When we met, all I saw was grey. Not the peaceful cool grey tones of the rainy PNW sky but rather the lifeless grey that felt like grief and loss personified. He made me so angry and was the literal grey cloud that followed me around everywhere and brought my spirits down making me more angry than I had ever been in my life. Before I met Callahan, I firmly believed that I didn't have an angry bone in my body because, in any situation where someone would typically feel furious, I always skipped that step and looked for a way to make it better. But never Callahan. At least not at first.

Now looking at him across our favorite table in the basement of the library, I realize he wasn't ever just grey. His soul is the color of the inside of the many shells I have found on our long beach walks, the kind of shell that changes color depending on how you look at it. Sometimes, when you first pick it up, it's just grey. But if you shift it in your hand so the light hits it differently, you uncover pinks and blues and purples that are indescribably intriguing. That's how Cal's soul is. When I first looked at it, I caught a bad angle. But as I got to know him better, I could see that his soul also has exquisite pinks and blues and purples. You just have to look at him from a different angle. He doesn't deserve my anger. None of it is his fault. But he was an easy person to blame. And that short-sidedness cost me so much time spent misunderstanding the true colors of this man's soul.