Vincent Van Gogh’s Old man of sorrow.

I was given the opportunity to observe and ponder this picture while I read Henri Nouwen’s book Spiritual Formation: Following the movements of the Spirit.

In the village of Etten, in the Netherlands, Vincent van Gogh sketched a still life of a sick farmer seated near the fireplace with his head in his hands and his elbows on his knees. 16 (see color insert, Old Man with His Head in His Hands.) The old man is “worn out,” Vincent notes, “on the threshold of eternity.” In this print I have tried to express… the existence of God and eternity—in the infinitely touching expression of such a little old man, of which he himself is perhaps unconscious, when he is sitting quietly in his corner by the fire.” Vincent’s vision of death and new life is revealed in his letter to his brother, Theo, dated November 15, 1878. In it he writes: “It is a sad and very melancholy scene, which must strike everyone who knows and feels that we also have to pass one day through the valley of the shadow of death, and that we also will have our share of tears and white hairs. What lies beyond this is a great mystery that only God knows, but He has revealed absolutely through His word that there is a resurrection of the dead.” P120

As I looked I could see the mans friends and family mill round him – he still unmoving. A person lights the fire, others feed it with wood and coal. Cups of tea are brought, food, but grief can’t feed on real food. The mans position doesn’t change – or does it? Does he begin to beat his forehead with his fists, grind his knuckles into his skull to feel a real pain, that will pass; unlike the pain in his own heart, the pain of loss.

Or is it a picture of a man alone, save for Vincent; but what can he give him? A man alone with his diagnosis, a death sentence… “I’m sorry Mr ________ the biopsy showed cancer cells and the prognosis is not so good. We see people with this cancer every week and with management we can give you X more months to live.”

You stumble home from the hospital numb, grasping the information leaflets they carefully gave you with your next appointment date.

You come in and slump into the chair by the fire. You think things like:

“I knew that it was bad!”

” ”

“F**k!”

“What about my ___________”

“Why me?”

Or is he a man slumped on the street, syringe at his side, having taking his last hit in the Russian roulette of street drugs… was it heroin or was it fentanyl?