All the Empty White

For my mother, an artist, who passed away last week, and for all loved ones who endure mental decline.

I take your hand, the brush askew, and I hold it in my own. Together, we find the palette and we move to the canvas, and there is nothing more. I am helpless. The strokes are foreign to me, the vision incapable of forming. I cannot, yet I bear witness to what was once so effortless, done without thought, only feeling. A graceful glide, a deliberate dash, a final flourish. They exist now only in your memory, in brittle, diaphanous thoughts that render your gift irretrievable, leaving only the empty white.