Post 6: The Aftermath: Drowning in Grief
Life after Sarah’s death wasn’t just devastating for Mike—it was suffocating. Grief clung to him like a shroud, pressing down with every breath, turning the simple act of existing into an unbearable weight. Each night, for the first two years, he drowned in his own tears, swallowed by a sorrow that refused to loosen its grip. The future he had once imagined with Sarah—vivid and full of hope—had been ripped away, leaving him stranded in a wasteland of memories and unrelenting pain.
The drinking, once a quiet shadow lurking at the edges of his life, became his only refuge. He poured himself into bottles, chasing oblivion, desperate to escape the reality that Sarah was gone forever. Worse still, he had been the one to make that impossible, final decision. Each glass was like a thin veil over a wound too deep to heal, a temporary balm that only served to deepen the darkness when it faded. The alcohol muted the agony for a few short hours, but when the numbness wore off, the anguish returned with a vengeance.
In the dead of night, when silence screamed the loudest, the bitter irony gnawed at him. For years, he had feared leaving her behind, imagining her outliving him, a widow navigating a long, lonely life. But fate, in its cruelty, had twisted the story. She had been the one to leave first, and now Mike was the one left behind, a hollow shell of the man he once was. The weight of that truth bore down on him relentlessly, trapping him in a grief so heavy it felt like there was no escape.
Current Progress
Not much!
The traveling has made it difficult to make much progress this week but I am back at it today.
Intimate feelings about the story
I will be interviewing Mike again this week. There is an important message in this hand that I am getting to just now. I am hoping to have his voice for you hear for yourself. He’s such a great guy that I really enjoy our interviews. We have had several.
About the Painting
The negative about paitning and traveling with a wet painting, runs risk of smearing. I have shown that in the video. A sweatshirt touched the wet paint and did a bit of blending. This is the reason I only travel with a work that is on the first layer, it is EASILY fixable on the next paint layer.
I am now in my Texas studio but I took a little video of “life in the day” while I was still in Wisconsin hence the reason that you see me pouring my 4am cup of coffee and walked out with me in the dark to the studio.
My Texas studio is set up and I am now fully functional again. YAHOOOOO!
Collect early - Gigantic rewards.
By being a paid subscriber here, you have the opportunity to collect this work before it’s complete at a price with a HUGE reward. I will progressively increase the price of this work as I tell the story and complete more of the painting. IF you collect early, the painting will still be completed and the story will still be told, but you get to call it “Yours”. You will be the ONLY person to call it “Yours”.
Your purchasing reward will diminish on Sunday. Each Sunday, I will increase the cost of collecting this work.
I have scheduled this work to take me 7 weeks. I have divided the story into 7 weeks as well as the progressive pricing. The first price increase was yesterday. Collect early, save BIG!