"The Most Beautiful Painting"

Abstract

This reflects the strength of a lady confined to the bed. She wanted to paint; her joints would not let her. She was determined to. But not always one can win her handicaps. It is not always, that you can make a disobedient body, crippled by Rheumatoid Arthritis, work the way you want it to. Could she paint? I have known her for more years than I can count. I had known her from my school days, as she had been my English language teacher. At times, I jokingly said to her “Mrs. Mathews you have given me beatings for not getting correct spellings and pronunciations, and now it is the time (though undesirably), I am giving you the prescriptions”. To me, her physician, what she had was just another case of Rheumatoid Arthritis. I knew she wanted to paint; I also knew that she would not be able to. She herself was even aware of this, although she never cared to admit it. Her Rheumatoid Arthritis was so advanced that even corticosteroids could not have offered much in the way of relief. Most of her joints were immovable and she had been confined to her cot for a decade or so. Her disease had developed over time. It was not that she did not realize that something was happening to her; she could always make out that her joints were changing. Gradually the wrists, then the elbow, then the little fingers; and surely of late it was the most of her articulations that lost their momentum. When I write Mrs. Mathew was ’limited’ to her cot, I certainly mean she was limited to her cot. viewpoint of the medical men was that she was completely disabled. As far as she was concerned, she always wanted to do something that was creative. An active person like her is bound to be restless. She wanted to hue the canvas. She wanted to put her feelings in color. She was adamant to paint and it became a terrible job to explain her how very impossible was it for her to do so. She would not accept this fact, and Mr. Mathew had to get her a 24 x 36 canvas, set of oil colors, and painting brushes. Getting these, she seemed to be the happiest soul on earth and was as jubilant as a little kid getting his favorite candy. Would she be able? We wondered. We knew it was not quite possible with the state of her joints. She tried to lift the brush. She could not. She tried to do so umpteen times, but all in vain. Holding the brush requires approximating the fingers and imparting them a grip. I have used my hands to tie my shoestrings, write my schoolwork, to do my dissections during college, to stitch wounds, to palpate my patients. I did all this while never, ever realizing how important this set of fingers was. The Most Beautiful Painting