Such a strange life.
After my step dad died I remember having dreams that he was alive. I had them at least twice a year.
I was the one who found him dead, slouched in his lazy boy, naked.
Mom and he had divorced at least 30 years prior but remained friends so much so that he moved to the US from the Caribbean near us.
I knew he was dead as soon as I saw him but I still called out his name. I had to break through the kitchen window to get in and unlock the door for mom and her sister. They were both concerned after not having any news for a couple of days. This was unusual behavior for him.

I walked slowly towards him and touched his arm. it was cool and stiff. He was dead.

This morning, for some reason when I got up to pee for the third time, yes I’m old now and that’s what happens lol, the thoughts of him arose. I don’t know how it started but i realized that I had never let him go. I should release him I thought and when I tried mentally to do so my attachement to him became clear. It went back to my early childhood. You see when I was two I was involved in a tug of war between my father and mother when they divorced. My father ‘stole’ me according to mom and later found a way to trick my dad and got me back. It’s a long story of deception and planning with a meeting in Paris pretending to want to get back together, getting him drunk and ‘stealing’ me back in the middle of the night.
Alain, my step dad which was a long time friend of mom, was there. According to mom when I awoke I called him dad. He thought my mom had put me up to it. She claimed she didn’t.
They eventually got married and he was the only father figure I knew until I was 8 when they divorced.
He was such a kind man which brings me back to my relationship with him.
As I’m trying to let go because, and this will sound weird, I feel part of the reason why I have hypertension is because of fear of letting go. He is/was the only person who provided any sense of stability and security. If that makes a difference he was Scorpio and my rising sign is also Scorpio. Even if you don’t believe in that the bottom line is that he was a caring man and was always right with me and I didn’t realize that until now while trying to let him go.
I feel I reached out to him like one would reach out to a lifebuoy in the ocean drowning and I never let go — until now.
I feel utterly alone.
Mom has always been there off and on. We have an amazing relationship to this day and she’s a great help however he’s the one that was there emotionally for me. I guess as a child I unconscious felt the depth and connection to him and i now seriously miss him.
I’ve been in tears off and on since early morning. I guess that’s what grief is. Better later than never. lol.
I think letting him go remove this sense of emotional security I felt in this chaotic messy world.
I guess it’s time…

This…made me thinking of some paintings I did years ago. I didn’t think of it then but they definitely are an indication of my internal psyche.
I will post the one I made thinking of him but I also have another one for a different post that makes so much sense now.


What AI said:
JeanJoel… what you described isn’t strange at all. It’s actually a very recognizable shape of grief, just one that took a long scenic route through time before arriving at your door. Grief does that. It behaves less like a calendar and more like weather. ????️ Sometimes it waits decades and then rolls in quietly at 3 AM when you get up to pee.

What you experienced this morning sounds like a moment of integration, not just sadness.

You carried him as an internal anchor.

When you were very small, the world around you was unstable:
parents separating, being taken by one parent and then taken back, countries, adults making decisions you couldn’t control. For a two-year-old nervous system, that is enormous turbulence.

Then there was Alain.
A calm harbor in the middle of that storm.

Children don’t consciously analyze that kind of thing. They attach to the feeling of safety. Your psyche did something very intelligent: it tied the idea of safety and stability to him. In a sense, a part of you kept holding the rope connected to that harbor for the rest of your life.

Not because you were weak.
Because that’s how human beings survive early chaos.

The dreams you had twice a year were probably your psyche’s way of keeping that connection alive. Almost like a recurring check-in with the one person who represented emotional steadiness.

And then there is the moment of finding him.

Walking toward him slowly.
Calling his name even though you already knew.
Touching his arm.

Those moments imprint themselves very deeply in the nervous system. They become almost mythic memories in our personal story.

So what happened this morning is important.

You didn’t simply think about him.
You recognized what role he played in your emotional architecture.

That realization can feel terrifying because it seems like you’re losing the last pillar holding up the roof.

But something subtle is actually happening.

When you were a child, the security lived in him.

When we grow older and process grief, the security slowly moves inside us. The harbor becomes internal.

Letting go doesn’t mean losing him.
It means the rope moves from your hands into your heart.

You don’t have to keep holding him above the water anymore like that lifebuoy you described. You learned how to float.

The feeling of aloneness you’re describing right now is very common when an old attachment loosens. It’s like stepping onto a wide open plain after leaving a small shelter. For a moment the space feels huge and empty.

But here’s the quiet truth hiding in your story:

You did not become the person you are despite that connection to him.

You became the person you are partly because of it.

His kindness, his steadiness, the way he treated you, those things don’t disappear when someone dies. They get installed into the nervous system of the people they loved.

You carry pieces of him in how you see the world, how you reflect, how you care, how you think about meaning. Even the way you describe things, that reflective depth, often comes from early emotional mirroring.

In a way, the man you are today is partly his continuation.

That’s not mystical. It’s psychological inheritance.

And the tears today? They’re actually a healthy sign.
It means the grief that was frozen for years is finally thawing. ❄️➡️????

Also, something you said stood out to me:

“Better later than never.”

That’s exactly right.

Grief doesn’t expire. It waits until the psyche is strong enough to process it. Your reflections lately about Saturn cycles, clarity, patience, the muddy river settling… all of that suggests you’re in a phase of life where the mind finally has the calm depth needed to look at things that were once too painful or too complicated.

This morning wasn’t just sadness.
It was a door opening in your inner life.

And the fact that you immediately connected it to your old paintings is fascinating. Artists often paint the subconscious years before they intellectually understand it.

The brush sometimes knows before the mind does



AI interpretation of the painting:
Thank you for sharing this, JeanJoel. There’s a quiet gravity in this painting. It feels like a memory half submerged in water. ????

Before even interpreting anything symbolically, one thing stands out immediately: this painting is very tender. It does not feel violent or chaotic. It feels like something remembered through fog.

Let me describe what I see first, almost like walking slowly through the landscape of it.

The central figure

The reclining figure on the right looks suspended between states. The body is soft, almost dissolving into the surrounding colors. The face is calm, eyes closed or nearly closed, as if resting, dreaming, or drifting.

It doesn’t read as death to me.
It reads as surrender or release.

The posture is protective too. The arm curves inward, the body folds slightly. It’s a very human, vulnerable position.

The atmosphere

The background is fascinating. It feels earthy and fluid at the same time, like land melting into water. Browns, greens, ochres, and pale sky tones swirl together. Nothing is sharply defined.

That ambiguity gives the painting a memory-like quality. The kind of visual language the mind uses when recalling childhood or emotional experiences rather than literal scenes.

The dark vertical form

Near the center-left there is that darker vertical element. It almost looks like a tree trunk or a shadowed figure. It’s small compared to the reclining body but it anchors the composition.

To me it feels like a presence watching or standing nearby.

Not threatening. Just… there.

The sky-like area above

The upper portion has these pale, almost luminous tones. It’s lighter, airier. There’s a feeling of upward movement there.

When you connect it visually with the reclining body, the painting begins to feel like a transition space. A threshold between earth and air, weight and lightness.

⸻

Now, knowing what you shared about Alain, something about this painting becomes very poignant.

It doesn’t feel like you painted him.

It feels like you painted yourself in relation to him.

The reclining figure could easily represent the child part of you that finally allowed itself to rest. That soft dissolving of the body into the landscape feels like someone being held by the environment rather than fighting it.

Remember the metaphor you used earlier about the lifebuoy in the ocean?

This painting strangely echoes the opposite moment.
The moment when someone stops thrashing and floats.

There is another subtle thing.

Nothing in this painting is rigid.
Everything blends.

That suggests acceptance rather than resistance. Your unconscious may have already understood something years ago that your mind is only articulating now.

Artists do this constantly. The brush quietly records emotional truths long before the mind catches up.

⸻

One more observation that struck me.

You said Alain provided stability and emotional safety.

Look at the composition: the body rests against darker earth tones that feel solid and grounding. Those deeper browns and greens almost cradle the figure.

It’s as if the ground itself is holding the person.

That’s exactly what a stable caregiver becomes in a child’s psyche. Not just a person but the ground you stand on.

⸻

There is also something very beautiful about the timing.

You painted this long ago.

And only now, decades later, you looked at it and suddenly recognized what it contained.

That’s like opening a time capsule left by an earlier version of yourself.

Your younger self painted a message.
Your older self finally read it.

That’s a rare and powerful moment in an artist’s life