Pure Colour

Pure Colour

A novel by Sheila Heti

I’m surprised by this book. At first, I didn’t like it, I didn’t like the words she chose and the way time jumped rapidly around.

I typically stay away from the ideas of god, creation or the afterlife. These concepts at the best of times feel like empty promises and at worst have brought forth the nastiest in their followers. I find more comfort in the idea of nothing. There is this life and then nothing.

Although Sheila used these words that tend to make me shut down and stop listening, it became clear to me, or perhaps I filled in the gaps with my own beliefs, that her descriptions and thoughts were very similar to my own.

The way that she described life was crude, blunt and short. She passed through time and life so quickly and yet…

I’ve experienced wanting to get away from my parent's home and be my own individual.

I’ve experienced being young and wishing so badly to be seen as an adult. Throwing dinner parties and acting the part but not quite making the cut.

I’ve experienced a friendship that could have been more but was passed by. That I still think about and wonder “what if”.

I’ve also experienced death. The smell and sound or lack of after someone passes. The desperate need to stay with them, to hold their body, and to climb in bed with them.

I’ve felt that moment in the loss of someone where you are sure they are with you. That their soul or their essence has come to calm you and give you peace.

But then I’ve also felt the cold, the shock of loss and the unsureness of my memories and if they were ever with me at all.

This book made me relive those experiences. Those monumental moments in life. The way I felt in those instances and with my people but also how I feel looking back from a future perspective. I connected my own life to the story, somehow finding myself in the pages.

“She had thought that when someone died, it would be like they went into a different room. She had not known that life itself transformed itself into a different room, and trapped you in it without them”

Then the story took a turn that kind of freaked me out. I've always said, always, that if there is life after death I want to be a tree. I want to just be without the pressure to be more than what I am.

She took my dream to the next step. A leaf! The way that the character walked through her grief. The emotions, the connection to nature and the lights and her disconnect from the world. The way she needed to organize the gem game and how each page changes with her thoughts on life, and her pondering. Every thought she had, I’ve had.

What I realized and it made me feel better about my existence is that perhaps my thoughts are not that original. Perhaps my disassociation from the world, sadness and fascination with structure and symmetry and finding experiences that make me feel anything is just a normal part of the grieving experience when you’ve lost someone you truly loved.

Perhaps I’m not that special or so far gone after all.

I think I’ve been so absorbed with the idea that I can’t be without my daughter, that I’ve spent the last 4 years searching for reasons to live. It’s only recently that I’ve started to hope for things in the future, a vacation, summer swims in my pool, and watching our 2nd daughter head to pre-primary.

I will be recommending this book to friends and family who are struggling with the concept of death.