There are people who have a favorite color, and then there was Melanee.
Mel didn’t just like purple. She embraced it with a level of enthusiasm that I’m not entirely sure the rest of the color spectrum was prepared to compete with. If something came in purple, chances were pretty good that it was going to catch her attention. Shoes, outfits, jewelry, nail polish, blankets, suitcases, you name it. If manufacturers had started making purple toilet paper, I’m fairly certain it would have been worth at least a conversation.
And not just any purple, either.
Mel had standards. There were purples that went together, purples that absolutely did not, and shades that apparently existed in some classification system I was never properly trained to understand. I’d look at two things and think, Hey, they’re both purple. What’s the problem? Mel could immediately identify why they didn’t match, usually with the kind of confidence that suggested I should probably stop talking before I embarrassed myself any further.
I never understood how somebody could love a color so much while simultaneously rejecting half the things that came in it.
But that was Mel.
She could go shopping for something perfectly ordinary and get distracted by an item simply because it was purple. Now, I’m not saying she purchased everything purple she ever laid eyes on, but I suspect the color occasionally carried more weight in the decision-making process than some of the actual features of the product. A suitcase, for example, should probably be evaluated on things like durability, storage capacity, and whether the wheels are going to fall off somewhere between baggage claim and the parking lot.
But is it purple?
Well, that’s certainly an important consideration.
Over the years, purple became so associated with Mel that I stopped thinking of it as just a color. It was part of her identity. You could see something purple and immediately think of her. It was almost like she had her own personal branding department, except nobody had to pay a marketing consultant to figure it out.
And apparently, after thirty-two years of exposure, some of that enthusiasm rubbed off on me.
I actually like purple now. Not just because it reminds me of Mel, either. I genuinely appreciate the color. I don’t know if that’s the result of developing better taste or simply spending so many years surrounded by it that my brain finally surrendered. Either way, I suppose there are worse things a person could pick up from their spouse.
Mel even had a favorite song that fit the theme.
It’s an energetic, wonderfully quirky song, which seems pretty appropriate for a woman who could be just as enthusiastic about the color of a pair of shoes as she was about whatever happened to capture her attention that day.
I can still appreciate how something as simple as a color could bring her so much enjoyment. Mel didn’t need somebody else’s approval to decide what she liked. If she liked purple, she liked purple. She wasn’t going to apologize for it, and she certainly wasn’t going to switch to beige because somebody decided it would be more practical.
Frankly, I think the world has enough beige.
But here’s where today’s story gets a little interesting.
This morning, I happened to be wearing a tie-dye shirt with purple in it. Nothing particularly remarkable about that. I’ve got clothes, I put one on, and so far the day has been proceeding more or less as expected.
Then I noticed that my girlfriend was also wearing multiple pieces of purple.
Neither of us had discussed what we were going to wear. There wasn’t a plan, a coordinated wardrobe selection, or some secret agreement to honor Mel’s favorite color. We just happened to get dressed, and there it was.
Purple.
Now, I’m a reasonably practical guy. I understand how coincidences work. Two people wearing the same color isn’t exactly going to bring the scientific community to its knees. I’m not suggesting NASA needs to investigate or that we’ve discovered some previously unknown force of the universe.
But I had to smile.
Because if there were ever a way for Mel to make her presence known through something as ridiculous as wardrobe choices, this would be a pretty damn good one.
And I love the fact that my girlfriend was part of it without either of us planning it. There’s something genuinely sweet about that. My life today is different from the one I shared with Mel, but it doesn’t mean the little things that remind me of her have to disappear. Sometimes they show up in unexpected places, in moments that are happy rather than sad.
I don’t need to know whether it was coincidence, a little nudge from somewhere beyond my understanding, or simply two people who happened to appreciate a good color.
I can enjoy the moment without having to explain it.
I think that’s something Mel would have appreciated. She had her own preferences, her own style, and a remarkable ability to make those preferences known. Purple wasn’t just something she wore. It was something she enjoyed, something she chose, and something that became part of how the people who loved her recognized her.
And now, whether intentionally or not, it’s become part of my life, too.
So here I sit, wearing purple, with my girl wearing purple, thinking about a woman who probably would have been delighted by the whole thing.
Although, knowing Mel, there’s a very good chance she’d have taken one look at us and pointed out that our purples don’t actually match.
Some things never change.
Love you, Piggy.
“Wear purple when you want to evoke magic and mystery in your life.” – Gabrielle Bernstein