By Karin Hedetniemi
In the gentlest way, the nurse smooths your collar and leans back. “Do you think this shirt is too feminine?” She’s dressed you in a pastel yellow polo shirt, a few buttons at the neck.
I stand at the foot of your bed, watching you sleep. I’ve never seen you wear this color before. You look younger, boyish even; the gravity of all that has happened, receded.
We have an old yellow house: an Edwardian Vernacular Arts and Crafts with a honey varnished door, yellow roses at the gate. The wood siding, a bleached buttercream. Just last summer, you sanded and repainted all the south-facing boards. The paint color was Enigma — I remember because it’s one of your terms of endearment for me. I like being your Enigma. A little mystery is necessary in any love story.
“I could find another,” the nurse offers.
I’m not aware she is dressing you for something holy. She wants it to be right for me.
“No,” I say, in almost a whisper, thinking of sunlight, babies, golden-crowned kinglets. “It’s perfect.”
*
You haven’t come to me in dreams yet, but a few days before your celebration, Lolanda says you visited her. She has this uncanny gift for connecting with people soon after they’ve died. They’re always eager to demonstrate their renewed vitality. She’s an open channel.
Lo tells me her recent dream was a preview of your gathering. You were there, looking healthy again, beaming with pride. She embraced you and waved over to me, look! But I couldn’t see you — just her arm hugging the empty air.
Now, she adds one more specific detail. A prickling sensation floods my veins, rushing up my neck. It’s something I’ve not told a single soul.
“He was wearing a pale yellow shirt.”
*
The morning after your celebration, I take our pup to the shore.
The sky is an overcast palette. I’m in an empty beachcombing trance, putting one foot in front of the other, my boots sinking into gray, wet pebbles.
My thoughts drift back to Lo’s dream, your shirt, the strange and curious wonder of it all. Were you there at the gathering? Did I make it right for you? At that precise moment, something unusual flashes my peripheral vision, surges my veins, rushes my scalp. Something holy because not a second passes between my question and the answer.
At the toe of my boot, in the seaweed and stones, there’s one yellow shirt button.
Karin Hedetniemi photographs and writes from Vancouver Island, Canada. Her creative work recently appears in Grain, Welter, Lunch Ticket, EVENT, and other literary journals. In 2020, Karin won the nonfiction contest from the Royal City Literary Arts Society. Her pockets are full of sea glass and buttons. Find her at AGoldenHour.com or on socials @karinhedet.
MoonPark Review 