I spent my whole life hearing about green. My parents told me about it. They said it was something called a color, and that there were others too. Things called blue, red, yellow, orange, pink. They said my eyes were green.
I didn't believe them. The world is black and white, with grey thrown in to varying degrees. My eyes were grey. My clothes were different shades of grey, sometimes white, maybe black. When I told them they were lying, they just smiled and said I would understand one day, like I was a fucking child. I vehemently explained to them on a regular basis that color might as well have been Santa Claus. They weren't real.
I was twenty-six when my mother was diagnosed. Tumors were growing on her brain. She had six months to live, maybe a year if the treatment bought her that much time. She became an empty shell of herself. Her hair fell out within two months, and my dad held her while she cried about her "red locks." I was stupid, and above all, I was angry that she was holding onto a lie when her life was ending.
I was twenty-seven when I told her that. When she cried. When my dad hit me. Tile was rising up to meet me before I realized what had happened. I was only vaguely aware of the singing throb in my cheek, so focused was I on the look of horror in my dad's grey eyes.
I was twenty-nine when she died. She had held on longer than anyone expected, which made it hurt all the more when she did pass. My dad woke me up streaming the night she died, before either of us knew it had happened, repeating two things over and over: "Marie! MARIE!" and "The color!" I remember shaking my head and rolling over to cover my ears with my pillow. Even now, I thought, with mom lying in a hospital bed, my dad believes a bunch of bullshit.
I was thirty when I left. Filled with the lies of my parents, I packed up my apartment and left my hometown running. My dad didn't do anything to stop me. I had spent several nights a week at my parents house to make sure he didn't do anything stupid, and he never spoke, save to mutter about hues and shades, about "beauty lost." He never noticed me leave, but his voice followed me out. "Blue, red, green, brown, yellow, orange. Sky, roses, grass, dirt, daffodils, sunrise." Lies on top of lies, I told myself. But they accompanied my thoughts regardless.
I was thirty-four when I ended up in Seattle. It was a hard, grey rain that washed over everything that night. It reminded me of the look my dad had hit me with when he hit me. I thought about calling him, but another, bigger part just... Didn't care. His words were in my head, though, when I ran into someone. We fell to the ground, immediately getting soaked by the rain water that covered the sidewalk, and I muttered an apology as I helped pick up their groceries they had dropped. The voice that came back from them was a woman's, soft and lilting. I glanced as I handed a bag to her, and our gazes met. She gasped. Her eyes dilated.
They were blue.
I was thirty-four when that bag slipped from my fingers and hit the ground again. I rocked back in my heels as color spread through the world, all of it flooding out from her irises. My dad's rantings came back to me, and the colors made sense. Her hair was spun gold. The blue of her eyes was shot through with streaks of silver. Her cheeks were brushed pink. Her lips were bright red. The scarf around her neck was checkered yellow and green. Her jacket was a subtle brown, and the t-shirt under it was a light blue that matched her jeans.
"Hi," she whispered.
I didn't know how to respond. I was dumbfounded. Color was real. Her beauty held my attention like nothing else ever had. Before I could speak, she reached up hesitantly and caresses my cheek. Our eyes never wavered as I whispered back, "You're gorgeous." Her blush deepened.
I was thirty-six when I put a ring on her finger, and when I reconnected with my father. Tears streamed down my face as I apologized for not believing him and mom. He held me and forgave me, assuring that my mother would have just been happy that color had found its way into my life. I realized that for him and, now, for me as well, "color" was the same thing as love. I showed him the ring, all gold and silver and glittering. He closed his eyes to imagine the colors, and he smiled.
I was thirty-eight when she and opened our business. It wasn't large, barely more than a corner store selling her paintings and my sculptures. My pieces sold better and more often, but her works were worth having purely for the sake of seeing the looks on couples' faces when they came into the shop full of love.
I was forty-three when my father had a heart attack. I was hopeless and helpless as he lay in the hospital bed, slowly dying as his heart failed him. I remember wheeling him to the courtyard to show him a piece I had sculpted in his honor. My love started taking me hiking with her to get me out of the house, out of the hospital, out of the studio. It helped. I remember the phone call when they told me he didn't wake up after he fell asleep. I tried to cry, but my tears were spent so there was simply an ache in my chest.
I was forty-four when our business really took off. She and I got orders from across the nation for our artwork, and our lives together bloomed. Whenever there was a lull in the order list, we would travel the world wherever we felt suited us at the time. We traveled everywhere together.
I was forty-seven last year. I was taking a custom sculpture to an event in Philadelphia while she stayed in Seattle for the week to finish the painting for which she had been commissioned. I kissed her goodbye on Tuesday. The event was scheduled to go through the weekend, starting Wednesday. On Thursday, an unknown number kept calling me incessantly. I ignored it.
I was forty-seven on Friday, October 23rd at 8:47 pm, chatting with other artists from the area when my world turned grey.
I was forty-seven when it hit me like a fist, pushing the air out of my lungs. I went down on one knee, my head reeling as the grey seemed to invade my mind. I stumbled backwards, bracing myself against the leg of a table as tears started streaming down my face. I knew I was making a scene, but I knew, too, what the grey meant.
I was forty-seven when I skipped the rest of the event to go back home. When I found out she had been run over by a drunk driver. When I had to lay her body in the ground.
I am forty-eight years old. For the last year, suicide has never been far from my thoughts. Life without color is difficult as an artist, despite the fact that sculpting exists less as color and more as shapes and forms. But life without love is almost impossible.
I can't count how many times I've held that gun in my hand, stood on that balcony rail, stared longingly at the highway. It would be so easy. Just a trigger, a short step, a sharp twist kg the steering wheel, and I could be finding her in the next life. But who would I be helping? Her? Me? The people who love my art, or hers?
There is an oil painting my room. I don't look at it. I stand, eyes closed, my fingers tracing the brush strokes. I imagine the colors and her smile as she spreads them across the canvas. I put the gun back in the drawer. I step away from the balcony. I keep my hands on the wheel. I may live without color now.
But at least I saw it.
