The Color of Grief is Not Black

Sensitive Content Warning: grief, death of a child

You were in love with color.

I could see it in your eyes. We all could, I think. Even though you couldn’t tell us how you felt with words, we could see it–the way your little brown eyes would widen, would take in the light, the way your whole face would grow brighter. 

I always thought your eyes looked just like Dad’s. 

Is it wrong to speak of you in the past tense? 

You wore bright orange shorts. They hung loosely about your little legs. Tell me why I can still see that flash of neon color, hear the pitter-patter of your bare feet on the hardwood floor?

Your shirts were always vivid, emblazoned with spaceships and trucks and all sorts of boyish delights. When you first came to us, we had to dress you, but soon enough you were learning to pull your own shirts over your head. You were choosing your own outfits, your own colors.

Maybe I won’t talk of you in past tense anymore.

Here, let’s try it this way. Your hair is black, jet black, curling in tendrils over your cheeks and ears. You frequently run your hands through it, curling it round your small fingers, pulling on it sometimes. When you first came to us, it was short, very short, and even thinning in places. Over time it grew–so long, you had to have a haircut because it was in your face all the time! 

What a handsome little boy you were. Are.

I’m sorry. 

I know you’re not gone; I know it is only death that has separated us and nothing more. 

But death is so foreign, and heaven so far away from me.

Forgive me for speaking in the past tense, for remembering you in memory; to speak as if you are still at home, rocking on your chair in the living room–it feels like I’m lying to myself. How easily I could convince myself you’re still here with us.

If I can be honest, I half expect you to be around every corner I turn. I sometimes imagine you ambling into my room–remember how I would groan, and complain, and ask someone to take you to play elsewhere?—and though I watched the ambulance take you away, though I watched your casket be carried out of the church, I still feel no surprise at the image of you standing before me.

Maybe it hasn’t hit me yet. Hit me that you really are gone.

No, not gone. 

Dead.

They are not the same.

All right, so I’m going back to past tense, because this is all memory. I’m sure now you wouldn’t mind.

You loved color, and you loved being outside. The grass was fascinating to you. The swing was the best thing in the whole world. The sky above you, the trees in our backyard, the dirt under your feet–they were all yours to explore and love.

But, you know, more than color, and more than playing outdoors, you loved people.

All people, stranger or relative, friend or foe, you loved them. It was a bit of a problem, actually, because we had to constantly be on guard to make sure you didn’t go up to strangers and pull on their hands. Do you remember standing in the line at Disney World–that place I might forever associate with the last month of your life–and pulling a phone right out of a woman’s pocket? We had a good laugh out of it later (after assuring the poor lady that we did not teach you that).

You loved our friends and their families, but you had favorites, too. Like Mr. Dave. Oh, you loved Mr. Dave, and his funny newsboy cap that he hardly ever takes off. Ever since I met him (and we’ve known that family since I was a baby) he’s been wearing that hat. He’s got a couple of them but they all look the same–like he stepped right out of Newsies and into the 21st century. 

When he lifted you up in his arms you would reach for the hat and pull it off, giggling, and though we wanted you to learn not to take and throw things, Mr. Dave didn’t care. He loved listening to your crazed laughter after tossing his faded brown hat in the green grass.

You loved Mom and Dad. Our sisters and brothers. You loved watching them, playing with them, laughing with them. How can I express what a miracle it was to watch you go from being a shy, silent little boy to a loud, enthusiastic child who, though he could not speak in words, was always signing something to his parents and siblings?

Mom, you would say, with your hand to your chin.

Dad, with your hand to your forehead.

Music. A sweeping motion up your arms.

Swing. Motioning back and forth. Your fingers dangling like legs through the air.

Eat.

Sleep.

Happy.

You were happy.

You smiled with those pearly little teeth, a grin so mischievous and goofy that sometimes I couldn’t help but laugh at it. I do still laugh at it, sometimes, seeing that picture we put on your candle. It’s a great picture, don’t get me wrong. A perfect picture. It captures your spirit perfectly. Your snarky attitude.

You’re wearing a hat in that picture, the hat Grandpa knitted for you in colors of bright blue, orange, and white. He’s been knitting since before I was born, always making crafts for his grandchildren. Hats, blankets, scarves. 

He delivered your eulogy.

And then the white sheet was placed over your casket, the little casket, the casket I think about often. It was made by monks. You never got to meet a monk, but I’ve met them often. Peaceful men, with long beards and gentle souls, whose prayers go up continually and whose smiles are full of joy.

I think of that casket, and the joyful monks, and I know that every nail, every cut, every carving in that wood was a prayer offered for us.

Because no one can look at a casket so small and feel without loss.

The very sawdust of their work was sanctified by that link between heaven and earth, that thought of you, that thought of us, and that thought of the great between. 

We brought you to your burial place. There was a cross on your casket, a small, dark, wooden cross–the monks had made it. 

Lots of people cried. I did not.

I wanted to, but if you had known me long enough–and I’m not sure you did–you would have known that I never cry in front of people. Not if I can help it. 

I saved my tears for later. 

Hugs, kisses, and the slow moving of the crowd away from the coffin, back to the cars: the final physical parting. The people began to disperse, some to head home, others to join us at the celebration of your short, incredibly necessary life.

But there was something that almost made the tears pour out, hot and fast and ugly, and I only saw it as I looked out the window–the last look towards you–before we began pulling away.

“What is that?” someone asked, but their voice was muffled as though underwater, and my reaction was slow as I looked over.

There was something on your casket. 

Small, soft, a dull shade of brown like the fresh earth beneath the grass.

A newsboy cap.

At least, that’s what I think it was, and I still think of that hat resting atop you, that cap you had once loved. A relic of sorts.

And when I picture that scene, that little hill and your casket on top, enveloped in wood and prayer, presented with that cap to keep forever, I see the blue sky. I see the yellowed grass and think of how come springtime, it will turn vivid green and lush. 

I see you playing in that grass, giggling in your orange shorts and grinning with white teeth, and I think of the color of mourning, the color of grief; it is not black. 

It is all the colors that make me think of you.

This piece of writing is dedicated to my little brother. 

I knew him only for a short time on this earth; he was adopted into our family and passed away only a year later. Though his life was brief, it was not in vain, it was not unnecessary, and he will never be forgotten or unloved. 

I also want to dedicate this to anyone else who has lost a sibling. You are not alone in your grief. 

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them; may the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

Amen.