Tears on Aisle Number 4
A poem of time + place + love + death
A Saturday, like all the other Saturdays that stretch through months of days like other days
Searching for sustenance in cans, cardboard boxes, and waxy cartons, weighing needs against bank balances
Walking aisles too crowded among people too busy and children too noisy
A sound above the din, my phone? At 10 am on Saturday?
Intercom drowns out a voice — male, my stepmother’s neighbor two states away
Finger puncturing ear to hear words that are soft and thunderous, both, at once
Found, on the floor, hours after arriving home from the grocery store
Ironic
I look at rows of cereal boxes — red printed words — heart-healthy — Did she eat that and it didn’t work?
She defeated cancer — twice — Most recent 10 days before; Don’t come now, she said,
Chemo kept me from living, I have things to do, to get — new dentures, new glasses
I have living to do before you come — next month, okay? I’ll be ready next month
But, next month won’t come, will never come because while she was living, death arrived
Driving a different car, not the Cancer Cadillac but the Heart Hearse
Ironic
Thank you. Really, what else could I say through tears on aisle number 4?
People stare with curiosity — my head buried in the shoulder of the man I love
I cry for the only mother I ever knew and loved And, really, not that much or enough
The one who arrived after another died and stayed too short to earn “Mom”
Loved, mostly from a distance, loved by phone, packages, and cancer reports
Difficult on her best days, infuriating on her worst, loving without knowing how
And, dying when she shouldn’t have — dying when she had living to do, dying before good-bye
The good-bye I thought would come in a hospital while drugged in a slow death
Instead, a knock-out punch, swift and silent, no whispered good-bye —
Only tears on aisle number 4
I’ve wanted to write about finding out about my stepmother’s death while I was grocery shopping but struggled to create the right vehicle for the story. Thank you, David, for providing what I needed with this prompt: