Slight stoop? Check.
Permed white hair? Check.
Dressed just a tad formally for grocery shopping? Check.
My subconscious completes a checklist I didn’t know she had and reaches her conclusion: It’s Mom.
Of course it’s not my mother. Mom’s been dead for more than two years. And if she were still alive, she wouldn’t be in a Gilbert grocery-store parking lot on her own. But the old woman walking towards me triggers that recognition reaction. For just a second.
I stop breathing. For just a second.
I consider whether to act. For just a second.
Can I tell you something?
She doesn’t look alarmed, and so I tell her what just happened. I don’t cry. Not quite. And she gets it, better than I do, really.
I’m glad I could make your day.
Yes.
Because Mom was here. For just a second.
Ahh, you didn’t cry, but I did. Because that’s what I do – and because I’ve had that experience.
Alison – Well, it was a close thing, even for me. And now that Mom’s been dead for more than 2 years (I almost wrote – “gone for 2 years” but that’s kinda the point – not gone, in one sense), it was a fine experience. The early ones were more akin to distressing.