Second person 2

I just got back from Trader Joe's. The last time I had been was down in California. It was the day we drove to the mortuary to talk to our "counselor"--who really was nothing more than a big guy in a black suit with a contract for us to sign. Every detail about the mortuary experience was silly--the blue surgical gloves the "handlers" (they probably have a sugary name, too) put on before doing the gymnastics required to get my mom's body from the bed to the stretcher; the way they looked at each and every one of our faces as they left the house, saying "my condolences"; the shiny, windowless, white mini-van in which they drove her body away; the cheap cardboard box we ended up choosing for her cremation ("We would prefer not to have her in a container at all," we explained, "but since we have to choose one ..."). Before going to the mortuary, we stopped at Trader Joe's to pick up some flowers to place with my mom's body. It would take two to five hours for the cremation to be complete. Slow-roasted?--my aunt joked uncomfortably. Flowers, we thought. My mom loved flowers.

My parents (should I say "my dad" now?), like me, live just about a block away from a Trader Joe's. While I was visiting over the summer and the week before she died, I would take frequent trips there to buy food--something special for my mom. She liked their cranberry juice. She liked their soups. And, when it became difficult to chew harder foods, I thought, "Maybe she would like the macaroni and cheese?" (I ate the package I had bought for her the night before she passed.) The last food she ate was from Trader Joe's--two bites of their tapioca pudding. These thoughts became rough scars on my memory the moment she died. I hadn't realized it.

I dragged a bit while I was shopping today. You get that disorienting feeling. You remember your old thoughts there, and feel your new self here, but you (something beside mind or body, apparently) are caught in between. First person and second person, only now moving aimlessly between the two. You can't go back and you can't forget. And so you stay in the middle, discombobulated by your body that keeps you here, where she is no longer, and your mind that's scarred by there, where she still is. Still is.

And so it is, yes, one foot in front of the other. But I think it's okay, sometimes, to drag your feet, kick and scream, beg and plead. To remember.