This is the only painting that I've ever done that was done in two stages, two years apart. My best friend had died from cancer, and I painted her disappearing around a corner into the light, leaving me alone in the empty house. Please note the small smile, an intentional reference to the "it is better to have loved and lost, than not to have loved at all" business. Having gotten her actual leaving done, I then put it away. Two years later on the anniversary of her death, I said out loud that even the walls cried, and that was what it needed to be finished.