Friday, September 2, 2011

Brown

Do you ever feel like you could best describe the way you feel at any given moment as a color? I tend to color-code my life, but I also tend to be a bit eccentric - which is why I ask if anyone else does this, instead of assuming that yes, of course you all do. Because that would just be silly. Besides, you know what they say about assumptions...

Anyway.

I feel brown today.

Brown like my hair is brown, which is to say that I am a brunette. Dark rich brown, almost black. Black-brown, I think it's called. Like my Cherokee ancestors before me. I have the Cherokee cheekbones to go with it. When I was little, my cousin Livvie would say that it was "Pocahontas" hair. Or "Cher" hair. I, of course, preferred Pocahontas to Cher. Both then and now.

I feel brown. Brown like my eyes are brown. But not like my father's are brown. His are dark, like espresso. Mine are a mix of his chocolate eyes and my mother's green ones. Green like jade.

I feel brown like the paint on the walls in this house. "Wheat," they call it. I think it looks like "light-brown," but nobody asked me.

Brown.

My great grandmother died today. Her last name was Brown. We called her Grandma Helen, my brother and I. We are going to her funeral this weekend.

It's not really how I saw myself spending my Labor Day weekend. But nobody asked me.

I heard once that people wait to die. They wait until they can see their loved ones one last time. They wait until after Christmas. A lot of people die after Christmas.

Grandma Helen didn't wait. I wonder if that means she had nothing to wait for? I wonder if she couldn't wait because she was in too much pain? I wonder if she didn't wait because she knew no one would come. I didn't come. No one did. She died alone.

I feel bad.

I feel brown.

Brown like dirty. Brown like wet, muddy earth that stains your clothes and smells like rotting leaves.

Brown.

1 comment:

  1. Though the content is sad and I'm very sorry for your loss and your feelings of inadequacy. Your introspection in this post is absolutely amazing! I'll say it again, your writing is so dramatic and riddled with descriptive's common and uncommon. That's why it appeals to me so much I think. You're my personal favorite writer at the moment and I'm not usually fickle. My respects to you and your family

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