Red is my mom’s color.  I’m not sure if she chose it , or if it chose her.  Either way, it was hers.

It didn’t pervade every nook and cranny of her life.  It accented and enhanced.  It popped and surprised.

It was the color of her bridesmaids’ dresses 51 years ago.  It’s the color of her couch in the guest room.  It’s the color of her favorite blazer – the one that now hangs in my closet. Red was the roses in the garden in NY and the poppies on the wall in FL.

I can’t see a vibrant red without thinking of my mom.  She was red.  Alive, vibrant, bursting with life and energy.  Even as cancer sucked her life away, she lived fully.   We celebrated her life with red streamers and party blowers and tie-dyed poster board and nurse-contributed prune juice and balloons a few days before the color drained from her face and she breathed in one last constricted lungful of air.

I will remember that last breath.  More than that, I will remember a life well lived and a daughter of the Most High who embraced whatever and whoever came her way.  I will see red with its pulsating call to life and remember my mother who lived it well.