Recently, while in a store purchasing a card, the woman ringing me up commented on how lucky the recipient would be. Not a text or an email, but an actual card, in the mail. Given that I was in a store with a large selection of greeting cards, I wasn’t surprised by her comment, but it was her age that surprised me, as she was several decades younger than me. She said that in a world of texting, sending cards was a nice gesture, and that their store had one of the best selections in Boulder (she was right). She told me her friends prefer texting and they rarely speak on the phone. I agreed and told her that my daughter was the same, communicating mostly by text. I added that when she calls, I always know she is alone in her car on a drive longer than 15 minutes.
As she was handing my credit card back to me, my phone rang. My phone is always on mute, so hearing it ring startled me, especially with the ominous timing. The woman raised her brows, smiled, and said, “Well, it must be your daughter calling…on her longer than 15-minute drive!” I smiled and, without hesitation, said, “Yes, probably so.” Spoiler alert, the call was from a solicitor, which was not surprising, but it came through on my muted phone, which was.
For a brief moment, I felt a sense of calm and peace I hadn’t felt in a long time, like finally being able to exhale, and Emery was alive and calling me because she was alone in her car and bored. I held the moment for as long as I could, because it felt good.
Grief is strange. It’s living on railroad tracks, with my normal day-to-day life on one track, and grief running parallel on the other. Grief is the trickster of the two and will show up without warning with unexpected waves of emotion. Sometimes it’s a powerful surge that has me bracing, and other times it’s unknowingly using the present tense, not the past, when I talk to a stranger about Emery. Always, it is a reminder of the love that continues.
When I walked out of the store, I realized I was smiling.
