In 2011, my sister Stephenie was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. She was 33 years old at the time, and I - the big sis - was barely 36. It was to become a death sentence. A prolonged one. She passed away quietly just 2 months ago.
The past few years were very tense, yet unravelled and chaotic, most of the time. She had so many surgeries - dangerous ones, at that - and so many emergencies. It was a hard road. Not only for her, but for all of us. As for its effect on me, I felt lost because I had never been so close to something so perilous before with someone I love, who is just like me - the only one with the same 2 parents, the same genetics, the same bloodline. And she was my baby sis, someone I'd fight for quite literally in our youth (if anyone ever threatened her). And she watched out for me too, in ways I'm just beginning to see. We were lifetime best friends. We were as close as sisters can be. But this time I had no control and no way to save her.
I've been in therapy for quite a long time (for other reasons), but my counselor knows I deal with issues and emotions I can't control through art, especially painting. That way, I have some sort of exertion over what's happening. Because painting anything is MY version of the world, for better or worse. She advised me to paint something with Steph in it, so I did.
And this is it. It's unfinished. This is Steph at home watching TV, as it was what she did most of every day if she wasn't at the hospital. Originally there were supposed to be angels hovering above in the glow with their hands on her abdomen, healing the cancer. Her 2 dogs and cat were to be in it too, as well as her IV pole. But when I started it in 2012, I quickly ran out of energy and never finished it. A friend of mine who was a hospice nurse and had a brother dying from cancer as well saw this version and said "It's sad, it's depression." And oddly I had never seen it that way, because to me it was "unfinished." But she had a point. I decided I would photograph the unfinished painting and keep it for what it is.
I don't know if I will ever finish it or not - sometimes I think so, other times not so much. But if I do, this will be the first of a diptych, the other painting will be "A Life Fulfilled." But for now, this is how Steph's life was toward the end...someone too young with so much life inside brought low quietly to an untimely end. I can't believe she's not here. But just because her end on this earth was tragic, she did leave it peacefully and quietly, understanding the nightmare was over and she could finally rest. I think the way she lived her life toward the end, with an odd calmness I'd never seen before, is a testament unto itself. In retrospect, I believe she will have had a gigantic and positive effect on those of us still alive, those who knew her well or not at all. I want to make the next painting about that, if I decide to start one. For now though, since her death is still so close and overwhelming for me to see beyond it, I have this painting, "An Unfinished Life."
Right now, I can just say to her with comfort, "I'll see you again! Later, poopyhead."
In Memoriam
Stephenie Michele Holmberg (née Fitts)
June 29, 1977 - Sept 25, 2014
