Lost in Green Colored Grief

*TW: This story contains descriptions of depression and the process of grief as well as mentions of self harm.*

The news of my husband’s death came just after supper. Everyone was huddled in the living room savoring the contentment of each other’s company. Just like every other evening before and how every evening will be after this one.

Taffy, the old cat was curled up in my lap when the knock on the door sounded.

I scratched the grumpy gray feline behind the ears as Saffron padded over to the entryway and opened the door. 

“Are you Mrs. Welles?” I heard a gruff voice ask my daughter.

“Um, n-no,” Saffron said. 

I set Taffy down and walked to the entryway.

“Hello, what can I help you w-” I stopped myself. The smile froze on my lips when I saw the two men in military uniform standing on my porch. One stood tall and broad shouldered, his face gruff and apathetic looking. His large form took up the majority of the small space. So much so that I almost didn’t notice the small, red-haired young man standing beside him. 

“Are you Mrs. Welles?” the taller man repeated, this time with more emphasis.

I think I already knew the reason for their visit and what was going to be said next, but regardless, I ignored that small voice in my head urging me to prepare myself. 

“Yes,” I said stiffly. “That would be me. May I help you?”

The words were not even fully off my lips before the men had taken their hats off and somber looks were crafted onto their faces. My stomach sank and I realized I should have listened to that voice in my head even before they responded.

“Ma’am,” the gruff man said, “we regret to inform you that your husband, Franklin Welles, was lost during a siege at the Battle of Attu.” 

A cold chill washed over me and my heart leaped up into my throat, preventing me from responding. I gripped the door handle and Saffron’s hand for support as the men’s faces swam and swayed.

“His body has yet to be discovered,” the red-head continued. “It was a very beneficial, but costly fight, so it may take some time to recover him.”

I couldn’t fathom the reason why they thought I cared about the outcome of the battle, but I remembered to nod my head politely even as my mind slowly shut down. “Y-yes,” I stammered. “Of course… thank you.”

“We offer our sincerest condolences to you and your family Ms. Welles,” the gruff man said, not looking the slightest bit sympathetic to me.

Ms. Welles he had said. No longer Mrs. Welles. I was now a widow.

I gave the two gentlemen another small nod before shutting the door. As soon as the door was between me and the soldiers, I pressed my back into its wood surface, hoping it would take the pressure of my grief away from me. I had sunk into despair before I could take a breath. I couldn’t believe it. I refused to, in fact. 

My beloved, he couldn’t be gone.

I was drowning, faster than I could blink. It was all too much. Too much to work through. I couldn’t handle it. I was drowning and then I was falling. I let my head hit the wood planks and allowed the pain to slow the swell of grief rising and bubbling just beneath the surface. I didn’t cry out, nor did I scream or weep. I simply forgot how to breathe or think.

I gave no reaction as Saffron and her brother Klyde, their faces wet with tears, carried me to my room. I passed out way before my throbbing head had hit the pillow.

When I woke up to a migraine, I understood with perfect clarity what happened.

I sat up in my bed, the softness of the comforter and mattress enveloped me in a strange sense of comfort and calm. Franklin had picked out this comforter, it was a simple forest green. Both his favorite and mine. It reminded me of his eyes and made it easier to miss him. I could almost pretend that he was with me if I focused on the color and make of the fabric long enough. The thought made me smile and I shook my head a little. Then laughed.

It had all been a dream of course. There was absolutely no way Franklin was dead. He was coming home in a few days and I had been busy getting ready for his return home. I had been feeling rather ill for the last few days, worried sick that something would go horribly wrong just before Franklin’s return home. It seemed perfectly logical that my ailment would result in a nightmare about just the thing I had been fearing most. 

I shuddered, shaking off the final traces of the dream and slowly got out of bed. Immediately, I set about my morning ritual: bathe, get ready for the day, make the bed and do my hair. I then walked out of my room, happy that in a few days time, I would no longer have to spend mornings in my room alone. Franklin would be beside me in the bathroom, shaving his face while I did my hair or helping me make the bed. I must admit that I was getting awfully lonely. 

I walked into the kitchen with a bright smile on my face, drinking in the sight of the familiar yellow wallpaper, tiled floor and the people occupying the room. 

Sitting at the mahogany table were my two sons Klyde and Joseph. Both of them were spitting images of their father, with their dark hair and their bright green eyes. I felt that familiar stab of loneliness rise before I quickly shoved away the thought and any negative feeling along with it. The boys had been bent over the Saturday morning paper when I walked in but they looked up when they noticed me in the doorway. 

“Good morning boys,” I said cheerfully, padding farther into the room. “It isn’t like either of you to be up this early. Why, usually I have to send Saffron up to fetch you just in time for breakfast!”

Before they could respond, I saw Saffron at the stove. She was focused on a sizzling pan of sausage. I looked around and saw the table set, a plate of eggs on the counter, and bread in the toaster. 

“Saffron!” I exclaimed, rushing over. “Since when do you make our breakfast?”

Saffron froze and turned around to face me. Every time I look at her small, upturned nose and sharp lips I’m reminded of her father. They all looked just like him. It was sometimes a painful reminder that Franklin was overseas and not sitting at the table, laughing with me as I cooked breakfast.

“Sorry mama,” Saffron said and looked over at her brothers. “I just wanted to do something nice for everyone today.”

I shook my head, this out of control change in my routine was unacceptable. “You already make lunch for everyone, Saffron, breakfast is a job for your mother.” I push past her and take over the stove. “If you insist on helping, why don’t you feed Taffy?”

“I already did Ma,” Joseph piped up.

“And we all did our chores,” Klyde added.

Shocked, I turned around and placed both of my hands on my hips. I wasn’t sure whether to be nervous or proud of my children for stepping up and acting responsibly so out of the blue. “What is going on with all of you today?” I exclaimed, throwing my hands into the air. “The boys woke up early, Saffron’s cooking breakfast and all of you did your chores and fed the cat? I thought you hated Taffy, Joseph!”

Joseph wouldn’t look me in the eye when he shrugged. “I don’t know,” he mumbled. “I guess Taffy isn’t so bad.”

“Mama,” Klyde said suddenly and stood up. Just looking at my seventeen year old son made my heart ache. He looked so much like his father did at his age that it seemed my heart stopped every time I recognized the similarities. “Do you not remember what happened last night?” he asked.

I frowned, confused. Something had happened last night?

“Why no, I- Oh rats!” I turned around and quickly turned down the stove. I hadn’t been paying attention and accidentally burned the sausage Saffron had worked so hard on.

“Here mama let me help,” Saffron said, coming over to take the pan away from me.

“No, no dear. I got it,” I said. I took the pan back from her and went over to the sink. There were bits of burnt sausage stuck to the bottom. 

I turned on the sink, humming a little tune as I lathered up some dish soap on a wash cloth. Just as I started scrubbing the pan, Klyde laid a hand on my arm. I paused what I was doing to look at him and the pained look on his face almost made me drop the pan. “Klyde what is it?” I asked. He looked too much like his father to be looking like that. I didn’t like how the hurt in Klyde’s face made him look like my husband. I would do anything to wipe the misery off his face and stop looking at me like that.

“Ma,” he whispered and gently took my hand in his and squeezed. “Do… do you remember the two men that visited us yesterday?”

I frowned and because I, in fact, did not remember. Unless you count the two men from my dream. But I was certain this wasn’t what Klyde was referring to.

“We didn’t have any visitors yesterday, Klyde,” I said confidently. I cocked my head to the side, suddenly concerned that my son was sick. His hand fell away as I lifted mine to put it to his forehead. “You don’t have a fever,” I murmured, half to myself. But my reassurances only seemed to upset Klyde more. He turned away from me and looked at his sister. She had a similar look of hurt on her face.

“What is the matter with y’all?” I exclaimed. “Chin up! It’s a beautiful day today and there’s lots to do before Monday.”

“M-Monday?” Josh stammered.

I gaped at my youngest son. “Joseph, don’t tell me you forgot!” I exclaimed. “That’s the day your father comes home!”

I heard a loud clang behind me and spun around. 

Saffron was bracing herself against the stove, her hand dangerously close to the burner and the plate of eggs overturned on the floor. Her face had gone pale and she looked at me as if she had seen a ghost. I suddenly wasn’t confident in my ability to gauge my children’s health like I had done so accurately over the years. Why did Saffron seem so sick all of a sudden? And why was she looking at me like that?

I bounded over to help Saffron but she waved me away, already back on her feet. “I’m fine mama,” she mumbled. “I just tripped.”

My nerves started to tighten around my throat as I grew concerned for my children. They were all acting so strangely.

“Will somebody please tell me what in God’s name is going on here?” I demanded I didn’t like that they all seemed to know something I didn’t. Being kept in the dark in your own home was not a pleasant feeling in the slightest.

Klyde took my hand again and I pulled it away, ignoring the hurt in his green eyes. I almost glared at him before remembering he was still a child. And he looked so much like this father with those green eyes that I couldn’t bring myself to do it. 

“Ma, Dad isn’t coming home Monday.”

“What?” I looked between all my children and they all had matching somber looks on their faces. “Did a letter come? How could you know that?”

“Mama,” Saffron’s voice broke as she came to put a hand on my shoulder. “Two men came to the house yesterday, remember? Last night after supper.”

It sounded an awful lot like my dream. But they couldn’t know about my dream, I hadn’t told anyone about it. It must have been a coincidence. I shook my head, “no. No there was no one at the house last-”

“Mama,” Klyde’s voice sharpened. Sharper than it should be when speaking to his mother. I was just about to lecture him on his tone but he continued before I could get a word in.

“Dad’s dead.”

I didn’t believe them. I couldn’t. How could I?

The children called the doctor on me, they said they were worried about me. Worried because I didn’t believe them. Worried that I had driven myself to insanity in my grief. What grief? There was nothing to grieve. I didn’t know what they were talking about.

Franklin would sort all this mess out when he came home. He would lecture the children for holding me up in my room and calling the doctor when I was perfectly fine. I would be able to move my legs again when Franklin got home. There was no point in doing that when I was so lonely. It was so unbearable sometimes that it was an effort to breathe..

I must have mentioned my dream to them earlier and they had taken it seriously. How else would they have known about the two men?

I knew for a fact that Franklin would be coming home.

I just knew it.

It’s Tuesday. He never came home.

Fear tightened around my heart as I stared down at the comforter I gripped in my hands. Forest green. Just like his eyes. They swam in my memory, clear as day. I wouldn’t let the image of him fade. I felt my mind start to spiral, the loneliness I had felt for months and months seemed to press into me harsher than before until it was all consuming. Food was out of the question until Franklin returned, how could I have any appetite when the love of my life and I were so far apart? It is a miracle I have survived this long without him. I didn’t feel like eating anyway, the loneliness fed me enough that I was functioning off of that alone. A small pinprick of hope poked through the dark recesses of the cloud in my head, a green speck of light in the darkness.

He was coming home. I just knew it. There must have been some delay, maybe he had told me the wrong date in his letter, maybe he couldn’t find a ride from the port in time to make it home yesterday. 

The fear and loneliness dissipated and was shoved into a corner of my mind. He would be home soon. He wasn’t dead, he wasn’t-

No, I wouldn’t panic just yet.

Not until I had proof that he was really, truly gone.

His tombstone has a nice epitaph.

Franklin Welles

Beloved Husband, Father and comrade

at ease soldier

I didn’t pick it. It had been written by his commanding officer. No one bothered to ask me what I would have wanted the epitaph to say. To be honest, I don’t know what I would have said if they had.

I stared at the carved stone marking the head a rectangle of freshly laid dirt.

He never had a funeral.

There was no one to pay for it. For all I had known, he was still breathing in oxygen and sunlight when in reality his lungs had seized and those forest green eyes I had loved so much were forever closed.

I gripped the flowers in my hand just to have something to anchor me and delay the oncoming madness I was sure to face soon. I half wish I had bought roses, so the prick of their thorns would sharpen my dulling senses. He used to buy me roses, I think to myself.

The wave of crippling loneliness and grief that accompany that thought is so sudden I drop the flowers and fall to my knees, gasping. Reality slams into me a second later. I can no longer hide when faced with the evidence.

Franklin.

My beloved.

Gone forever.

He is not coming back.

My heart pounds in my ears.

I am all alone, with nothing but my grief to hold me close at night.

While I will be wrapped in our blanket, the color I used to get lost in.

My stomach dropped down into the ground as a wave of nausea weighed me down.

My own stupidity did this to me.

I blink rapidly, expecting tears to fall as my breaths become shorter and shorter. I’m hyperventilating but no tears would come. I cannot cry. I am unable to give him the gift of having somebody to mourn him properly. 

I’m trapped. Trapped in my own sorrow with no way to release it. 

I had thought if I could just imagine he was alive and detach myself, it wouldn’t hurt. If I could refuse to accept it and pretend nothing happened, it would go away. But no, my misery only grew and built up until the pressure was too great. But even then I shoved it down. Ignoring the horrible truth.

Oh how I was paying for that mistake in full now.

I can’t help but wonder how long it will take for his memory to fade in my mind. It is only a matter of time as I am losing my touch with reality. I can feel it slipping through my fingers just sitting here.

Now I have to go home. I can only hope my children won't be around; I am too tired to do much else but sleep

But I’ll sleep on the couch.

I will not sleep wrapped in a blanket the color of his eyes.