Camille and Claude. It sounds like the star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet. Maybe how Yoko was John’s muse. Or how supportive our fellow compatriot Josephine was to her Napoleon. Or Joan Baez and Bobby Dylan in their heyday.

The leaves rustle gently beneath the soles of our feet in this ocean of greenery before us. We are not quite at the higher edge, and we aren’t at the end. Jean and I are floating in this wispy wind as vibrantly red poppies ripple everywhere. Claude is somewhere around here. With his tools. Capturing this. He is a real artist. Over the years, he has perfected his disappearing act. He knows how to constantly be around and remain unseen.

I’m the wife of an artist. I’m the luckiest woman alive. I’m a red poppy plucked from the ground, chosen among all those similar-looking, equally beautiful flowers to be by his side. I was his model. I became his wife. I bore his child. He missed almost the entirety of the pregnancy, but I was there when he painted his masterpieces. I was a muse, and I am a muse. It’s a mammoth fortune to be in the vicinity of his génie.

My husband had to be away, pretend we weren’t together so his aunt could continue paying him a monthly chèque. He sacrificed a lot for us. He is so courageous. When he got drafted, he fought his father when the latter offered to help him get out of the army only if he gave up painting. Men like Claude don’t give up. They don’t sacrifice their passions. I admire him for his decision.

Even if it’s at my expense sometimes.

I do get frustrated, especially on days like this when it’s too windy and my parasol is merely an accessory for Claude to paint. I can’t be mad at him for long; he struggled a lot for us. I can’t forget that one time he attempted suicide after the birth of Jean. Those were dark times of living with strangers until Claude stopped receiving rejections and started receiving chèques instead.

This is the price you have to pay if you want to be remembered alongside your artist husband. You have to weather his torments, his brokenness. You have to acknowledge that your brokenness must match his. He must look at you and find his own hollowness staring back at him. For richer, for poorer. In sickness and in health.

Self-erasure is a must. It starts with the last name and ends with a section on his Wikipedia page. You have to be an anchor during the hurricanes of self-doubt and creative blockages, and the anger that follows them. You share the misery, the depression, the moodiness, but not the successes. They are in his name, and that’s okay. After all, you are in the toile. You are a part of the masterpiece, even if it took you days and days of battling loneliness because he needs his space to create.

My husband is not a perfect man, and this is why he is a great artist. Someone once said Art is a handicap. We make art because we are flawed. I thought he was talking about Claude. Claude is a bad husband; this is why he is a great artist.

I sometimes wonder if I were an artist like him, could I spend my mornings in this field of poppies, and leave my son to his devices so I can recreate his childhood on a canvas? Let the blue brushstrokes consume my every thought? I can’t imagine competing against this… dedication. After all, I refuse to believe I’m totally stripped of art. Claude loves me because he finds art in my being. In small towns like Argenteuil, the only benchmark you can strap your value onto is your spouse.

And what is the point of trying to fight it when you’re closer to death’s door than he is? He was offered the talent and granted enough years of good health to put together a legacy. We grow to accept our imminent death and our bestowed roles in life. He will be the legendary painter, and I’m the silhouette of the woman you’re staring at and printing on your tote bags.

Until death do us part.

I haven’t been feeling my best these days. I’m on the precipice of a revelation. I feel death advancing, and while I wait for a diagnosis, I decide to diagnose my decisions in life to kill time before it does me. And I understand now I could’ve done life better if I knew better.

But fantasies only go as far as imagining being married to a predictable accountant and losing the part of me who did choose Claude. I don’t like to think I was duped. I simply outgrew the environment I chose. A person is allowed to change their mind, but I missed the one technicality preventing it, which is being a woman.

I wish I was plucked like a red poppy, but I’m nothing like it. Our similarities started with our affinity for short lives and stopped at our abhorrence of being fussed over. Unlike me, red poppies love to grow on their own. They are rebels. They disturb the soil. They don’t care if they are undesirable. They are independent. An adjective my generation hasn’t known yet, and if some did, I did not.