I lost my baby dalmatian on 7 May 2015 and am trying to carry on living as normally as I can, given the circumstances. Sparky was my darling and her paw-prints have left an indelible mark on my soul. How does one not miss the apple of one’s eye? Is it possible to forget she didn’t live with us for 12 years and our lives revolved around her? We never went on a family holiday together, one of us always volunteered to stay back with Sparky. She was the wheel and we were the spokes.

After she went away to the spirit world, I tried immersing myself in activities which needed me to learn new things, techniques, kept me busy so that I wouldn’t miss my baby. I planted a few saplings, read up on growing plants in a balcony. The surprising thing was that all my plants survived my ministrations, considering the fact that my earlier attempts had always met with disaster. Maybe it was her love and spirit that kept the greens green and my thumbs blameless.

Then came a phase where I took up acrylic painting, very new to me, hence it warranted more reading up on the net and more canvases being bought, wasted and repainted upon. This activity helped me heal somehow, I lost all track of time and people while painting and this eased the constriction in my chest a bit too.

I bought a few canvas boards and started splashing paint on them randomly, some I tried painting by watching tutorials on how to paint, and tried to replicate the paintings in the videos.  I painted over on a few of my initial paintings, not because my second attempts were an improvement on the earlier ones but because my heart was reluctantly getting used to the idea of a life without Sparky and my paintings are testimony to my acceptance and adaptability. All my artwork is still raw and messy, a bit like my heart, a lot like my soul.

I have posted before and after pictures of my work under this post and hope you will be able to see where I am going with this. My healing journey from June to August 2015…

By Sulekha Rawat