Bathe in Color

2. Paris Wills, Age 16, August 1, 2019

Here Lies Elizabeth Wills

August 1, 1978 - August 1, 2016

"Happy Birthday, Mom. I brought you carnations - your favorite - pink."

Tears fall from my eyes and I try to hide them, wiping them off with my sleeve, hoping to dry them before she can notice. It's silly of me. After all, how could she not notice? She is looking right at me, staring me down with those mesmerizing brown eyes, so dark that they look black, just like mine.

"No more tears, my darling. Don't cry over me like this," she chastises in her loving way, hovering now over her tombstone. It's still jarring to see my mom floating, a sight I never thought I would see. I see her looking down at the carnations - she wants to pick them up, for my sake.

"I can smell them, but I wish I could hold them like I do in your poems."

At that, I gasp, staring up at her in wonder. How could she know? She's never been out of the cemetery since the day her body was buried.

Thinking about that day cuts me deeper, consuming my mind with all the melancholy emotions I felt watching them lower her casket into the ground. It was the second-worst day of my life. Rain poured through the whole service, and I'll never forget walking over to the casket, seeing her doll-like face, and thinking about the angels who took back their precious porcelain. She was married off to the heavens, all dressed in white as her lifeless body floated down into the ground.

That day she looked almost as beautiful as she did before her time in the hospital. When she was there, she looked petrified - the vacuum was sucking away her life force day after day until there was nothing left but the illusion of a once brave woman. I watched the last ounce of life leave her marvelous brown eyes as I tightly clutched her hand, wailing while the nurses and my father tried to pull me away from her icy body. That was the worst day of my life. Not a single one of the hundreds of pink carnations I had put at her bedside could save her, no matter how much hope she claimed they held.

I try to wave that memory away, not wanting to think about it anymore than I already have. It's been exactly three years since she passed away. Her life came full circle. She arrived on August 1st and died the same day thirty-eight years later.

"You get lost in your thoughts like me."

I catch a meditative wrinkle in her pale lips, almost certain she is remembering her father, who passed away a year before her. She was never the same after he died. Some days, when I catch myself aimlessly staring off, I remember the wistful expression my mom would dawn - pinched lips, glassy eyes, and stoic features. A ghost before she even died.

Whenever I asked her what she was thinking about, she would always say, "Just your grandfather."

She was that way, though, even before he passed. There was always something on her mind causing the pain I noticed in those milky brown eyes, red with tears, covered up by layers of makeup and empty smiles. My father chose to ignore it, but kids never forget the emptiness of blank stares and quivering lips.

"How did you know I wrote poems about you? I never write here," I reply, hoping to focus her attention back on me before both our minds disappear from this plane of existence.

For a moment, she just smiles. I stand there, the chill in the air shown in the clouds of my breath as I anxiously anticipate her answer, wondering what else of mine she's read.

"A few times, I've managed to appear outside the cemetery walls. It takes quite a lot of strength, however. I have to manage my strength wisely, or else..."