Red – it is not a color I have historically associated with much. It feels so bold, so strong. I’m more of a water-color person, give me some nice blues or greens any day. But now, I close my eyes and I see red so often. The red of George’s skin when he was born, so red because his skin was still translucent; it was still supposed to be developing within the safe haven of my womb. He was so beautiful and tiny, but oh, so very red. Red is the color of our blood – George’s blood that he grew in his body and that shone like a beacon beneath his skin…Blood that came out of me for weeks after I delivered George and my body recovered from labor & delivery…Blood that was transfused at one point into Sara in her last week of life, when she started becoming anemic… Blood that came out of Sara when her chemo port got dislodge multiple times, and the blood that they pulled out of her day after day to run tests in the hospital. Red is also anger – my anger at so much joy and beauty being yanked from my life, at our plans imploding without reason. Red is my hurt – it’s a steady bleed – some days I can keep it under control with compression, but other days it just gushes out no matter what I do.
I try to think of some less painful things that I associate with red. Sara loved her red lipstick, and she loved dying her hair shades of red. I loved her punk rock red phase. Sara had these wonderful red heart-shaped frame prescription sunglasses that she wore often, and then a pair of regular glasses that had red frames with white polka-dots. Red was important to her as a Femme. Sara and I both had mutual crushes for the beautiful red-haired Dana Scully from X-Files, something we bonded over early in our relationship. The first year we were in our house, the holiday tree we put up in the basement had a red and teal color scheme that turned out so beautiful – that was one of THREE trees we put up that year, at her direction. We have a red almost-floor-to-ceiling bookshelf in the kitchen full of cookbooks, 90% hers, most of which she rarely cooked from but loved to look at for inspiration. And then, of course, is her little red car. I love that car – it is so SARA – roomier inside than it looks from the outside, squat looking from the outside, with a few choice bumper stickers on the back. I’m going to be really sad to sell the car, but we’d already been talking about it together; it’s just not that practical during the winter time. Maybe I’ll replace it with a different red car, which is funny, cause I never saw myself as a red car type of guy, but now I’m having trouble letting go.
Note: this was written based on a writing prompt provided to me through a paid course I am taking. I am not including the prompt, because the daily prompts are a critical component of that course.