CW: Death, grief

I awoke again to stiff pains radiating from the back of my neck. There isn’t any time for me to dwell on it, though. The old wooden floorboards groaned from the weight of my legs as I slowly emerged from bed. Disheveled and desperately begging for more rest, I moseyed toward the bathroom. Unkempt hairs shot straight up, almost as if they wanted to get away from my head. I don’t blame them at all. Sometimes I get brave enough to look at myself in the mirror. Those days are becoming less common, though. Instead, I prefer to count the tiles in my bathroom. I noticed a lack of grout in some of them nearest to the shower. She would’ve yelled at me by now, but she hasn’t yelled at me in a long time.

My drive to work is uneventful. Clouds cast shadows that distort the landscape, creating a gradient between dark and light. Water droplets snake down the front windshield, obscuring my vision. I curse my faulty wipers. The pitter patter of precipitation makes fun of me as my anger grows. She would’ve laughed, poking fun at my disdain toward rain. I quickly shake my head. I don’t have time to reminisce. The warehouse is in front of me now, a heap of metal designed to weather the elements. Making haste, I park my car carefully in line with the rest. My eyes follow the paved sidewalk toward the entrance. There isn’t a good reason for me to leave the comfort of my seat, I tell myself. If that were true, I should never have gotten up from bed. I wonder why I did that.

My job is to perform quality checks on newly produced automobile parts. Honestly, I couldn’t tell you if I liked or hated it. I’m not particularly interested in cars nor do I really care to do anything else. When I would come home, she used to say it was like I was a different person. I tried to explain why: my only roles were to examine, test, sometimes approve, sometimes deny. My freedoms in the factory were few and far between. The constant, arduous process of keeping up appearances with my coworkers during the lunch break never helped either. I didn’t understand why they would always waste their time with small talk. Eventually they all gave up on speaking to me. I celebrated by telling her that I finally got some peace and quiet at work, but instead of smiling, tears formed in the corners of her eyes and she turned away from me. I didn’t understand that, either.

The first time I noticed that something was wrong was when I chose to splurge on dinner. I hadn’t had any Italian food since she left. It wasn’t that I loved Italian or anything. Honestly, I don’t care what I eat. Food is food if it is nutritious and keeps me going. Italian was her favorite, so subconsciously I must’ve been reminded of that. I picked up pasta on the way home from a spot we used to frequent. Bella Napoli. I used to surprise her with cacio e pepe whenever she told me something went well over the phone before we reunited for the night after work. Now, the heat radiating from the takeout box served as a painful reminder that she wasn’t going to be home when I got back. Once I was inside, I put my face directly over the box, letting the rising warmth hit my face. The dry, earthen aroma of black pepper was a comfort I had long forgotten. Closing my eyes, her smiling face appeared in my head. A sudden cold sweat came over me and I stumbled back, hitting my head on the wall. When I came to, I couldn’t believe my eyes.

She was about 6 inches away from my face, her smile a blinding white accented by the deep brown of her eyes and her tan skin she was always so proud of. My jaw agape, I sat on the floor, dumbfounded as to how she was suddenly in front of me. Quickly, I wiped my eyes and found her standing next to the wall bordering the living room. Her hand glided over the emerald green couch that we had picked together many moons ago. Emerald green? Confusion crept in as I thought back to that day. I was certain that the couch was grey, just like all of the other furniture that remained in our slate colored house. She looked at me, still smiling, and gestured toward the rest of the kitchen. Myriad shades of blue, red, and yellow filled my vision. Honeycomb tinted windows nostalgic of summer nights spent gazing up, lying on the still warm streets had replaced the dark and brooding apertures of memory. Covering them, curtains with an aura of lapis lazuli shimmered elegantly, the same way she did while we danced together on our first date. To the left and right were the most gorgeous ruby upholsteries I’d ever laid eyes on. Rich in cushion, I couldn’t help but think of her infamous lipstick that drew my attention incessantly. At that moment, I craved her.

Before I knew it, my vision blurred and I began to weep. It was simply too much to bear. A deep and primal longing that was suppressed by a desire to forget and ignore was overcome in an instant. The crimson scorn of my self-hatred, the sunbleached blonde of her hair, and the white emptiness of wasted time formed a kaleidoscope, eclipsing my thoughts. I looked back at the wall, now clad in lavender, her favorite color. I called out to her, pleading to hear her voice. “Why you?”

The only reply I was given was the gentle melody of the breeze materialized as the clinking of the wind chime we had installed one week before she passed.

She looked at me softly, turning to face the window. The sun shone a brilliant gold through her ethereal figure. I thought about the diagnosis, and the drive home, and the dark house we returned to. The image of my wife in the fetal position, unable to move or speak, only whimpering, without any meaningful comfort. The strong public persona she wore everyday, regardless of her ceaseless pain. I bent toward the ground, my neck aching in pain. I allowed my hollow job to take me away from her, physically and emotionally. I sacrificed the little time we had left distracting myself from the truth, for my own sake. The greyness of guilt was unbearable.

It was then that I felt her hands carefully lift my head from the ground. Images of our past flooded my senses, filled with joy, sadness, and everything in between. Colors bright and vibrant, each one a different memory. Each color, a different shade of her, of me, of us.

When I opened my eyes, she was gone, but the colors weren’t.