Rainbow Ribbons

Beloved Randy--Last March of 2008, while walking arm in arm with you down the hospital halls, we both marveled at a double rainbow that filled the entire eastern sky.   Both rainbows formed almost two complete arcs.   We remarked how we had never seen a more beautiful rainbow. 

                        

It was one year ago today that I last held your hand

       and told you I loved you.

Just one year ago, I heard you take your last breath. 

When you left, you took my sun with you.

Rainbows can't exist without the sun . . .

Sweet are the memories 

of lollipop flowers

Of gingerbread houses

Of sugar coated hours.

Of fairy drawn coaches

and fanciful rides

Down silvery moonbeam 

Slippery slides.

Of rainbow ribbons

Tied in my hair.

Ah, Rainbow Ribbons

That I no longer wear.

But even though rainbows

and moonbeams must fade.

They only melt into skies

Made of pink lemonade.

(Note: I wrote the words and music for the song Rainbow Ribbons one sad, rainy night while I was at BYU the fall of 1965.  It is written for a classical guitar and a flute accompaniment. Later someone on campus heard it and asked me to perform my song for a play she was directing the spring of 1966.  I wish I knew how to add my own recording to a blog playlist, so you could be listening to the song as you read this. The music expresses my emotions so much better than the words.) 

 

However, there are no skies of pink lemonade for me now.  

I need the Sun for them to exist . . . .

In 1966, I was on a BYU a cappella choir trip on a bus near St. Louis, Missouri, when the following words just came into my mind.  It was springtime.   Although I wrote this poem 43 years before I ever dated Randy, the words seem to be quite prophetic in expressing what has transpired and how I feel now:

Candlelight and lace,

A lingering embrace,

A tear upon her face

       Sighed goodbye

       To a springtime sky,

              His familiar knock,

               A lilac scented talk,

               A moonbeam tinseled walk.

Candlelight and lace

Now grace

An empty place.

       A dress with an old style look,

       Pressed rosebuds in a book,

       A weed crowned garden nook

              Remain to say

              He went away . . . .