that glows and shines from your face. It’s like a light. When I see you I think you’re beautiful. I believe it comes from deep inside you. I know that you are a good and kind person and that makes me like you even more.” I was taken aback. Maybe it was so meaningful because it came from him. My uncle. My JiùJiu.
Some of my fondest childhood memories were in Taiwan with him, my brother, cousins, and all, running along the small serpentine sidewalks that lace around the green rice paddy fields. We went to play basketball. My aunt made homemade dumplings for us when we returned. Basketball, rice paddies, and dumplings on those hot humid summer days.
When I returned stateside, I mailed him this painting. I prayed that somehow I could weave the very fingers of God into the yellow lights of the trees or the crimson stains of the cascading flowers. Maybe those red flowers could absorb and contain the life that was bleeding out of him and give it back when his body was healthy and his lungs alive.
During that last visit, an image of him was preserved in my mind. It was the last time we saw each other. Healthy, happy, and free. As the year unfolded and the battle went on, his body continued to degenerate. Time poured in and funneled into the last few weeks of his life. It was a time when I couldn't tell what were morning shadows or evening half lights. My mom never would stitch together a description of how he really was doing. The only thing she would tell me to do was to remember him as he was when I last saw him. Healthy, happy, and free. It was fall in Taiwan then. Remember him then. Remember him strong. Much stronger than lung cancer.
He died a year after that visit. He died in December.
His body was cremated. Besides the garments that covered him, the only thing that went in there with him was my painting. My aunt laid it on his chest. It was a gift during the last year of his life. My little watercolor. Blue hues, little trees, crimson flowers, and yellow lights. I cried when my mom told me.
This painting never saw a gallery wall, or any wall. It was never sold, never purchased. Never framed, never matted. It existed just for a small moment in time, given as as gift, was burned, and turned into ashes. Only this blurry capture of it remains. I will never hear from my uncle what that painting meant to him. Whether or not he liked that particular shade of yellow, or the whitespace above, or the little mountains below. These strokes, those hues, or that blue. Maybe it made him smile a real smile. Maybe it made him laugh a real laugh. Maybe it made him feel loved with a true love. Maybe it told him of salvation, when spirit joins a body that will never die. Maybe it gave him beauty and breath during his last year, the hardest year.
I never knew what I really meant to him until that day. I never knew how meaningful my paintings could be until that day. I know he cherished it. I know he cherished me.
