Mural Erased

Healing comes in so many ways, the levels are countless as you try to help yourself make any sense of it all. Losing a loved one is a hard one, feeling hopeless about the struggles and disasters in the world is another hard one. We all have a right to ourselves to find ways of coping with grief and my family finds it in art. When we look at art which brings happy memories, the healing continues, day after day until you can smile again. 

Well, my family just lost their dad. God help us, as we are taking it very hard. 

 On this Father’s Day, missing our dad so much, we chose to paint a Father’s Day memories mural for all the people struggling with the loss of their daddies. I cannot begin to express how much healing and bonding painting that mural brought us. Everyone knows my family paints and we have been painting that particular mural wall for over 20 years. It began with my daughter Kala’e’s wedding at the park. Before, the graffiti on the wall was unacceptably, disgustingly bad. Of course we got permission to paint the wall and found out it curbed the graffiti problem. 

It’s out of pure love that our family continued to monitor the murals and painted fresh ones when needed. Volunteering everything: our time, our paint, gas, equipment, love, all of it. 

So when the DLNR came to Kala’es house and told her we couldn’t paint, she told them that we have permission, can he find out what is going on, but in the meantime it’s Father’s Day – we are painting. We painted. 

They issued Kala’e a citation and they painted over the mural. Gone forever. They destroyed something so priceless I cannot even begin. They crushed every healing memory painting that mural brought. We were together doing something creative, positive and fun while we cried missing our dad. 

I cannot grieve for my children and I cannot change things, but I can make happy memories so it’s a little less painful looking back. 

Scarlett Ritte