Opinion : 2014: The Year of the Wounded Angel

This painting was one of our inspirations during the challenging, often tragic, year that was 2014.

We all learned so much in 2014 – and many of last year’s lessons were from paint, and paintings – and pain.

I learned that I could mix one gallon of an impossibly ugly bright green paint with a few ounces of equally ugly of “wet cement grey” paint and a gallon of “historically pale yellow” to create a unique medium-light green that works well in our living room.

Although one daughter described our house as the site of a crayon box explosion, the new green provides a colorful contrast between the Coca-Cola red kitchen and the pumpkin cinnamon spice of my office area (which I also created from a collection of paints that would have been historically ugly on their own).

I painted the entire house in the long, long winter of 2014. Two bathrooms, the laundry room and two bedrooms, along with the rooms mentioned above. Although my work is certainly not professional, most of it looks pretty good – or at least not-so-bad.

But not everything I learned last year came from success. Not every painting that inspired me showed happy scenes.

I learned, in June, that a 1994 Oldsmobile 88, driven too fast on a gravel road by a teenager, will end up upside-down with a two-foot deep v-shaped dent in the front after colliding head-on with a light pole.  Fortunately, angels and airbags kept our daughter safe; she was able to walk home from the ER later that day.

It was my search to explain how thankful our family was after that close call that led to my discovery of the painting entitled “The Wounded Angel.”

I had never heard of that painting – although it has been for years the official national artwork of the country of Finland – until after Lydia’s accident.

The painting (see photo) shows two young boys carrying a wounded, bleeding angel on a gurney, with the smokestacks of a small Finnish city in the background. The message of the painting is that this angel suffered its injuries while helping the mortals; that even Heaven can feel the pain of those of us down below.

Hugo Simberg created that work in 1903, after spending six months recovering from meningitis. His work represented his experience – and his recovery.

The people of Finland cast their votes for “Wounded Angel” in 2006. I am guessing that whatever happened in their country in 2005 or 2006 must have felt similar to what we have felt in Vinton for much of 2014.

In Vinton, last year, our guardian angel shed its first blood in January.

I was in the exam chair at Martin Eye Clinic on a Friday when I felt my phone vibrating with a text message from Valerie.

A local man – a guy I consider a friend – had been arrested – for murder.

Many of us spent the next several weeks pondering how someone we knew at church or work or other places in the community could carry a secret like that for so long.

And that was just the beginning of the unimaginable challenges, tragedies and heartaches that 2014 would bring us.

There were way too many tragic accidents, way too many too-early funerals. Our racing community lost two guys in separate accidents; the Vinton-Shellsburg community also faced sudden loss, twice.

We survived many close calls, too.

I had spent the spring and summer planning to spend the first full week-end of September in Baltimore, celebrating the 200th anniversary of the writing of the Star Spangled Banner. Instead, I spent that particular late summer weekend in a hospital waiting room while my twin brother had quadruple bypass surgery.

All went as well as it could have for such a surgery, considering that the doctor who investigated my twin's chest pain found such severe blockage in all four ventricles that he kept him in the hospital and scheduled surgery as soon as possible.

Instead of going to the East Coast, I went to London – London, Minnesota, that is. It's a tiny town just across the border. Our vacation turned into an afternoon/evening road trip that took us to the Little Brown Church and then an hour or so north. We made it to Minnesota, and back to the hospital, before visiting hours were over.

Many of you had many days like that, and worse, in 2014.

Yet, 2014 was not all bad. Here in our area, we made arrangements to repair our historic courthouse clock and install an all-purpose turf at the V-S athletic complex. We welcomed new leaders to our community, as well. Vinton has a new police chief and city coordinator; Vinton Unlimited and the Benton Development Group also have new leaders. Our local fireworks makers went to Mason City for the convention and came home with the trophies indicating that they are the best in the world. Vinton-Shellsburg band, track and cross country teams enjoyed successful seasons and a couple of our 2014 graduates were National Merit Scholarship Finalists.

And even more importantly (to me, at least): I am a grandpa, again. Shortly after buying the very last lawn mower from the soon-to-close Alco store, I spent an hour holding Talitha Annaliese Gates, who was born Dec. 20. My oldest daughter finally became a mom again, after years of wondering if it would be possible.

And yet, while sharing the joys of Christmas that a new baby brings, I realize that in many homes, the lights of Christmas are accompanied by moments of silent sadness.

Life is like that some times. 2014 was like that way too often.

But there is one more thing about “The Wounded Angel” that we should know as we let its image comfort our weary souls: Sinberg had sketched the figures of his painting years before his illness. But surviving that sickness and his six-month confinement helped bring color to his idea. His life became richer, his work more alive, because of the pain he survived.

And so will ours.