Mommy’s Gone & She’s Not Coming Back
I walked up to the express line of our local grocery store. There were two people in front of me and a woman to my left looking at the headlines on the newspaper stand. She came around behind me. I knew technically she was there before me and indicated that she could get in front of me.
“No. That’s okay. I was over looking at the paper,” she said. She appeared to be in her 40s, black hair, glasses. An older man made his way over.
“Grace, how are you?”
“Okay,” she said. Slight pause. “Still trying to deal with Betty’s death.”
“Oh, yes,” he said in the stiff, formal way we do when we talk about death. “Terrible.”
“Lisa’s having a very hard time of it,” Grace said without prompting. “She doesn’t have the cognitive skills to understand that Mommy’s gone. She keeps asking ‘When’s Mommy coming home and take me to the library?’ Or, “Is Mommy coming to pick me up for church on Sunday?’
“So I went over to Barnes & Noble and picked up some books on death and dying for children and I’ll take them over to the house. She loves to read. So when she asks when Mommy is coming to take her to the library they can give her these books and explain Mommy’s gone and she isn’t coming back. . . .”
“I can help someone here,” a young cashier said trying to mask her tired voice with a weak smile. I handed her my box of matches.”
She scanned it. “That’ll be $1.39.”
I handed her two ones.
“Would you like this in a bag?”
“No, thanks.”
She opened the drawer and pulled out two quarters, a dime and a penny and deftly dropped them into my palm. She was maybe 17. Her hands were soft.
“Would you like your receipt?”
“No, thank you.”
“Have a nice day.”
I stepped out into the sunshine wondering how Betty died. I opened the Explorer door, got in and started the engine.
It doesn’t matter how she died. What matters to a lot of people is she’s not coming back.
And somehow it matters to me now.