Healing on Two Wheels: Grief, Art, and the Road Ahead

Healing is a strange road. It rarely runs straight, and it almost never takes us where we expected to go. Since my father’s death, I have found myself thinking about that more than ever. My father was an incredible musician and an even better artist. He could take a blank canvas and create something beautiful, or sit with an instrument and turn emotion into sound. His life, like all of ours, contained both beauty and brokenness. Losing him has reminded me that healing is not about erasing the painful parts of our story. It is about learning how to carry them without allowing them to determine where we go next.

Motorcycles have taught me something similar. When you ride, you cannot spend all your time staring at the obstacle directly in front of you. You have to look through the turn—to where you want the motorcycle to go. Your hands and your body have a remarkable way of following your eyes. Grief can work the same way. If all we can see is what we lost, the pain can become the only road in front of us. Healing does not mean pretending the obstacle was never there. It means acknowledging it, respecting it, and then slowly beginning to look beyond it.

I think about my father’s art differently now. A painting is rarely made from one perfect stroke. There are layers. Some are bright, some dark. Some mistakes are painted over, yet they remain underneath and become part of the finished piece. Maybe our lives are much the same. The painful things that happen to us do not have to be wasted. Loss, disappointment, regret, and even tragedy can become layers that give us greater depth, compassion, patience, and understanding. We do not get to choose every color placed on our canvas, but we still have some say in what we create with them.

There is also a moment on a motorcycle when you realize you cannot safely ride while constantly looking in the mirrors. The mirrors matter. They tell you where you have been and what is behind you. But they were never meant to be the place where your eyes remain. I will always carry my father with me—the music, the artwork, the memories, the laughter, the hurt, and the lessons. Healing means allowing all of it to become part of who I am without letting yesterday dictate tomorrow.

Maybe that is what life after a fall really means. We do not rise unchanged. We get back on carrying a few scars, a little more wisdom, and perhaps a deeper appreciation for the road still ahead. My father created beauty with his hands and music from his soul. In my own way, I hope to honor him by doing the same with my life: taking everything I have been given—the beautiful and the painful—and creating something better from it.