The Light of the World: A Memoir

He is someone who journeyed to freedom, I think, and I was married to someone who walked to freedom. The culmination of the freedom was love and family. That’s all he did, that’s what he did.

the man lived. Not nearly enough, but not insufficiently. He found his life’s work thrice: as an activist; as a chef; and as a painter. He understood himself as something larger than himself: His mighty, extended family of origin; his beloved native land and its people. He found love and became part of a new extended family, and a new people. He ha

how can we be so happy, when we have been through so much? The forest is not denuded. The trees are standing tall.

I never once doubted him, because that is how he made me feel. So I walk forward knowing I was loved, and therefore am loved.

Something is fading, not the memory of him but the press of memory, the urgency of writing, the closeness of him. He is somewhere in the atmosphere, but also not.

As I sit alone with these words, I think about how brave he was in so many ways, and how brave he was to go into that studio every day with his demons and his angels, and labor to put them on canvas.

I wonder if these memories are finite, which is why I keep writing them down. The basket of remembrance has three sides; one is open; can it tilt and spill out?

“Bless him for loving you when you needed it, for healing you, and for preparing you for me.”

Both artists, both soulful, both woman-worshipping monogamists, both aesthetes, both fixers and makers, both uncensored, both un-pretentious, both similarly self-effacing and similarly dramatic, both creatures of the nest, both passionate cooks and eaters.