A Love in Colours: Grey

The gray silk tablecloths were being placed with care on the large rounds in the banquet hall as the guests began to arrive. They stood outside the room, peering through the windows, mesmerized by the gray cloths being unfurled seemingly in slow motion. The cloths were being waved in the air as if to signal surrender if only they had been red. The past few weeks euphemisms and expressions about the end were repeatedly spoken as if to convince him everything was over, but both of them believed that the real excitement was yet to come.

She was sitting at a large table, surrounded by his colleagues, watching him up there on the stage. She couldn't believe that he was actually retiring, but she knew that she would have to believe it at some point as it was actually happening and it was meaningless to hold onto such obvious disbeliefs when the truth is so readily apparent. Could it be that time already she thought? Wasn't it just yesterday when he had just started this job in the first year after they fell in love? The answer, quite clearly, she reminded herself, was no and why did she insist on continuing to ask herself this question? She remembered the endearing self-assuredness he had as he left for work each morning when he was first starting and how that had barely changed over the years. He had been one of the fortunate ones - he loved his job and was excited to go to work. She loved his positive nature and outlook on life and felt that it was infectious as he had helped her see things more positively as well and that was quite almost definitely the best possible kind of infection or infectious disease there could be as almost all others ended with someone getting very sick. As she sat there listening to story after story about his incredible contributions to the company, she remembered a more youthful version of him in her head and it made smile. Her head was often full of different images and pictures of him and she wished she could construct a mental way of organizing them - sort of like an album with plastic pockets to store the mental photos, but she laughed at her naivete about constructing albums in her mind, especially when it came to making the plastic pockets. She couldn't believe how much time had passed, but attributed that to her inability to keep track of time very well and to how much fun they have had over the years. She watched him on stage with a pride that was unlike that of a parent or a teacher or a plastic surgeon and more like one that a wife would feel for her husband and that just made sense, she thought, as that was the nature of their relationship. Finally, it was his turn to speak and he stood and walked slowly to the lectern and made eye contact with her. He grinned, took out his notes and addressed the audience of friends and colleagues in a way that only he could - as a freestyle rap.

He sat there listening but barely hearing the speeches. It was a technique that he had honed at work over the years and could easily give a series of workshops that people would listen but not hear making the means of delivery quite challenging. His mind was drifting and he gave into the sensation as he was quite enjoying being caught up in a cloud of déjà vu because he had remembered to have a snack first. His mouth broke out into a small grin as he remembered how eager and excited and full of beans he had been as a young man when he first landed the position. He used to eat bowl after bowl of cooked beans that he had lovingly soaked overnight himself right before a shift primarily for the protein and the digestive fibre and secondarily for whatever may have coincidentally aided his performance at work. Yes, he had been annoyingly eager, and he saw that same ridiculously annoying eagerness on the young aiming-to-please-even-if-that-meant-wearing-face-paint employees he hired himself ever since he became management. Somedays he wanted to mentor these new employees and other days he lamented our modern negative view of tar-and-feathering, mostly due to his investing heavily in tar a few years ago. His eyes caught his elegant wife's in the audience. He was struck by how well she had aged and his mind quickly started listing all the ways they could benefit from that financially without completely compromising her elegance. He came up with two. He was so lucky to have her as she could have had any guy but chose him based on his humour, his unflinching love and, at least partially, due to his glass-blowing skills as she was a sucker for objects of glass, especially those that had been blown by men with senses of humour that also loved her. Even as this date on the calendar rapidly approached, it hadn't totally hit him until now - he was old and he was retiring and it had helped that he had recently started hitting himself with the calendar causing a fair amount of ripping as the calender was quite cheaply made. Finally, it was his turn to speak and he was ready to leave his mark - he wasn't sure how or where, but it would be a permanent mark, it would involve mixed media, and it would be intense, partially edible and subject to interpretation.