Berthold Woltze - Der Brief

Berthold Woltze - Der Brief (The Letter)

I came across this picture in some meme and I was struck by the apparent grief in the woman's face. I have only experienced real grief once and that's when my mother was struck down by an aneurysm. While she was the one that was struck, for me it was a similar experience, it was like being hit with a hammer. It was sudden and debilitating. I eventually recovered but it took me a year. I didn't experience the same thing with my father's passing. I suspect that was because his death didn't happen suddenly, he just gradually deteriorated over a period of six months until he just wasn't there anymore. It was still debilitating. For some stupid reason I was the executor of the estate and that was extremely painful. I don't recommend it, get a lawyer and let them handle it. 

I had some friends in high school who were killed in car wrecks, but those deaths affected me hardly at all. Of course, they weren't family, so I wouldn't expect those deaths to cause the same kind of reaction. Celebrity deaths affect me not at all except to be surprised that they were still alive. A lot of people seemed to be upset when JFK was assassinated. I remember my neighbor, a teenage girl, was particularly distraught. I remember wondering what all the fuss was about. Bad shit happens, people get killed all the time. His number happened to be up. Why are upset about this one death but you aren't upset about the thousand other people that died in our town recently?

Once I get past the grief I look at the picture again and I notice the woman is leaning against what looks like a large block of stone. Now it could be an oven, but it appears monolithic which makes me think that her home has been built over some ancient ruins and that block was just too big to move, so they just left it there.

This afternoon I was over at my daughter's house. She is planning on some remodeling and there is big fat brick chimney going right up through the center of the house. It doesn't have any real use any more and she is wondering how much trouble it would be to take it out. Shoot, it wouldn't be very much trouble at all, not more than five or six thousand dollars worth of trouble. You just got to figure out if it's worth it. Which brings us back to the big block of stone in the painting at the top.