The Colours Of Before

• Maryam Vaseer, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2018

My husband was a special soul with a brilliant mind, his every spoken word beautifully crafted.

I remember being critical though. At some level, his willingness to think and feel so deeply amplified my own insecurities. He was so brilliant I could hear his mind - all the words bouncing off, coming together so easily.

Slowly he changed. I remained the same. A young minded woman in an ageing body, stubborn and unwilling to accept the good she had while it remained. The day of this realisation dawned on me like a new sun, but I soon came to understand it may have come too late. My darling was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s on January 1st, 2004.

He sat staring off into space - not a single word escaping his lips. The poetry stopped. At this point, I’d learnt to read his eyes and the way they crinkled at the corners or didn’t crinkle at all. I’d learnt to read his nose and the way it turned up at the tip. I’d learnt to read his ears and the way they looked when he listened. I made sense of his thoughts and feelings from the disjointed conversation that now punctuated the increasing silence between us.

His carefully set features were a constant message, but they read blank; a new language he hadn’t quite gotten the hang of. Nor I. I longed for the resonance of those words he spoke a long time ago.

“Hello...hello?"

“Hello, I miss you.” “Hello, I love you."

I spoke to him in childish tones, because perhaps he could re-learn, still bloom, and not wither. I could be his protector, making sure he wasn’t taken too soon. But how soon is too soon? The soil of this earth seemed to rot him from the inside, fading his colours to sepia.

“I’m sorry,” I told him, “I’m sorry that your mind is turning against you”.

I spoke the words to him that he used to use. Could I teach his ailing mind to be brilliant again?

“Can you wake up? You’re here, and you’re not. That is so painful for me. Do you understand?"

Every day for the last thirty years, you’ve loved me in every way possible. Maybe you didn’t know it, but I loved you too. I think back- I am new again, dancing in a crowded school hall with my childhood sweetheart, posing for pictures.

My mind is my camera, and there are endless photos. Us.

Now I’m just another person or thing. Can you tell the difference? Our memories and connections are what made us...us. You’ve lost that, so I’m trying to hold on for the both of us.

Eventually, I will have to face the inevitable. You will not come back.

There is only one thing left to do: the letting go.

So now I sit..

I have lost my love
I sit here in silence
Remembering you.