Do you have a colour that distinctly reminds you of someone?
When I remember my mum, I think of her blue eyes. She had a light Wedgewood blue and white coloured top that she kept for special occasions and I’d tell her how, when she wore it, it made her eyes dazzle and dance like the sea on a hot day. ‘Wear it more often!’ I’d tell her. ‘It’s ‘your’ colour’.
When she died of breast cancer in 2011, I wore black to her funeral but with these light blue tights in her memory, as well as her blue vintage Hermes scarf in the same shade.
These days I wear this colour when I want to imagine she’s still here; on the end of the phone, sharing an absurd joke (she had an exquisite sense of the ridiculous) or telling me, with a mother’s knack, ‘It will all be ok, trust me’.
Today I’m wearing these tights not in sadness but in joy – joy at having known her and having had her in my life. I feel lucky that there’s a colour out there that gives me such a failsafe fast-track connection to love.
Martha, The Colour File x
