Her brush slid across the canvas, leaving a curving stroke of blue behind it. She had just put the finishing touches on the colorful background featuring a beautiful meadow, untouched by the hands of man. The field was a luscious, rain soaked green, while the sky was the same blue as the real sky on a gorgeously clear summer day. Along with the trees skirting the edge of the field far into the distance, there was also a giant oak positioned just to the right of the center of the painting. Every crack, crease and dimple in the bark was detailed enough that it looked as if you could reach into the painting to chop the tree up for firewood. There were birds included too, painted as if captured and frozen in time then sewn expertly into the art which was her painting. It had taken her eleven months and twenty-nine nights to complete the background to her perfection. No matter how beautiful the picture before her was however, it hadn’t even become the beginning of a masterpiece yet. That would come tomorrow, once the paint was dry and ready to surround the miracle she would create with only her fingertips and memory to guide her.
So the next night down the wooden stairs she crept, into her basement which was dark and cold in order to finish the masterpiece by the morning. She needed no colors and no brush for her fingers would create the strokes tonight. She first realized what she could do exactly seven years before, in the same spot she was in now, downstairs in her studio painting. It was late and she hadn’t been able to sleep well in so long so she ended up falling asleep against her easel with her brush in her hand. When she woke up her brush was on the floor and on her canvas was a portrait. She thought that she must have done it when she was asleep but none of the colors on the canvas matched any of the colors on her brushes. She reached out a finger to touch the lips of the person on her easel. To her astonishment, a deep red appeared where her finger had been. She reached forward to caress the painting again, this time with purpose. She wasn’t about to ask questions, she was too tired to try and understand. With only her finger and the sleek paint materializing out of it, she completed his face just as the morning sun made its first appearance in her studio window. That portrait was the first masterpiece she ever created, leaving behind it the promise of many more to come.





This portrait would be number seven, symbolizing the seventh anniversary of a life changing tragedy. She climbed gracefully onto her stool, which held memories of years and years past. Then, she began to paint. Not a single soul other than her knew of this ability, and she wanted it to stay that way. She still did not understand why or how, nor did she want to. She was just grateful for the chance to remember a loved one in such a miraculous way. Like every year before, she started with his hair, closing her eyes to see him clearer in her mind. It was just brown, nothing extraordinary, but it always smelled so great and its softness would tickle her fingers whenever she ran them through it. Next she did the ears, the ones he listened with so intently, as if every single word spoken to him was just as important as any other. Then she moved onto the eyes, as blue as the sky beyond his head and still bulging with the innocence of a newborn child. Those eyes could watch every move you made, making you feel like the only person in the world when standing in a crowd. His eyes could also read you like a book whether you wanted them to or not, making it impossible to ever lie straight to his face, which was what must have made him so trusting. The next thing she would paint was always his nose, which had a special gift of sniffing out whichever yummy treat she was trying to hide from him. That was a normal occurrence in their household; she would be munching on a candy bar and seconds later it would be plucked from her grasp and disappear behind his plump lips. Those, his lips, were the very last things she would paint for it hurt the most to remember them. If she closed her eyes and concentrated hard, she could still feel them brush against her forehead, cheeks, and lips. They were always so red and she could remember pushing them away from her whenever she was busy with something but if she could see him just one more time, she would grab him and lock her lips to his then throw away the key.
She was finally finished so she dropped her finger from the canvas and stepped off her stool to stand back and take in the masterpiece she alone had created. It looked just like the picture she held tight in her mind for the past seven years. It looked like all she had to do was reach forward and she would feel the warmth of his skin against hers. She put her hand out to steady herself against the stool but only grasped at air as her knees gave out from underneath her. She crumpled to the cold concrete floor knocking the air from her lungs. She was throwing her hands up to try and find something to pull herself up off the floor and gasping for air when the first tear snuck its way out from under her clenched eyelids. Slowly she stopped grabbing at nothing and instead wrapped her arms around her aching knees, pulling them in close to her heaving chest. There she sat, and let the tears fall from her body like she had somehow broken a dam inside her that kept the river of emotions from flowing beyond her control. Eventually she repaired the dam and wiped away the last tear from her cheek. She finally grabbed the stool and firmly pulled herself to her feet.
Slowly she picked up her masterpiece from her easel and made her way to a table hidden in the shadows at the corner of the room. She turned on the light that was above the table and on it appeared six other portraits of the same person as she had painted tonight. Everyone had a different background than the others. One was a beach, another was a mountain, and the last, was a restaurant. Each one was a place they had been to or had wanted to go to before the incident. As she carefully set the seventh portrait in its place, she couldn’t help but feel some regret at having no one to share her gift with. Then she reminded herself that, she did have someone to share it with, at least in memory. Not just on this date, but every single other day too because every day something happens that she mentions to him while kneeling beside her bed at night, and this is just another one of those things.
Finished in the basement, she turned off the light and walked back up the stairs, through the kitchen and the living room to another set of stairs which she climbed all the way to the top floor. She entered quietly through the first door she came to and gazed at her twelve year old daughter sound asleep in her bed. She reached forward to brush her hair behind her ear when she realized the odd color of the pillow. She touched a finger to it and when she saw that it came back wet, she knew she wasn’t the only one feeling again the pain of this day. With care she stood up and walked over to her daughter’s closet then pulled from the very back her black dress carefully folded on its hanger. She also pulled the black shoes out from under her dresser and set them next to the dress on a chair. Finally she opened the heavy curtains to welcome the rising sun into the room. Silently she left the room allowing the warmth of the sun to wake her daughter from her slumber.
The lady then walked into her own room a few doors down and pulled her own black dress from the back of her closet, and her black shoes from underneath of her dresser. Then, throwing open her own curtains, she welcomed the day which was the seventh anniversary of the death of the masterpiece which was her husband. Today she would spend with her daughter at his resting area and tonight she would spend in her own bed, sleeping, but tomorrow she would commence the newest masterpiece which she will finish a year from this day. She knew he would forever be her masterpiece with whom she shared her deepest and most cherished secret because the heart knows not of the boundaries between heaven and earth.