A week ago, the color faded from their cheeks. The rosiness of my mothers’, the comforting tan of my father’s. Both of them gone, ashes in the winds of life.
My aunt Mimi is the most colorful person in my life, always using time as a canvas and using it well. I, however, was a child of rainbow colored pens and flowery rooms. My clothes always perfectly matching and never once had I worn a black outfit. Until a week ago.
Now I sit, staring out the window of my aunt Mimi’s car. It was frosty from the cold, the world covered in brown and white. The trees are dead. The grass is dead and the tulips that covered my home in Holland Michigan are drained of their vivid colors and, otherwise, dead. Not only is everything that had a possession of color dead outside, but I am dead. My eyes no longer the melty Hershey chocolate brown that they once were. They are grey and emotionless. My lips chapped and pale, form a straight line expressing my feeling of nothingness.
My aunt still had her vibrant green eyes and light pink lips. Her blouse was a bright teal color with grey swirls in the shape of tear drops covering every inch of it. Her jeans had a certain hue to it that made them seem like an ocean of blue. Orange covered her nails, shining in the sunlight, making them seem like they could literally sparkle. Bouncy locks of dark brown hair rested on her shoulders, bringing out the unique features on her face. Such as, her dimples when she encouragingly smiles at me or her freckles that are sprinkled across her cheeks and bridge of her nose. Or even the wrinkles forming at the corners of her eyes from grinning and cackling too many times in her youth.
I look at her every now and again to see if I could unearth a single hint of pain coming from her. Yet, every time I look at her I see my happy, giddy aunt that she has always been. If she feels any pain, she is masking it well.
Inside my heart, every time I take a sideways glance toward her, I feel it’s wholeness become crunched between my lungs and rib cage as everything seems to compress together. She had been my mother’s sister and closest friend for years. Since Mimi was born, my mother had treated her as her own, as the most important friend and family member she could possibly have. Now, twenty years later, my aunt Mimi lost her forever and is left with me; a very different version of her.
The problem, though, is that she looks like my mother. Her hair is the same tone of brown, her smile curving the same way, her eyes flashing with wonder and joy just like my mother’s used to do. Mimi’s eyebrows are arched the same and her cheeks have that same warmth to them. It’s like my mother is here, sitting next to me but I know it is just a mirage due to my wishes.
My eyes begin to hurt, the tears behind them begging to be shown. I hold them back, my eyes turning more and more grey by the second. I glance back at my aunt. Blinking, I am at disbelief at what I gaze to.
Her hair turns grey, pushing and spreading throughout the brown. The colorful, bright blouse she had been wearing now was melting into a blue-grey with black tear drop swirls. Her jeans become black with every second as the blue drains down to her boots. The orange of her nails becomes a dark grey and her lips and eyes both become lighter greys to match. The beautifully toned skin she once had was now being replaced by a ghastly color; becoming almost white. Her freckles became black dots, like those that come from an ink pen and I stare in amazement and fear.
She becomes like a painting, every kind of color by her becoming a tint or shade such as herself. I look at my hands, trembling, they became the same pale grey as her’s and I shove them away into my pockets.
“Are you okay honey?” she asks, turning to me, arching her eyebrow like my mother had done.
I gulp for air and nod, all of me wanting to run for my life.
“Alright,” she says in disbelief, reaching over and rubbing the lower part of my arm before replacing it to the wheel.
I blink again, but she stays that way, ghostly and unreal. Forcing myself to look away, I turn and face the window, scanning the fields for any color of the rainbow. There is none. So I sink down in my seat, realizing that my misery and desolation has made me color blind.

In an instant, I shoot up in my bed and grab the sheets in a death grip. Gasping, by back shakes and I come to reality.
I’m in my new room in my Aunt Mimi’s house reliving the most intense and torturous ride of my life in a dream. Boxes are still stacked in the far corner of my room, by the window, and my dress from yesterday's church meet hangs on the birch chair that sits next to the closet door. The curtains are drawn and my cat is curled up on my matching birch desk waiting for me to fling the curtains aside and drench him in sunlight.
I touch my chest, my cold fingertips shocking my skin. The clock in the corner glowed with neon yellow letters. It was already three o’clock and I feel completely exhausted besides the six hours of sleep I have had. So, I flop back down, sighing as my head hits the pillow.
For the next three hours I toss and turn, my thoughts conquering my ability to sleep.