The Register-Herald, Beckley, West Virginia

Life!

February 5, 2010

‘The pain will pass; the beauty will remain’

Inside Out column

By Bev Davis

Let’s face it. Life can be painful at times.

People we love die. A family member suffers a stroke. We encounter circumstances that create emotional or physical pain.

Denise, the sister of a dear friend, recently opted for hospice care as she copes with the day-to-day realities of end-of-life issues. A nurse by profession, she has fought a valiant battle with an extremely painful disease that has worn her down physically, but which has not diminished her vibrant faith in God.

She’s worked her way past the “why” questions and focuses now on how to make the rest of her life as meaningful as possible.

This week, while working a crossword puzzle, I got puzzled myself and found I couldn’t come up with the right word for any of several successive clues. I happened to look at the design within the puzzle itself, all those black blocks in an intriguing pattern. There seemed to be no particular rhyme or reason to the pattern, but together the dark blocks made a framework for all the words in the interlocking white spaces.

That’s a bit like suffering and all the other unanswered dilemmas we face. We know somehow they are all connected and there is an eternal pattern that makes sense, even though all we can do is fill in one square at a time.

Ironically, as I was reflecting on that idea, I looked at the next crossword clue: “Painter of ‘The Bathers.’” The six-letter answer: Renoir.

I remembered a story about Auguste Renoir and his friend and fellow artist Henry Matisse, who was almost 30 years younger than Renoir.

Over time, Renoir had become nearly paralyzed by a painful and crippling form of arthritis. He continued to paint, fighting through long days of pain.

It’s said Matisse visited Renoir daily and couldn’t bear to see his friend in such tortuous pain. One day, he blurted out, “Auguste, why do you continue to paint when you are in such agony?”

Without removing his brush from the canvas, Renoir answered, “Because the pain will pass; the beauty will remain.”

“The Bathers,” one of his most significant works, was completed just two years before Renoir died — and 14 years after he was stricken with the disabling disease.

I believe people who fight through intense pain — be it physical or emotional — accomplish something great, whether they leave behind a beautiful work of art or a legacy of faith that persevered.

I think the real progress begins when we, like Renoir and Denise, work beyond the “why” questions and focus on how we can invest the rest of our days and what we can leave behind for the benefit of others.

Maybe we can do that only by remembering, “The pain will pass; the beauty will remain.”

— E-mail: bdavis@register-herald.com

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