I’ve been cleaning out my Mom’s car. I’ve found emery boards, granola bars, and rubber bands. Lots of rubber bands. They keep turning up, like the glass and pieces of chipped pottery that mysteriously surface in our backyard after a heavy rain. I also found a receipt for a pie, dated November 2016 from the Grocery Outlet store. It cost $.79. She paid with a dollar and got change back. It must have been one of those hand held ones, like a Hostess pie. I wonder what flavor she chose. Chocolate? Cherry? Lemon?
I almost kept that receipt. It took me back to an ordinary day when my Mom was still with us. It was right before the holidays, eight months or so before she got sick. She was out, driving herself around in her own car, the car I am cleaning now. She must have stopped at the store for a little treat, for a sweet pie.
My grief comes in waves. It ebbs and flows like the tide. Today, a faded receipt for a pie is enough to floor me. I don’t know what I was doing that day, when she carefully chose that pie, carried it to the cash register, paid for it, and then, most likely, sat in the car by herself and ate it. I probably wouldn’t have approved. It wasn’t a snack her doctor recommended. Today, though, I wish I would have been there. To share it with her. To savor the sweetness of that ordinary November afternoon.
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