I Light a Candle in My Studio: On Grief, Art, and the Urgency of Breath

This week, I light a candle in my studio.
For Veronica.

We met when we were 20.
Two wild-hearted women, full of laughter, art, and untamed dreams.
Over the years, life carried us to different cities—different rhythms, different seasons.
Sharing a best friend, our connection felt intimate while physically distant. Veronica and I shared the same loves across time: creativity, beauty, spirit, curiosity, depth, passion….The kind of friendship that transcends distance and lives in the marrow of you.

And now, she is gone.

A sudden stroke.
No warning.
No chance to say goodbye.
Just stillness.
And the quiet quake of disbelief.

In the hollow of this absence, I do the only thing I know to do—
I paint.

There are griefs too sacred for words.
And mine lives in brushstrokes.
In silence.
In the breath between one color and the next.

No years of meditation have ever held me the way a white canvas does.
The soft hum of classical music.
The feel of soft wind across my cheek.
The red on my brush blooming like memory.
The deep, holy inhale that reminds me—
I am still here.

This is where I grieve.
This is where I remember.
This is where I pray.

And as I paint, I whisper a vow to her:

I will carry her gravitas.
Her unmistakable Scorpio fire.
Her exquisite beauty—the way she walked into a room like a poem written in skin.
I will carry all of it forward, into my life.
As my life.
Living more fiercely.
Loving more openly.
Creating more truthfully—because she cannot.

I painted this week for Veronica.
For her daughter.
For those of us left behind to make meaning out of breath,
to sculpt sorrow into art,
and to live for those who no longer can.

Let us not waste a moment.
Let us feel everything.
Let us make beauty of our ache.

With all my love,
Robbi