the witnesses
2024
acrylic on paper
[painting of a collaged man and his dog in a colorful chaotic abstract space. Both the man and the dog are collaged together from disparate magazine clippings - the man with a head and a half, the face undeveloped and unformed, the torso arms and legs all different, some moving in different directions. The dog is part illustration part large dog and part small dog. The entire background was clearly once fluorescent orange, as it peeks through the rough colorful marks scribbled into half of the background–green and blue and red and so on–an almost blinding, hunting vest orange.]
When my mom died by suicide, she was outside in a wooded park with trails and boulders and a lake (more of a pond, really) and trees. Many trees. When my dad found her, there was a man and his dog passing by, a winter afternoon jaunt to get the blood flowing and the body moving. A practical, healthy routine. My dad called out to the man, frantically asking him if he’d wait in the parking lot for the police for him, that his wife had just died and he couldn’t leave her. The man waited, and this is all I know.
But I think of him often–who is he? How old was he? My mother was obscured, but what did he see of my father, what does he remember? Does he think of it? What does he look like? How does he describe that day? Did the dog feel there was something wrong? What breed was it? How big? How small? Did it bark a lot? Was it scared? Was he? Did he run to the parking lot, did his heart hammer as he waited? Did he call someone? I don’t know. I don’t know.