paint

Posted under family by rahma

My grandfather was born on a farm.  He was raised on a farm.  He spent most of his life on the farm.  Farming wasn’t his first choice of career.  He wanted to be an accountant or a doctor, but he never made it to college.  When farming became his lot in life, he threw all of his blood, sweat and tears into the land.  He built the house and barn at the family farm almost single handedly. 

He survived farm accidents and illnesses too numerous to count.  When he was 9, his appendix burst.  He survived.  After my father was born, he fell down a hay shaft.  He survived.  Still in his body cast, he shuffled down the rows of tobacco, pulling weeds.  He rigged his tractor with hand brakes so he could be out in the field even before his ankles healed.  He had his hips replaced 3 times. 

Despite the numerous hardships he faced as a farmer, he never lost his smile.  My most persistent memory of him is when he was lumbering around the house like cross between Frankenstein and an enormous penguin, a grin plastered on his face.  His gait was stiff due to his 2 artificial hips and ankles that never completely healed, but he refused to let it get him down.  He still milked the dairy cows right up to the moment he sold them in the late 80s.  He continued to drive the tractor, even after it flipped over on him while driving up a hill.  He did repairs around the house, and climbed up ladders to pick apples.

He never slowed down, even after he and my grandma sold the farm and moved to town.  He got right down to business and planted a huge garden in the backyard.  He puttered around the house, but most of the time was devoted to his greatest passion - painting.

At 62, my grandfather taught himself to paint.  My aunt gave him a book on drawing and he thought, hey, I can do that.  He would clip pictures from magazines by the dozens and look through stacks of pictures that my aunt and uncle took on their numerous ’round the world adventures.  When he found a picture that struck his fancy, he would retire to his studio, surrounded by chaos and begin.  He painstakingly copied the picture to the canvas with a pencil, erasing and redrawing more times than I can count.  When he was satisfied, he would dig around in the piles on the floor for the right color of paint and proceed. 

His painting only slowed once – when my grandmother became ill.  He cared for her as her health declined over the years.  He refused to put her in a nursing home.  Whenever she was in the hospital, he would be there, hovering, insisting that they weren’t taking good enough care of her.  When she was confined to bed, he moved his painting supplies to the bed next to her and continued to paint.  My grandmother died 2 years ago, and he cared for her right through the end.

The day he went into the hospital in June, he was out in his garden digging bean poles.  He finished, called the ambulance since he couldn’t drive anymore, and waited out from for them to come.  When my father rushed to the hospital, one of the first things Grandpa told him was that he needed to go out and finish planting the beans. 

He had prostate cancer.  There were complications.  Despite that, he wanted to go home.  He wanted to be out of bed, out of the hospital, and back to his home, where he could putter around, doctor his wounds with vaseline, tend his garden and paint.  Ever few days, he’d struggle out of bed, start packing his stuff and announce he was leaving.

He never came home.  When it became clear that he would need to spend quite a long time in a nursing home to recover, he decided to give up.  If he couldn’t be independent, life wasn’t worth living.  It’s the only time I’ve known him to give up.

When we were cleaning out his house this week, we moved all his paintings to the basement, where he had hung his favorites on the wall.  We stopped counting at 300.  Two of them now hang on my wall.

At the funeral mass, the first reading was from the Ecclesiastes 3 

 1 There is a time for everything,  and a season for every activity under heaven:  2 a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot,  3 a time to kill and a time to heal,  a time to tear down and a time to build,  4 a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance,  5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,  a time to embrace and a time to refrain,  6 a time to search and a time to give up,  a time to keep and a time to throw away,  7 a time to tear and a time to mend,   a time to be silent and a time to speak,  8 a time to love and a time to hate,  a time for war and a time for peace.  9 What does the worker gain from his toil? 10 I have seen the burden God has laid on men.

 As I read this passage, I was struck.  What is this but qadr?  Allah (swt) has ordained a time for everything.  There is a time for life, and a time for death.  Alhamdulilah, He ordained 84 years for my grandfather.  He could have taken him when his appendix burst when he was 9, and then I wouldn’t be here.  He could have taken him when he fell down a hay shaft, and my father would never have known his father.  Alhamdulilah, we had 84 years with my grandfather.

Of course, knowing something is qadr Allah and finding peace with that knowledge are two different things…