What A Simple Painting Can Do – May Is Filled With Blue Irises & Blue Memories

A simple trip to a museum, that’s all it was. So okay, it was a museum of modern art where all my expectations easily grew into reality: I don’t understand modern art. Not one bit. If anything, it confuses me most of the time.

But there was an exposition of four painters from Switzerland, the Barraud Brothers, who painted in a realistic manner (well, at least they started out that way). What you see is what you get, that kind of style (which grows even more pleasurable when you start to guess titles of paintings, as realistic artists where no enemies of stating the obvious).

As I was floating through the museum, I enjoyed most of what I saw, but nothing really seemed to move me. Until I, somewhat reluctantly, turned a corner to see the one work I hadn’t focused on yet. And then my heart skipped a beat.

May is a bad month for me. A few important people keep me busy in my head as I see the fifth of May drag along, the birthday of a good friend who passed away almost two years ago. At 42 she had to give up fighting cancer. I miss her a lot.

And then on the twelfth is my niece’s birthday. Only, it’s the niece who never made it onto this World alive. There were so many things wrong with her tiny being, she never stood a chance against fate…

May is the month of quietly missing these two souls and thinking about them a lot, keeping them alive in my memories so death hasn’t won in the end.

So what does this painting have to do with all that?

My niece was called Iris.

I didn’t know this painting existed, let alone that it was there in that museum. And if I hadn’t reluctantly made my way over to that far-end corner, I’d never have known. But I did. And I do.

It might sound silly, but I feel somewhat grateful when looking at this photo I took.

They’re not here any more. Not Iris, nor my friend. But somehow, they are still here. In a painting, as flowers in a vase. In my head, every time I think of them. And in my heart. Because I’ll never forget them, not for as long as I’ll live.

May is a bad month for me. But serendipitous moments like these make it better.

❤ ❤ ❤

 

 

 

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PS: Last year, we planted a single iris flower in our garden. This year, there’s suddenly two growing there! Irises are symbolic flowers, who say: “your friendship means a lot to me”