Rainbow of a Life

White. A grey head bobs up and down under the gentle fall of snow. An old woman, burdened under a load of groceries from the corner store, makes her way home. Blank faces busied with their own lives ignore the passing figure. She reflects on her humble Cavalry; she is dying. Not quickly with a fast working disease, but slowly, she dies with each passing day and she knows it won’t be much longer. And only one thought bothers her. Only one thought lingers and inflicts itself on her wearied conscience day after passing day. Is there mercy…?

Red. There was blood. A steady stream of blood for several days. She had sat on the toilet and saw the blood and water; a perverse mingling of two sacred life giving elements. She felt mocked. And betrayed. She felt wounded. She saw only death. It hadn’t seemed the time for life. No one else had thought so either. So she did what she knew was wrong. And so the blood flowed. A baby is not born without blood. But this one was untimely. This one never saw the light of day.

Yellow. “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine! Let it shine! Let it shine! Let it shine!” she sang, a little girl standing on a step stool in her grandmother’s bright yellow kitchen.

“More chocolate chips, Nana?”

“Hmmm, let me see sugar”, the wrinkled face looked thoughtful, “now if you ask me, the whole point of the dough is just to carry the chips to your mouth, right? If you took a spoonful of that batter how many chips you think you’d get?”

“I don’t know, Nana.”

“Well let’s count ‘em. Take a spoonful here.”

“...one...two. Two.”

“Now ask yourself what sad, sorry, soul would want a cookie with two lonely chips in it?”

She giggled, “mighty sad Nana, and mighty sorry.”

“Then you lean that bag right on over the edge of the bowl there and don’t be shy about it!...Hmm doesn’t that look tasty now...Almost as tasty as you!” She said as she buried her face in the little girl’s belly causing an outburst of squeals, in which several minutes were required before both parties could resume their tasks. “Now why don’t you finish me that song there?”

“Don’t let Satan blow it out! Phfff!”

“As if he could!”

“I’m gonna let it shine! Let it shine! Let it shine! Let it shine!”

Green. She felt sick. That deep in your stomach, dread-filled type of sick. The Lord-what-have-I-done---no-one-can-know-about-this---if-anyone-found-out-I’d-die--kind of sick. In the girl’s high school bathroom she kept staring at the two little lines on the small screen, thinking she had to be reading it wrong. She kept choking back tears, which made her throat burn. She was swallowing fire. Checking no one else was around, she washed her hands and face. She looked in the mirror. So young. So beautiful. “Pretty Lilly”. She remembered at the May feast, laying white lillies at the Virgin’s feet. She couldn’t even think about that now. “I can’t do this” she told herself in the mirror, over and over. She heard footsteps in the hall. She threw the stick out.

Blue. Light poured through the stained glass window. Filtered through the shards of glass it painted colors on the marble floor--blue, purple, yellow, green. The pastor kept talking and she kept staring at the floor, not hearing much. But the cadence changed and his voice began to thunder, so her mind wandered back. “...SALVATION! Salvation in the WATER! Noah’s Ark is not just a story of DESTRUCTION, for from the destruction there emerges HOPE! See, the tears of God flooded the earth at the sight of all man’s evil. He BATHED the earth in His tears, washing away the stain of sin. What was born from that water was a NEW CREATION, new BEGINNING. Born from God’s tears in the sky appeared a rainbow, His Light shining on the misty water fallen from His face. So let your life be a rainbow! Let your life be a sign! Let the white light that shines be reflected in YOU!” She felt the burning in her throat again. “I can’t do this,” she whispered, and slowly slipped out of the pew and out the back door.

Purple. The time is drawing nearer..the old lady remembers, with some urgency, that there is something she must do. With labored breath and heavy legs she walks up the road to the old Church. In her arms she carries a bundle of fresh lilies. The old back door creaks open and her steps slowly and almost hauntingly echo on the marble floor as she makes her way to the statue in the front. It’s dark inside, and the deep purple linen of Lent is draped over the altar and pillars along the long, stretching nave. She looks up at the statue and seeing no one around begins to converse. “I’m not a virgin. No, I’m not. But I was a mother. Maybe I still am one, and he’s somewhere I just can’t see. I don’t know. But you saw the blood like me. You saw your son killed in front of you. You saw the death, you know what I felt! But...I handed mine over. I let them kill him” and now the water fell from her face, as torrents of tears and sobs poured out, “If you c-c-could, if you could just tell Him, I’m sorry! Tell Him I’d do anything to take it back! If I could go back and just turn the car around, my God I would! Oh--Oh---Momma! Oh, Momma!” And she sat on the cold marble step and rocked, and her sobbing sounded in the darkness. But not all sorrow is bad. And not all pain should be avoided. For sometimes the presence of God is felt not so much by His creatures in the white light and choirs of angels, but in the long, painful journey of Calvary.

Gold. She did die not long after. But it was not really the end. It was much more a beginning then anything else. The pangs of her last breath were quieting as her soul was being delivered. At the last weak heartbeats came to a rest and their labor ceased, a white robed neophyte passed through the heavenly gates. Entering a golden light and caught up and transformed in its rays, she was made to shine like the stars. And if you had been there, and perhaps listened closely, you felt you could almost hear singing… “This little light of mine...I’m gonna let it shine…” Mercy had not been far off afterall. It’s arms reached through every moment in her life, desiring to paint a rainbow.