She was young. Elegant. Vibrant. But her world had lost its color. The walls were white, and the doors, the bed, the coral tint of her lipstick—gone. She smashed the mirrors; they made her skin so pale, and her hair, a veil of snow. Perched on the windowsill was a photograph sheltered by a single drooping rose in an antique porcelain bath pitcher. She used to be able to see delicate blue tendrils curl up from the solid blue base, but the color disappeared months ago. She looked past the vase and the smiling snapshot of her granddaughter to the white world beyond. It was late November and the ground, trees, people, cars, everything was iced over with frozen snow.
She was tired of white.
In her dreams she saw the glint of red lips and shining eyes. Her son’s black hair faded to its natural dark chocolate, and her spaniel’s silky curls softened into their creamy toffee splotches and vanilla backdrop. She savored her dreams: they were her new sustenance. She no longer ate. All food lost its innate ability to satisfy her now, and its nutrients meant nothing.
All around her, delicate oxygen swirled, and she could see it. It shimmered and glittered about her—a temptress, gloating and unreachable. If air were a color, it would have been red, a deep taunting red, so dark it was almost black. Poisonous and thick, syrupy and sticky, the blood of the atmosphere. But it had no color. Oxygen had never held color, but it had never maintained a sparkle before either. The only way she could escape from its obtrusiveness was to lay her head back and drift into her Dreamland, free from the world of her existence.
She began to wonder if she was hallucinating. Perhaps the lack of food or oxygen had robbed her of her sanity. The sparkling atmosphere wouldn’t let her rest. She felt surrounded by a fairytale and Death at the same time. So she closed her eyes and tried to spend her time in a different land.
When they would come, she’d sit up and focus on their ghostly faces. She tried to ignore the shimmering. And when they left, she closed her eyes to meet them again, and smiled at their green, blue, brown eyes; their brown, speckled graying hair; their rosy cheeks. Sometimes they brought her favorites—the little ones, though they weren’t so little anymore.
The oldest was tall, taller than his father, and always dressed nicely. He worked too much, and always came straight from the mall when he didn’t stay late. He avoided her eyes, except when he spoke her name or said “I love you.” She always asked him about The Habit. Had he quit yet? He always looked away, back over his shoulder, rubbed the buzzed back of his head, always, always, always continually promised that he was working on it. She didn’t need to chide him. She never spoke a word about the stainless steel tank that sat next to the recliner, her new loyal colleague, helping her unwind the basics of Life.
The middle one was beautiful. She was strong and sweet, yet held a deep sadness in her eyes that she hadn’t in her youth. She wondered if those eyes held the sadness of this story or a sadness of something hidden away from everyone else. She’d show up in yoga pants and tanks tops, comfy sweaters and sandals. Her hair was always pulled back carefully. She smelled of strong lilac and pear, but it was musky, almost masculine, amalgamated with other secret scents. She’d retell runs through the park or describe the serenity of her yoga classes at the gym. Sometimes, she’d arrived with her mother; other times, alone. But she always smiled and eagerly reminisced, stocked with pictures, poems and letters, soda and pillows, and a wealth of questions.
The youngest was fiery. He wasn’t too shy or reverent to cease from bantering with his parents openly about his hair, his clothes, his activities, his attitude—anything really. She smiled and felt a joy swell within as she recalled the days when his uncle or aunts, and even his own father, challenged her authority as well. He was scared, though, she could see. His eyes were too complex to show any emotion. One might think he didn’t care, but she knew that he didn’t know how to organize all he felt. His presence grounded her. Maybe, she thought, he could see the sparkling, swirling oxygen too. Maybe he was as scared as she was, in the insanely complex sense of sadness, fear, searching and hope that only the glittering atmosphere could invoke.
In the beginning, she’d close her eyes to see the vibrancies in her world, though wide awake in all six senses. As time went on, however, she found herself drifting in and out of awareness without recognition. Before, she knew when they would enter; she could hear their voices and their footfalls from down the hall. Later, she’d wake to a hand on her hand or knee, rousing her, and a voice calling her name. She had the sense that they’d been there for too many moments, but she really didn’t know. She started to awake suddenly, jolted by the realization that she was no longer fully in touch with the world. She was slipping deeper and deeper into her world, where she lived in color and twirled in a sand and stormy blue paisley dress, with short mahogany hair and sparkling Irish eyes.
She coveted their presence, their tender hugs and kisses, their stories, smiles, secrets, their time. But she was tired of fighting through the cold sheen of silver only to see the blank outline of their profiles, adorned in black pants and white shirts, smiling through nonexistent lips and taking her in through their eyes, black rings outlining the emptiness of whiteness that somehow shifted and changed before her.
It seemed as if every visit made the starkness of their monochromatic portrayal more unbearable, and every time she closed her eyes afterwards, the colors of the universe rushed back to her, intensified, as if finally released from a long imprisonment, jumping, shouting, painting Life’s canvas with their exuberance. There came a time when she fought to raise her papery eyelids. She preferred her dream life to that of the now austere one in which they lived.
Eventually, she stopped opening her eyes. She nodded and hummed when they arrived. She could feel them when they touched her idle hand, and hear them when they whispered to her. They thought she’d left them, but she hadn’t. Not yet. She even saw them when they came. She drew them in her memory—their curves, their hands, their styles and hair and shoes, their eyes and lips, all expressed so differently; even if the differences were subtle, she noted them.
One morning, she discussed morphine with her doctor. For some time, the silvery glint of the oxygen had been slowly invading her identifiable world, her world of color. He seemed to understand, even if he couldn’t really know. She was plagued by the possibility of losing contact with the world where everyone else lived, but made her decision. The treatments began that afternoon.
That final night was cold. She hadn’t opened her eyes in weeks. Even when the doctor came in to start her treatments, she remained still and silent. She didn’t even know what he looked like, this mysterious man that was leading her down the last stretch of the path.
She knew they would come soon. Her son came in every afternoon to visit her. They all knew her decision, and they all knew where this decision would lead. It was late, after she had turned away her dinner, when they arrived. She was tired, so tired. Even if she had wanted to open her eyes and acknowledge their presence, she didn’t have the energy. The nurses had been pumping nutrients into her, she knew, for she had not eaten in days. So she listened carefully, with what energy she had left.
It was her son and his wife. They spoke quietly; to them, she was asleep. He sounded strong, but his wife’s voice quivered. For a long time, she thought it was only the two of them, until she heard her voice—the middle one. She was scared, that was clear. She hadn’t said a thing until she responded to one of her mother’s questions, tartly. Her voice wasn’t as blatantly emotional as her mother’s, but it was impregnated with fear.
She wanted, more than anything, to open her eyes and see her granddaughter for the last time. But she was dead to the world. She fought through the glint to imagine her form in her mind, but she was losing control of that world as well.
Footsteps smacked the floor as she whirled out of the room. Her parents talked in hushed voices about her. Will she be okay? How will she handle this? Should we have let her come? Thank goodness her brother isn’t here…
Ah, her brother…She fought to imagine him, as well, one last time. One last time. She could remember how to put him together, what he would look like, but she couldn’t visualize him. She was slipping. She was sinking into light. She was fighting, but she was tired…so tired.
His wife gasped. Her face contorted and her throat throbbed with compressed sobs. He put his hand around her shoulders and tears welled about his eyes, just enough for two to escape down his cheek. He wiped them quickly, and left to find his daughter.
She was in the sanctuary. She sat on a hard, old couch, curled up against the arm with a Bible held under the dim yellow light of the lamp. He looked at her, sitting quietly, crying, praying. She didn’t notice him, or pretended to ignore him if she had, so he softly walked over to the couch and sat down next to her.
He told her, and she cried. She turned away. The Bible shook in her hands. He touched her elbow and raised her up. He led her back to her grandmother’s room. Inside, her mother was sitting next to her body, crying. She looked up at her with a twisted face, and her daughter looked away.
After too long of a silence, the rest of them came. The rest as in two. The other son and the other wife. She greeted her niece at the door, enveloped her in her arms, whispered that it was okay to cry. The young girl’s body shook in her arms, her emotions released. For a long while, she cried into her aunt’s Christmas-red coat.
In clear, vibrant colors, she watched her family below. She smiled as she took in their beautiful forms, their bright colors, their love. She wanted to hold them and ease their confused sorrow, but she couldn’t.
She knew they would be okay, because He stood next to her, His hand around her shoulders, as she cried for them. She had raised them well, and they had raised their children well, and they all knew to find solace in Him. They knew that she had found solace in Him, too.
Weeks later, they all gathered, maybe hundreds. They saw her face one last time, they reminisced and reconnected, they recalled stories and memories. She watched her little ones carefully. The eldest was very composed—he played his part well. The middle one smiled, but held an emptiness in her eyes. She never went near the front of the room, stayed close to the back where the pictures and videos were displayed, ignoring the stark reality presented at the opposite end. The youngest was confused. He didn’t know how to feel, or how he should act. Should he be strong like the eldest, or did he have a right to be vulnerable like his sister? Instead, he rotated spots on the couches and spoke only when spoken to, acting indifferent. But she knew better.
At the service the middle one gave a eulogy. Her aunt stood next to her. Near the end, her voice wavered uncontrollably. She was losing her composure. With the casket so close next to her, she could no longer avoid the purpose of the event. She nearly ran off stage, but stayed. Breathed in, breathed out; breathed in, breathed out; breathed deep. She battled through the last few lines of her speech, taking moments to regain her composure as the audience chuckled at her jokes, but was nearly paralyzed by the pain gripping her heart. She finished, fled off stage, barely made it back into her seat before she dissolved into yet another set of tears. Her mother took her hand, she pulled it back. Her aunt rubbed her back, she stiffened. At the end of the service, she escaped out the door to the frigid December air, freezing her tears and sobering her chaotic mind.
The clouds cleared and the sun glistened on the crystallized snow and in her eyes as she smiled from above. She swirled her Cosmopolitan in its glass and laughed silently. She had had the final say in her life. Though the last months and moments were dictated by that atmosphere—the glistening, suffocating atmosphere—she had left her legacy in the thoughts and memories of all those in her life. She sat on the stone wall, leaning on the pearly gates, and felt a fullness in her heart. She was confident her sons and daughters, her grandchildren and best friends, knew the essence of her soul, the essence that lived on in the heavenly realm, creating ruckuses at the heavenly dinner table with snappy jokes and not-so-tall earthly tales.
Vive Vivian
