The Color of Dying Page #4

This is a story about how attitudes about life and dying are intimately connected.

• Short story

								


“Why, Jeffery,” Mrs. Sylvester said when he entered the well-lit bedroom, “it is so good of you to visit. Please sit down. I assume everything went well?”
“Very well, Mrs. Sylvester, thank you” he said as he sat in the Queen Anne chair by her bed in which she had recently been confined, “and I am sorry that it has taken me so long to get here. To be honest, with all the arrangements and legalities, I just simply forgot until I was opening cards and saw yours. Thank you, by the way, that was very thoughtful. The money will be appreciated by PFLAG.”
“I think it was marvelous that you both chose such a wonderful organization. But anyway, I don’t want to keep you so let me show you what I wanted to ask you about.” She reached into her night table drawer and pulled out what appeared to be a small framed and matted watercolor of simple horizontal wide stripes of bright pink blending into magenta that then seemed to be swallowed by a deep, rich purple. “Your aunt left this here the last day she visited. She said nothing about it so I supposed she had left it here by accident. I was about to call her when I turned it over and on the back was written: ‘For your journey – ask Jeffery.’”
He took it in his hands and, as he had done just a few weeks before when he held her envelope in his hands, he let his fingertips gently glide over the colors. He chuckled, then smiling broadly he looked up at Mrs. Sylvester. “These were Martha’s colors of dying. And now mine. She wants them to be yours as well.”
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