A Dream of Love, Loss, and One Last Goodbye
Years ago, I attempted to take my own life. As the darkness began to close in from a suicidal overdose, I dreamed of AJ, my late fiancée. In that dream, she found me. She pulled me into her arms with a tenderness that felt real enough to dissolve every ounce of pain I had been carrying. It was not a goodbye. It was an understanding. From the six long years of suffering I had put myself through, missing her.
This painting is directly connected to my watercolor Dying in a Snowfall, a piece that explores that same moment of slipping away — only here, the focus is not on the cold surrender of death, but on the warmth and bittersweet peace of her embrace.
Before I ever picked up a brush, I wrote a short story about that dream. Years later, when I painted Final Embrace, I realized the story had been waiting for this canvas all along:
“You’ve grown tired, have’t you dear?”, she reassured. “It was too difficult. I’m so sorry. I failed you”, was my excuse. My stature felt different, like the weighing years had melted off and I was almost floating. She snuck in closer and whispered in my ear with her arms wrapped around me, “I understand. It’s alright now. It’s time to rest.” “Just five more minutes? You know how much I missed this”, I pleaded like an innocent child. “I suppose. Maybe you’ll see me when you awake, but it’s a surprise”, as she somehow wrapped herself around me even more. It was just like her to say something alluring like that. A cold winter wind blew against my neck and creeped throughout the rest of my body, but it felt as though a warmth was melting me asleep. My eyes grew heavy as my head dropped on to her soft shoulder. It was becoming too difficult to fight to stay awake, but I was already asleep. I expelled my last bit of energy to muster up one last, “I really missed you.” Finally closing my eyelids and letting go, drifting off. Was this really her loving hug again, after all these years? Or was this just me, making the rounds in my head, to embrace death?
The attempt was a mistake I would regret, but that moment would change something in me entirely. From that moment, I made a promise. Instead of living in misery from the loss of AJ, like the six years before that moment, I would try to live the next 60 years to honor her and make her proud.
