‘Matter is energy, Energy is Light, We are all light beings.’
Albert Einstein.
Chapter 1 – Purple
A strong silence filled the room intensely. Purple. Dark and profound.
It was at this moment I realised how little belonged to us as a family. Suddenly, the room looked bare and bleak, tinged with a sad emptiness. The cold nipped cruelly at my fingers and toes.
We were poor, but unfazed. My mam was so full of love and had filled our lives with it, that we had always felt fortunate. Her positive spirit could fill any room, and deep purple was the colour radiating from her most often.
Nobody spoke a word and the silence unsettled me. Cutting through the quiet, I was struck with self-awareness. I suddenly felt exposed and taken aback with this realisation that I was a pauper, I was afraid and I was soon to be alone.
There had been times, these past few days, when that purple hue of my Mam’s had muddied and some fear crept through. But that was to be expected.
Where she once had a good dose of flesh, now lay protruding bones poking through thin skin. Darkness circled her eyes and stole their usual, beautiful, twinkle. A sad and grey paleness to her complexion replaced its usual radiant glow.
She was, without doubt sick. Very sick.
And this cruel, cruel world gave us just a few weeks’ preparation before her downfall spiralled rapidly.
The doctor was quite clear in his diagnosis but all I heard were muffled words uttered in the most sombre of tones and his suggestion that we go to chapel the next morning and pray.
While most folk of Methyr took to chapel every Sunday in their best attire, we, as a family were firmly anti-chapel. There were two reasons for this.
God took my Dad when I was just four years old, I barely knew him and so I decided never to become overly acquainted with God either. If he were to take my Dad, ‘he’ or whatever God was, would never get the chance to know me, I’d vow defiantly.
The other reason was our ‘spirituality’. I knew little about what this word meant, other than the stories my Mam told me. We see things, my Mam and I. Things that other people would never understand or necessarily believe. Things that would make people judge us, think of us as different. Not so long ago, we’d have been cruelly drowned. But I was special, not different she’d insist. Since the age I started to question and understand, she would sit me on her knee and tell me tales of what it meant to be able to see further than what most people’s eyes allow them to. It was a gift and one to use very wisely. She told me that many people walk around with their eyes closed. Not literally, you understand.
Even as I hit my teenage year and my body grew long and awkward, she would still put me on her knee; ask me to explain the things I saw and how they made me feel inside. She had all the time in the world for me, my Mam. She would help me to understand the way in which this gift had helped her make some of life’s tough decisions, such as who to trust, who to love, who to forgive and who to avoid.
Many people feared her mad, but she had no disorder of the brain and her sight was perfect, as was mine. But God, I sensed wouldn’t quite have understood this, nor the chapel-folk of Merthyr, and so, we kept our distance as best we could.
The past few weeks, with a ‘severe’ illness (but not a single prayer), we watched the rock in our lives erode quickly. Most of our time was spent with her in the bedroom. Our miner’s cottage was small and modest but the three of us in our little family were as close as the walls.
Now, as my Mams eyes grew heavy and she drifted to sleep, we stood close by. I looked out of the window at the passers-by, oblivious to the pain and suffering of our world, or perhaps they had their own.
Leona towered above me. At just 4 years my senior, the gap seemed enormous, both in our heights and our maturity. Leona was a woman and I, just a young girl. I looked up to her in every sense of the phrase. Despite not having ‘the gift,’ she was special too, my Mam would often tell her.
But over the years, she had built up iron gates around her and locked them tight shut. While I fell out with God at the tender age of four, I think our Leona fell out with the world.
She had our father’s eyes and his stubborn pride. She was practical and always had a wish to better himself and those around him, and she was his pupil. When he left, so did Leona’s spirit and just eight years old at the time, she lost her childhood.
As frustrating as this was for my Mam to witness and with very little she could do to console her eldest daughter, it was Leona’s steely dedication for hard work and her unwavering loyalty that made her so incredibly loveable. Our sisterly bond was strong. She lacked the tender warmth of my Mam, who would often talk poetically about life and its wonders and always welcomed us with a loving embrace. Leona seldom embraced anyone and her skin was cold to the touch. But she had our hearts, and we hers. Let’s just say, she saw life in black and white. Most people do …
*******
Cancer, I realised, was the one thing I hated most in the entire world. More than sprouts, more than Joe number 7 when he’d pull my plaits, and even more than God.
It was I who first spotted my Mam’s illness. I was sat close to her as she brushed my hair at the wooden dressing table of her bedroom, and I focussed on her in the reflection of the mirror. I’d often gaze at her and wonder whether, one day, I’d grow so beautiful. Perhaps 30-40 seconds of gazing, without blinking, my eyes began to water and her colours began to show. Purple, my favourite colour. But something was different. There was a deep hole in the colour, next to her waist. I shut my eyes tight before holding the gaze once again, and this hole reflected back at me. I scrunched up my face in a frown. I was a terrible frowner and often had a headache behind my eyes to show for it. I was doing something wrong - again.
“What’s wrong, love? Are you having trouble reading me?” she asked with the comforting lilt of her Valleys accent.
I was always inquisitive about new findings. Seeing colours of people so clearly was still relatively new to me and made my heart giddy every time I managed it. I understood very little compared to my Mam. I was a dedicated student, still learning and had, 12 months previously decided that dolls were for babies and instead I would concentrate on this skill that made me grown up and special, a woman like my Mam.
I was keen to learn and absorb information and she was the most patient of teachers.
Mam had always known I possessed the same skills as her. From my early years, I would describe or paint people with an egg-shaped colour surrounding them. This meant something to me, but perplexed others. The only person who understood everything I felt, said, and did was my Mam and that was enough for me.
I would forget my new ‘grown-up’ status from time to time and reach for the dolls, especially Betsy with her luscious blonde curls and her pinstriped frock. I would go weeks without focussing on anybody long enough to determine their colour. Life tended to get in the way. There were new ‘dens’ to build, boys to run from or daisy chains to be made.
Every now and then, I’d try it out again, see if I still had it. A new colour or shape would emerge, one that I was not so familiar with, and I’d always reach out for advice. Forever questioning, thinking, pondering.
And this was no different.
“You’re purple, but that’s normal.” I told her.
“But” I added, as her shoulders tensed.
“There’s a break in the colour, by your waist, like a hole … but my eyes are tired and it’s late” an excuse I offered apologetically.
She clutched her waist tight, as though understanding exactly what this meant. She mustn’t have had the energy to answer my questions or teach me this evening. I’m sure even she gets fed of me! I let it pass and looked down into my lap, a little confused. She continued to brush through my tangled hair, easing out its knots gently. And as I glanced back up towards the mirror, I noticed a single tear leave her eye and fall down her cheek slowly, before it hit the back of my neck and she swept it away.
*****
Spring was my favourite month. New life emerging, buds on flowers and the chill of winter slowly replaced by sunshine and warmth. But this had been the worst imaginable. It is difficult to prepare from something you know so little about. Death frightened me. In a season so full of expectation and new beginnings, our family’s strife and impending loss felt especially poignant.
On the days she felt well enough, my Mam would scurry around the cottage with papers in her hand, in a hurried nature. I would insist she sit down or rested, but she told me time was not on our side. She said this with a stoic bravery, but each time, without fail, I’d let her down by beginning to cry and she would spend the next half hour consoling me.
I tended to have words to describe the things I saw or the way I felt. But I would miss her more than words could even begin to explain. Each time I caught the thought in my mind, a lump would form in my throat and I’d feel as if I were choking.
Leona was in the house less than us. She was courting the son of the shopkeeper down the road. Owen was four years her senior. He was not afraid to graft hard and in this instance, his persistence had finally paid off when Leona agreed to his offer of a trip to the picture house. I had never been to the pictures, but Leona described how she had escaped into a fantasy land for the time that she was in there and was somewhat sorry to return. I want to go to the pictures one day.
A summer and winter later, Owen eventually had her heart. But this spring, he would visit our cottage of an afternoon, from time to time, frustrated as to her whereabouts. And we were just as confused as he.
Women of the village were flocking to our aide. Bringing food and making tea, speaking to me with pity in their voices and sorrowful expressions painted on their faces. They were good church folk and this is what good church folk did.
Between their visits and that of the doctor, time passed by quickly – the beauty of my favourite season just a hazy blur of hot cocoa and temperature checks.
I took each day at a time, hanging on to my Mam’s every word, soaking in every little thing she did, what she wore, how she tied up her hair, her smell. I didn’t keep a great deal of company in my life, our family was small and though I had lots of acquaintances at school, I chose to spend my time with my Mam and sister. I was in awe of them both, they were strong women and in control. Even now, with the cancer gripping hard on her body – she kept a strong energy about her, and Leona the same. I was weak, fragile and emotional. Useless, really. The scale of what was happening and what was to happen in future was crushing my heart. The sleepless nights were beginning to take their toll on my body. I looked paler than usual; I would cry at the tiniest of things and had become clumsy and forgetful. I was a silly child, unable to cope with the magnitude of a thing like this. My heart, quite literally, ached.
I had asked Leona one morning, as she was gathering some of her belongings and ready to rush out for the day, whether there was a point when she realised she was an adult and not a child. She looked at me for a moment before answering, her wavy dark hair hiding most of her face, and her narrow eyes narrowing further still, “I was never very good at being a child” she settled on.
She could see from my frown that something was bothering me, and although her mind was somewhere else, she sat down, although almost floating above her seat and eager to leave. There was always time for her little sister.
“It is time for me to stop being a child now” I told her matter-of-factly.
“I know that people treat me like a child, but I have no time for silly games anymore.” I continued, a little doubt rising in my voice. I imagined putting my few remaining toys away in a box under the bed and putting a stop to the imaginary adventures we often went on, once and for all.
I stood up from the kitchen table, with an almighty creak of the unsteady chair legs.
“Last year, Daisy told me at school that when a girl bleeds down below, she becomes a woman on that very day. She has been one for over a year now, actually! But that is not something that has happened to me yet. And I certainly don’t look like one.” I grabbed my very flat chest and ran my hands down to my bony hips.
“But I ought to be. For Mam. I’m scared Lee, because life is changing, isn’t it?” I asked. And that was the only way I could describe the million thoughts racing through my head and keeping me awake at night. An explanation that explained nothing.
Yet Leona understood my fears. She hesitated before reaching for my hand and giving it a light kiss and looked up at me. The icy cold of her hand brought shivers from my neck to the back of my knees.
“You are wonderful as you are, don’t change. We’re in for a rough ride, little one, but know that if I leave, I’ll always return. Now pop the stove on and fetch Mam a nice cup of tea, will you?”
And with that she flattened down my unruly fringe with the palm of her hand and headed out into the sunshine, leaving me with more thoughts whizzing through my head than could possibly fit.
*****
More time ticked by and yet here I was still unsure of what the future would hold, but for the realisation that, without parents, perhaps without my big sister, I would be facing it alone.
And as if reading my thoughts, my Mam opened her eyes slowly from her sleep and leaned over to pull me closer and bury me in her arms.
The same warm embrace I had felt for 13 years.
Leona lingered behind me. She seemed angry. This was becoming a habit of late.
She had been helpful but distant. She seemed to blame my Mam for leaving us, in some way. The same way she did after Dad died. She would spend hours at a time watching my Mam sleep, but looked cold and void of emotion. Sometimes a flicker of annoyance and anger would flash in her eyes, the feelings too strong, forcing her to exit a room, fast.
Watching our embrace had somehow offended her. She stiffened, her cheeks turned red but her face remained expressionless. She walked briskly away.
My Mam did not flinch, though she looked older and had grown weary. She kept me close in her arms. I watched Leona leave the room, worried about her.
My Mam could see this and mustered her strength to speak to me with a quiet clarity, emphasising each and every word.
“She will come round. She’ll be there for you, she loves you very much.” She said, without a flicker of doubt in her voice.
“Violet, my baby girl” she brushed her fragile hand across my forehead and let it linger on my temple a while. Her touch was soft as velvet.
“If you think of the world that we live in like a palette of colour … well we come in all shades. What you have is a gift to see those colours and determine who is unkind and wicked. I am leaving this to you now, Vi. I know you will make me very, very proud.
“Remember how” her voice began to weaken but her embrace remained strong.
“We would always love the times that rain fell on a sunny spring day?”
I nodded, trying with all my strength not to cry, to be brave and adult. My eyes pricked with tears and started to burn at the effort.
“One of the greatest natural beauties, the rainbow, fills the sky after a rainstorm. The Sun will always come. And while it may never seem so, be patient and hold out for it – it is always worth the wait.”
With a strength and clarity that reappeared in her voice, she said slowly “My girl, never let the people of this beautiful, colourful, world change you.”
I looked at her and panicked as the colour drained from her cheeks. I felt my throat restricting, the tears just bursting to be released.
“You hear me?” she questioned, desperately.
I looked straight into the blue of her eyes and nodded defiantly. One tear escaped, replaced quickly by two, then a dozen and then more still. The lows of the past few weeks felt like hands which were now gripping my heart and squeezing it hard.
I whispered “I love you Mam, so, so much”
And with that, her grip loosened and she left me and this world behind.
My eyes were full of water but through the bleariness I saw a white light shine brightly from her every edge of her body. A moment of peace. She was made of crystal, it made me smile weakly.
Leona stood balancing on the doorway, gripping the frame tightly.
She cried quietly while I sobbed loud and hard.