When the human heart stops beating, there are seven minutes of memories that flood through every cranial nerve. Every moment of their entire life played back like a high pace movie for one last showing. It's a final goodbye to the unwavering capacity that held every thought ever imagined by that person. So, let's say that the seven minutes are put together by a series of events that create the outline to that individuals life; an experience tailored to that one person that relates to them and them alone.
I believe my first minute will have bubbly waves of color that match my mother's eyes and it's crashing against a blank white canvas. The color will coat the thin board and make the first mark to a very unfinished painting. The blue represents my beginning, the part of my life that molded me into who I was bound to be, the product of a selfless woman driven by love and a steady promise.
Minute two and three will have millions of warm colors that sit closely with the sun when its day has come to an end. Deep reds and pastel pinks with a touch of light orange that come to overlap the blue. These colors represent warmth and happiness, something my family never failed to give me. Without them, my personality would be dull and dark. They taught me how to pick my head up to the sky when my eyes only see the ground, how to be brave and different in a world of monotone color.
Minute four will be twenty-two different shades of grey that branch from one corner of the canvas, like an oil spill, making its way across the rest of the surface. Colors so dark that they engulf the bright shades beneath them. An irreversible mark that I refuse to see as a mistake. These colors represent the first real pain that took away light in my life for a while, but without them, the rest of my story wouldn't be as bright and the colors wouldn't be as clear.
Although minute five, six, and seven are blurred, their colors still fall slow and easy onto the canvas. They are light and peaceful, picturesque hues that move in steady straight lines and never drift off path. They are endless and consistent, like the love that he will have for me. A future marked by stability with someone that made it all make sense. His colors will cover my canvas and make the picture a whole, they will complement the shades that are already there and drown out the grey.
At the very last second of my seven minutes, the canvas will be filled with the colors and the picture will finally be finished. Every accidental line, every dark, bright, and blurred color painted the picture that would represent my whole life. A canvas filled with stories that no other individual would see but me. As of right now I may not know exactly what that finished board looks like, but I do know it's full of colors that pass before me today.
