Red

Whenever anyone would ask her about her favorite color she would tell them it was red. It was a lie. Those of us who knew her were well aware of the fact that she was completely color-blind; a rarity for women.

That was my great-grandmother. A woman who had been renamed Nanny by dozens of grandchildren and great grandchildren. A woman who I remembered still working as a nurse when I was very young. A woman who always had time to play and run outside with her great-grandchildren. A woman whose favorite thing was to take you on your first roller coaster ride. 

She was a woman driven to work hard, to love fiercely, and to call bull shit when she saw it. She was my hero—and not only for the fact that she could drive a stick, drink coffee and smoke all at the same time.

I spent days after school with her, and entire summers with her, as a child. We were inseparable. We traveled across the four state area, speeding along in her compact car, seeing the roadside attractions and the kitsch. To her the kitsch was very important—often more important than high art.

If we were going someplace that required dressing up and makeup, I would help her select the colors—ensuring they did not clash.  She always wanted red lipstick, and was often certain that someone was misguiding her to brown. It was something she took oh-so-seriously.

I think that brown and red must look the same on the gray-scale.

Then she got sick.

That final summer I was one of the three dedicated to her home care. It was me, my mother, and my grandmother. She was a nurse, and had originally tried to fend off the cancer invading her flesh. Then, again the nurse, she came to terms with her odds, and demanded to return home. It was the one thing-- the most important thing-- we could give her.

I helped her write out her will on a legal pad. She and I cataloged the things most important to her, and to which family members she wanted to give those memories. Her most prized possessions were red—red Depression era glassware wrapped and hidden away in wooden trunks downstairs. Her ring with the garnet setting.

When she went out of her mind with the pain or the medications, she often became agitated. We placated her with the red honeysuckle boughs outside in her backyard, her red dressing gown, her favorite quilt with the red French knots.

And then she was gone. We placed red gladiolas on her grave.

I don’t remember if it was that fall or the following when I saw it, but I do know I was still shocked; so grief stricken I could not cry. The gaping hole in the cavity of my chest took many years to close. I know that I was outside that evening, sitting on the railroad ties which defined the edges of our family garden in the backyard, feeling sorry for myself. We lived too far south to normally see an aurora borealis, and I had a hard time registering what it was I was witnessing for the first several minutes.

It danced across the sky-- filling it, actually-- bright enough to draw my parents and our neighbors outside to watch. It wasn’t green or blue; it was deep, deep red. And I realized that this event, this astounding physical reaction which should not have been possible in our locale, was her sign to me. Where ever she was now, she could see it, see it all, and see it in the way she should have been able to all along.

This post was written in response to the Studio30Plus writing prompt of the week: Red.