Red is the color

Day 9 — #writeingrief

Red is the color of the blood that you didn’t want me to see in the hospital.

“Call the nurse. Don’t come in here,” you told me through the bathroom door, a mix of fear, anger, frustration and embarrassment in your voice.

Red is the color of the light against my tightly shut eyelids as I pressed them down harder to hold back tears. Red is stinging tears pooling in the rims of my eyes, spilling over.

Red is anger, hot in my chest. Red is burning in my throat. Red is what I see and feel as I am seething at the incompetence at this hospital. Not even incompentence covers it. I’m seething at the abject negligence, a total lack of compassion. You are a set of medical conditions in their eyes. You are a teaching tool, a curiosity, as a revolving door of nameless doctors, residents and interns parade through your room each day.

You are “Acute Liver Failure. Acute Kidney Failure. Potential double transplant.”

And then when you say you can’t bear the thought of a double transplant, they discard you, discharge you so quickly we were reeling from the lack of preparation or information. We were blindsided. We were sinking.

Red is lifeblood. Red is coursing through me, and I am keenly, agonizingly aware of the fact that it is not coursing through you. You are gray and gone and in the ground, and I’m screaming again inside. Red is screaming.

For as long as I can remember, I have always hated the color red.

“But you like pink, Mommy,” says my little girl. “And pink is like red.”

Oh no, my darling daughter. Pink is so different from red. Pink is a flush bud of life. Pink is delicate and sweet. Pink is sugar. Pink is youth and love and a gentle touch.

Red is vicious, intense, and can be very, very cruel. Pink carresses. Red stabs. Pink floats. Red drowns.

Red is my enemy. I will never wear red. Red kills me.