Simon and I were smitten with this painting when we saw it hanging in a gallery one summer while we were on vacation. We were only there to look and left without buying it but, because it was still on our minds the next day, we returned to the gallery for one last look. And that was that. The painting became ours.

That was in 2004, around the same time a powerful tsunami hit the Indian ocean. Heart breaking stories of loss and destruction were all over the news. I remember looking up at the new painting we so cherished, now hanging on our wall, and I thought about how it too could be destroyed in a fire, flood, or some other unfortunate event.

Oddly enough the thought wasn't troubling. In fact, it put me at ease.

By imagining the painting damaged or gone it suddenly became even more appreciated and precious. I loved it very much but I also in that very moment said goodbye to it too. 

It wasn't that I now would allow myself to treat the painting with carelessness or neglect since it would it would, after all, someday be gone. It was that I was learning to appreciate it without panic.