The Colors of You
A close up of colors, not clear if they are smoke or paint. They swirl and mix and mist in the frame. Oranges, reds, purples, pinks, whites.
By. Molly Senecal
Yellow — the color of your young hair, your wild hair. You fought with your unruly, lion mane growing up. I remember when you chopped off fistfuls of your hair (you hated how your curls hung askew) and the mangled roots glared out angrily from your scalp for months. Later, when you were older, you loved your hair. You washed it tenderly and rubbed Moroccan oil into your long, lion locks until they shone, and shook them out behind you like an emperor’s cape.
Pink — rose-pink, the color you dyed your hair for senior prom. Your forest-green dress was too long and I had to hem the edges. I remember cutting the lace off the bottom, and you cut your hair again. This time, neatly hemmed at shoulder-length. You stood among the roses with your closest friends, looking over your shoulder at me with your rose-pink hair. Smiling shyly, eyes full of future. I still have this picture. I still have your forest-green dress. I still have a lock of your hair.
Red — your hair mixed with your blood when you hit the floor. Then the color of the ambulance lights, the color of the neon hospital sign. Then the color red everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. They try, but they can’t put all the red back.
Black — the color of the box that holds your ashes.
Gray — inside, your ashes are gray with white bone chips.
White — white bone chips. Why don’t they tell you these things?
No one warned me about the bone chips. I cried and cried for those pieces of you. I am not able to bring myself to touch them, but one day I will. For now, the whiteness fills my nights — blinding my dreams. One day (I hope) I will be able to reach down and pick up my bone-white grief out of this black box and hold it in my hands. Then (maybe) I will be able to close my eyes and dream again. I imagine they will be ghost whispers of yellow, forest-green, and rose-pink.
I pray they will be dreams of the colors of you.
Molly is pictured smiling, wearing a maroon/brown sweater and vest with a cream scarf, with her hair pulled back, against a sunset background.
Molly Senecal is a deaf writer on grief, suicide, and loss. She is a mother to three children, and began writing about grief when her youngest daughter died by suicide at college. Senecal holds a master’s degree from the University of Southern California, and doctorate degree from the University of California, Davis. She is a dean at a community college in Northern California, and in addition to writing, she finds solace in photography, and trail running in the Sierra mountains. You can find more of her work here:
https://mollysenecal.com/
Twitter: @FerociousThings
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