The dress hung untouched in the back of her closet, deep purple, like dusk pressed into fabric. It wasn’t new—it carried the scent of lavender perfume and the faintest trace of smoke from a party years ago. She had worn it once, the night everything felt infinite.
Purple had always been her mother’s color. Not red, too loud. Not black, too final. But purple—the quiet elegance that spoke without shouting, the shade of twilight skies and bruises that healed. When her mother laughed, she swore the air shimmered violet. When she prayed, her whispered words painted the room in purple calm.
Now, standing before the mirror, she slipped into the dress again. It fit differently, tighter at the ribs, looser at the shoulders, but it still held her the way memory does—half comfort, half ache.
At the funeral, no one noticed the shade. They only saw her stillness, the way she clutched the hymnal, the way her lips trembled against silence. Yet she knew—her mother would have smiled. She would have said, “Even in endings, there is beauty. Even in sorrow, there is color.”
And as the sun dipped, staining the sky in a wash of violet, she understood. Purple wasn’t just her mother’s color. It was hers now—an inheritance of grief and grace.
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