“You must be joking, right?”
“No, I’m serious,” replied my sister Jo-Anne.
“I haven’t picked up a paintbrush in ages.” I set the glass of lemonade I was nursing on the patio table with a clunk. “Why would you even ask me to do such a thing?” I stared at Jo-Anne in disbelief.
“I have been thinking about this for sometime and have been waiting for the right moment to ask you. When I visited our cousin Joan last summer, she showed me the portrait you painted of Grandma. It looked just like her, so I would like you to paint Nathan’s picture for me.” Jo-Anne set her empty glass on the table, crossed her arms and waited.
Jo-Anne and I had a relationship that was untroubled by any of the many disputes that create rifts in families. Other family members were hesitant to bring up Nathan’s name, but she and I often talked about him: things he’d done, what he would look like at a particular age, what career he might have chosen. On dates that would have been significant—his high school graduation, birthdays and other occasions that were important to our children—were times we remembered him in our conversations. But, her request was making me uncomfortable. I shifted in my chair and plucking a napkin from the holder, wiped away the sweat ring from my glass. “That was Grandma. This is Nathan and it is entirely different.” Even though I’d managed a reasonable likeness of Grandma, painting my nephew’s picture was quite another matter.
“I don’t see how. A portrait is a portrait, isn’t it?”
Tears clouded my vision. “No, it’s not the same at all. Grandma was ninety-nine and had lived a good long life. Nathan, on the other hand, was just a kid when he was killed.”
“That’s precisely why I want you to paint his picture.” Jo-Anne remained adamant about her request to paint her youngest son’s picture.
After a long silence, I mumbled, “Well, I guess I could try.” My lack of confidence resulted from the fact that I’d only ever painted that one portrait and that was several years before. This one would be a far more emotionally charged endeavour. I knew I’d never get through such a project without shedding some tears at the memories.
Nathan had been killed in a car accident two days before Christmas. He was ten years old. His family was en-route from their home at St. George, Manitoba to Regina to spend the holiday with the rest of our clan. Near Portage la Prairie, an older model Cadillac sedan crossed two lanes of traffic, the meridian and another lane of traffic before crashing into Jo-Anne’s family’s minivan. It hit just behind the driver’s seat where Nathan was sitting. My brother-in-law, Cid, suffered a broken arm. Jo-Anne and the other two boys suffered only minor cuts and bruises but Nathan died at the scene. The driver of the Cadillac claimed that a sneeze made him lose control, not the fact that he’d driven straight through from Mission, British Columbia, on his way to Winnipeg. No charges were ever laid against him. For some family members, this fact generated resentment for several years.
