Crystal Blue Persuasion

Our ability to communicate and speak is the ultimate power of a human being to put ideas and dreams into being. There is a reason they call it crystal blue persuasion.

In yogic and Eastern spiritual traditions, blue is the color of the throat chakra, reigning over communication, self-expression, and creativity. The phrase true blue is as old as the hills because of a high-quality blue cloth made in the Middle Ages that did not fade, making the expression “as true as blue” associated with truth.

If you have loved blue all your life, most likely your mother did too.

My mother loved all colors, but red was the one she tried to shove down my bag the way only a mother can, to no avail. Our power struggle with red was the opposite of mothers and daughters who have a relationship with blue, I used to say. Without a doubt, every client I ever had who loved blue told me her mother loved blue when I asked.

Their blue environments throughout the years never change. I always imagined them dressed in blue denim, surrounded by coastal landscapes, eating off blue and white dishes as they garden, cook, and bake together.

My mother and I did not have anything in common, including the color red, and our environment was in constant change and motion. Her passionate penchant for red was an inherent, intrinsic mystery until I painted a table red.

Then the tables turned.

As a stay-at home mother, I made lots of friends with other mothers. As a working mother, I did as well.

A mother I knew got ALS and went into hospice care nine months later. I only knew two other people who had the disease; one lived for years, and the other for over three decades and is still alive.

At first I knew here as a wife.

She and I liked each other but did not know each other very well. She was ten years older. No one ever tells you that, like when you were younger, ten years when you are older is a huge difference. My kids were still in college, and I was in the throes of my career. She had been recently promoted from stay-at-home mom to golfing grandma. She loved golf, so naturally, she spent half her time in Palm Springs, where she had just finished building her dream home.

Shortly after, she was in an accident believed to have triggered the disease.

I was so shocked when I heard how fast it had progressed and, with so much time on my hands in year one of my five-year non-compete, I scheduled a time to drop by and visit her and her family. Driving to see her, I was riddled with anxiety, thinking the usual thoughts everyone has when these kinds of tragedies happen. Not knowing what to expect, I brought a bottle of champagne, thinking the family probably needed it. In hindsight, it was I who needed it more.

But, much to my shock and surprise, there were plenty of bubbles already there waiting for me.

From the minute I entered through her bedroom door, I was in a self-governed realm ruled by a sense of inexplicable joy, gratitude, and courage that, under the circumstances, felt surreal. The energy was powered by the woman's eyes and her smile. She was so present and focused on you, it felt like you were the most beautiful thing she had seen. I had never experienced anything like it.

Her eyes said it all.

An hour of conversation flew by. Yes, the woman could not move or speak, but somehow we did, and I do not know how we managed. When a bunch of her close friends showed up to do the Rosary, they invited me to stay and join them. I returned and did the Rosary with them for a couple of months just so I could spend time in the presence of a woman facing her final destination, death, with profound faith and grace. So much so that I forgot she was going to die.

She always wanted to buy a new home. Instead, when her kids flew the coop, she and her husband bought a home in the desert and transformed it into her dream home. One-of-a-kind floors, fountains, pool, gardens. No expenses spared. She was living the dream, golfing the greens when, shortly after the home was finished, she came down with ALS.

Now, living back in the home her kids grew up in, unable to turn her head from side to side, she had been staring at the same beige wall for months. When I heard how desperately she wanted to see the desert one last time and how much she missed it, I knew exactly what to do. Since she could not go to the desert, I would bring the desert to her. I promised her that in eight hours, by painting her room, she would be in the desert, even if I had to paint around her. I imagined her room in shades of terracotta, adobe, and golf-green. But no. She chose a shade of turquoise.

Of course she did.

Blue turquoise encourages inner healing through its ability to enhance empathy and caring, heightens our intuitive ability, and opens the door to spiritual growth. It is the color of the evolved soul. Say no more. Her soul was powering the room.

I started the next day, wanting to surprise everyone at our next Rosary. Once the room was painted turquoise, her husband and I moved the furniture around under her eagle-eye direction. We hung her favorite piece of art, a kitsch, colorful painting of a female figure, right where she could see it. Front and center.

We made plans to move her bed by the window now that spring was around the corner so she could see the flowers about to bloom. That night, she seemed to have an extra abundance of energy. She looked radiant surrounded by that blue. I stayed later than usual just to look at her.

When I returned to do the Rosary the next day, her husband opened the door and let me in. The others were standing in the entry. He told me she had started to transition, as if leaving us. He asked all her friends to stay and do the Rosary with her one last time. The quick goodbye I had come to give her four months earlier became a long farewell to a woman, wife, mother, friend, and soul.

Two days later, she passed away on her fortieth wedding anniversary.

Several weeks later, at her service, her daughter thanked me for painting the room. She said that the room where her mother had been for the last year would have been unbearable to look at, let alone walk into, if not for the beautiful color her mother had chosen.

The color had painted over the room's association with her disease. It was now the beautiful sanctuary where her mother transitioned and left behind her light, her version of life, her palette.

This is what the color blue taught me about knowing. Blue was her way of belonging to herself, to us, and to the world, right up to the very end.

Coloring is an act of belonging.

You are the palette.

 Send this to someone you know. 

Gretchen.

See my color work at colorbaggage.com