Etched In Stone

On 8/8/88 I was 13 years old, and I went to my weekly tennis lesson on one of the hottest days of the year. When I came home, my mom sat me down to let me know that my grandma had taken her sister, Margaret, to lunch to celebrate Margaret’s birthday. On the drive home, Grandma had driven off onto the shoulder and passed away at the wheel. She had a massive heart attack. Great Aunt Margaret was unharmed, but traumatized. I was devastated.

My Grandma was amazing. Also, how terrible for Aunt Margaret, to lose her sister/best friend on her birthday. Somehow over the years, the details became fuzzy for me, and the part about it being Aunt Margaret’s birthday slipped my mind.

Fast forward to October of 2013, when I lost my sister/best friend on my (39th) birthday. I struggled with her death, of course, but also with how to deal with the worst and most traumatic day of my life also being my birthday.

I went to visit my sister’s grave, as I often do. But I also went to see my dad, my grandparents, and my Aunt Margaret, at a different area of the cemetery. It was then, looking at the dates on the headstones that I realized/remembered Grandma and Aunt Margaret share a date on their headstones: Grandma’s death date of 8/8 was also Aunt Margaret’s birthdate. I suddenly thought: they were so close they even share a date on their headstones.

Then I realized this applies to my sister and me as well. We are linked by a date. We were so close that her death date 10/28 and my birth date 10/28 will be etched in stone to link us forever. This thought always comforts me, it’s hard to explain why that helped me, but it did. So today, 8/8, I want to remember the unbreakable bond of sisters, and that sometimes it is etched in stone for eternity.

Thanks, Grandma and Aunt Margaret, for being a beautiful example of sisterhood to show us the way.

You Can’t Make Dead People Happy!

Here we are, it’s September. I’m staring down the barrel of my sister’s death anniversary (also known as my birthday) next month. It will be eleven years. Eleven entire years without her humor, her guidance, her bossiness, her making me double over with laughter, unable to breathe; eleven years without knowing her opinions.

We had what we called “Monday Morning Check-in” for years. One of us would call the other on Monday morning and we would talk, sometimes for 2 hours or more, about whatever subject we stumbled upon. Through these talks, and all the other conversations we would have, I learned her feelings and her stance on so many subjects. I knew her incredibly well.

As the years have gone by without her, I have wondered endlessly what she would think of my various life choices, or how I was parenting, or the state of the world today. What would she have thought of Covid? Or current-day politics? Or the paths of each of her 4 children? When she was alive I wouldn’t even get a haircut without discussing my thoughts about it with her first, so you can imagine how much her opinions meant to me.

The problem I encountered has been that as I have tried to imagine how she would feel about my various choices or circumstances, time kept moving us further and further from our last conversation. Time moves on. The value I place on her opinions hasn’t changed. It has taken me a lot of time to work through the feeling that I was perpetually disappointing her.

I would make a decision, think through how she would react, and way too often I would decide that she would have disagreed. At one point I made a parenting decision about my 20 year old and second guessed myself. I thought, “No, she would have handled that differently.”

Suddenly I stopped myself. How did I know this? My sister, unfortunately, never had the chance to parent any of her children past the age of 15. How was I at all qualified to be deciding how she would make parenting decisions about a 20 year old? The answer, which took me so long to decide, came to me in a moment of anger. Frustrated with “her” and my surmising of “her opinions” of me, I found myself muttering to myself. “Ugh! You just can’t made dead people happy!”

I started repeating that to myself. “You can’t make dead people happy.”

It started to become my mantra, and my philosophy about how to process those feelings of endless wondering what my loved ones would think of me if they there still living. I mention my sister here because I was always seeking her input, but I have also spent a lot of time trying to decide what my dad would think of me as well. I want to make them happy, I want to make them proud of me. But, as dead people, they offer literally no input into my current life choices. (How rude!)

After the “you can’t made dead people happy” epiphany, I started to make up rules around the philosophy, because of course I did. I decided that it feels good when I pat myself on the back and imagine that my dad or my sister are pound of me. I don’t want to remove those feelings from my mind. However, when I imagine one or the other of them criticizing me, I now think “That’s not them. They are not judging my choices from beyond the grave.” I no longer accept criticism formulated in my own brain, as a representation of how they would have thought. I don’t think that’s fair to them (or to me).

You might ask (because I know I’ve asked myself) what about those hot-button issues they held such strong beliefs about? Can’t I at least believe that they would be critical of me for not honoring those strongly held beliefs? The answer, I’ve decided, is no. Accepting that they would be critical of me based on a strongly held belief they had 11 or 14 years ago, requires believing that if they were still alive, they would not have changed or evolved at all in the ensuing years. In which direction would they evolve? I have no idea. But I know they both were very intelligent people who would learn new information or have new experiences, and change their opinions as they deemed necessary based on that new knowledge.

I can’t, in good conscience, decide what they would think. And I most certainly cannot decide that they would be critical of me, one of the people they both loved most in the world.

So, to boil it down: I don’t care if this makes sense or not, but I decide on a regular basis that my sister and my dad are proud of me. I have also decided that any criticism I feel could be coming from them is not valid. I’m not qualified to speak for her or him. I also regularly remind myself of this philosophy by using the phrase, “You can’t make dead people happy!”

If I have gotten this all wrong, and I am able to see them again someday, I will accept any and all of their criticism at that time, all at once. But for now, I only accept loving support from “them”.

P.S. They both absolutely love this blog post!

Tales From The Cemetery

(A Feel-Good Story, I Promise!)

For three years now I’ve gone running at the local cemetery. It started when my gym shut down because of Covid, and I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. I’m so glad I chose to run at the cemetery. There are lessons of love, kindness, respect, dedication, and friendship around every corner.

Every morning between 8 and 9, Ed pulls up in his big, black SUV and carefully unloads a folding chair from the back. He checks the condition of the grass around his wife’s grave, and if it looks a little dry, he pulls a gallon jug from his truck and waters it. The date on the headstone indicates she has been gone since 2017. I watch as he adjusts his “Vietnam Veteran” baseball cap, lights a cigarette, and sits down. I can see his lips moving, I know he’s talking to her, but I’m too far away to hear. Besides, this is a private conversation between a husband and his obviously much-loved wife. His friend, Albert almost always joins him after visiting his own wife. Albert brings his own chair and his own cigarettes. When I run by, they yell “Good job, Andie! You’re going pretty fast today!”

Side note: I am never going fast.

Bill drives into work and backs his car into his spot. He goes into the building, but only for a minute. He comes back out and begins his morning inspection. He cross-crosses through the roads, picking up a discarded candy wrapper, or an empty bottle. He wipes some debris from the top of a pink marble tombstone. He smiles and waves at me as I run by. He walks quickly, and with purpose. Finally his walk brings him to the giant statue of Jesus. He stops, genuflects, and I can see his lips moving in prayer. I imagine he’s praying for not only the hundreds of graves he’s tasked with keeping watch over, but for all of their loved ones.

“Frozen Lemonade Guy” is what I call him in my head. His car is always parked at an angle in a no-parking zone. As he exits his vehicle to go walking, he sets (what looks like) a bottle of frozen lemonade on the hood of his car. We wave at each other. I’m running, he’s power walking. One day he motions for me to take out my headphones, so I do.

“I have seen you running here all summer.” Frozen Lemonade Guy says, “And I really hope you’re proud of yourself because you should be! You’re doing great!”

At first, I’m too stunned to speak, but I quickly yell, “Thank you!” as I continue my run, now with a huge grin.

I have it in my head one particular morning that I’m going to run more miles than I ever have before. I want to run at least 5, but once I get into it, I’m excited. I get to five, then five and a half. I can do more. Six miles! Six and a half miles! Okay my legs feel like rubber, so at the seven mile mark I allow myself to stop, arms raised in victory. I’m so proud of myself. I decide I need to celebrate this occasion, so I walk to the group of men digging in the flower beds. (They dig graves too, but not on this day).

“You guys!” I yell, “I just ran 7 miles! That’s the most miles I’ve ever run at one time!”

Every one of them drops or throws his shovel. They stand up. The tallest guy removes his gloves.

They clap! They cheer! They whistle! They yell, “You’re amazing! That’s awesome! Good job, girl!”

Oh, my heart.

What is it about the people I see at the cemetery? It’s a sacred place, of course. But it’s more than that. I think the people who gravitate towards the cemetery have a deeper understanding of that thin line between above the grass and below the grass. I think they treasure life just a little more. I think they smile a little bit bigger, and let their worries affect them a bit less.

When I started running at the cemetery during the Covid lockdown, my mind was swirling with worries and fears. The more I showed up, though, the more I felt I could hear the voices of all those people buried below the tombstones reading death dates like “Died July 2, 1973”. I could hear them saying “Honey, you are living through a rough time. We did too. You will be okay. Just keep running.”

And I have.

October

It’s October again. My old friend(?) Grief has come back for a visit. Grief shows up with a box of memories, and plays them to me like videos to remind me of her laugh, her bossiness, her toughness, even her illness, even her pain. Grief asks “Shall I show you more?”

And the technicolor movies stab me and gut punch the air out of me, so I want to say no. I want to squeeze my eyes shut, hide under the covers, and ignore his very presence (because, honestly, how dare he show up like this again?) But the videos are HER, so instead I say “Yes! Show me each one! Every single video! Play them in slow motion! Play them in double time! Play each one so I can see each detail! Then play them again!”

Some of the videos make my chest ache. Some of them make me snort-laugh. Some make me feel like SHE is right here, so close, just BEYOND. If I could reach through the screen she would punch my arm for being in her space.

Sister, it’s October again. Grief is here. He has brought the box full of memories with him again. And as he approaches, I perk up, because he has brought YOU with him,

Thank God.

Defiant and Unruly

Today when we arrived to see the George Floyd memorial, my 11 year old son emerged from the car wearing no shoes.

“Put your shoes on,” I said.

I was annoyed as my unruly and defiant child looked me square in the face, determined set to his jaw, and said, “No!”

I sighed. I knew this was a moment in which I could choose to battle, or choose my own sanity.

“Fine, it’s your feet that could step on something sharp, not mine,” I warned.

At the memorial, we walked around slowly, trying to wrap our minds around what we were seeing. My son was quiet as I pointed out some of the people depicted on signs in a circle in the middle of an intersection, blocked off from traffic.

“There’s Amanda Gorman, you saw her on TV. She’s a poet. There’s Martin Luther King, Jr. That’s Ahmaud Arbery, I did a memorial run for him, remember?”

He stopped and pulled a penny from his pocket with sticky fingers.

“I want to leave this here, but first we should say a prayer.” he said.

We held the penny together.

“Dear God, Please comfort George’s family and friends, and the friends and families of all these people. Please bring racial equality to our country, please let us love each other…” we stumbled through the prayer.

He placed the penny on the cinder block near the picture of Ahmaud Arbery.

When we reached the George Floyd mural he stood and stared at it for a long time. As I watched him, I added more to my prayer:

Dear God, let the defiant and unruly children grow to be defiant and unruly adults who, upon seeing racial injustice, look it square in the face with a determined set to their jaw, and say “NO!”

A Lesson I Have To Keep Learning

I took the month of July off from running, and exercise of any kind. I had a lot going on so I focused on other things. Instead of running, I trained for the Olympic Junk-Food Eating Team and spent way too much time on the couch.

I should know myself better than this by now. When I started to feel anxious, short-tempered, fearful about…lots of things, I just thought “Well, it’s to be expected, it’s been a very stressful month.” And it definitely has been a stressful month, BUT, for me, my mental health suffers when I’m not getting regular physical activity. I can feel myself spiraling down into anxiousness, crankiness, even sadness.

I admitted my husband a few days ago that every morning now I was waking up in a panic. The panic was about something different each day, and they were all situations I would normally be able to break down into steps and work through. Each everyday obstacle felt BIG and SCARY. It was even to the point that I was anxious and fearful about returning to running itself. I was thinking “What if I can’t run? What if it feels awful? What if I’m just not a person who can do that anymore?” I had to really force myself to try it with the promise that I could go as slow as I needed to and I would only run one mile.

It took until only about 3 minutes into my first return to running this morning that I started to remember why I go running in the first place. My mind started to clear. I could have actual thoughts beyond my carefully maintained lists of What I’m Worried About Today. I relaxed, looked around, enjoyed my music, and I ran 3 miles.

I know myself. I know that my body and mind cannot function as well when I’m not being physically active. So I’m writing this to remind myself that if I think taking an extended break from working out is not going to be some kind of fun and relaxing “vacation”. It will feel that way at first, but it comes at a high price to my mental health.

I just simply have to keep listening to what my body needs and taking care of it.

Tell me in the comments if there is a lesson you have to just keep relearning because you stubbornly refuse to believe it the first 765 times you’ve learned it!

A Gift

I have an Instagram account, and a Facebook account, and, man, I really love social media. I think it’s the “look at me! look at me!” youngest child syndrome. I’m an extrovert who is EXTRA (according to my nephew). I generally post positive things, like beautiful things I see in nature, and smiling selfies: lots and lots of smiling selfies.

In fact, I post so many smiling selfies and so much positivity, I tend to get accused of being “Miss Super Happy Positive”. That’s not the worst thing someone could call me, but I also think it’s funny. I think the image I project makes it appear as if I have no bad days, and no hurdles to overcome.

I received a call this afternoon from a friend. Her brother is dying. Or maybe he’s not. He’s in the tenuous in-between. I get calls like this sometimes. I have people around me who know that I am going to understand their grief and suffering and I can talk to them about it. As I told her this afternoon, “Thank you for letting me use this weird little bit of expertise I have for the good of someone else.”

I know and understand. I have lost a sibling. I have lost a parent. I have watched two of the people I love most in this world suffer, struggle, fade away, and die. There was nothing I could do. It was beyond my control. These experiences, and the aftermath, are what gives me this “weird little bit of expertise” in these matters. I will always take these calls, and I will always feel honored that someone felt like reaching out to me in some of their most painful and difficult moments.

So why all the smiling selfies? Why so much sunshine and rainbows?

It’s because I remember so clearly how things were back then. I remember the day-to-day difficulty of watching my dad’s condition deteriorate. I remember the daily calls from my sister, in which the physical and emotional pain she was enduring came straight through the phone and cut into my heart. I remember thinking at the time how blissful it would be to have a day that was ordinary. I sometimes daydreamed about an average day in which everyone I loved was pain-free and happy.

I now have the luxury of living the kinds of days I was dreaming about. I have some loved ones facing difficult situations, but I believe they will be okay. We are not in the emergency zone. However, the nature of this life is that nothing is certain and nothing stays the same. It might sound very dark, but those days will come again. The days of hospital visits, pain medications, and making decisions about someone else’s life. It is very likely these scenarios are part of my future in some form.

When I’m in the midst of pouring everything I have into helping my loved one through a difficult health crisis, and things seem so sad and bleak, I want to remember the time I’m living in now and know that I appreciated the gift of the ordinary days. I want to remember that if I’m extremely fortunate, I’ll have days like that again.

These ordinary days are a gift. And that makes me smile*

*(and then take a smiling selfie, and then post it on social media)

The Post About The Quarantine

I have hesitated to write about the quarantine because probably everyone on earth is writing about it right now. How could I possibly have anything unique to say on the subject? We are at home. All the time. I’m homeschooling our kids. My husband now works from our house in an office he occasionally shares with said homeschooling kids. We are trying to: be helpful to others, keep from getting on each other’s nerves (if possible), and WASH OUR HANDS! The days are strange. We don’t know when or how this situation will resolve, we just have faith that it will.

But the thought that keeps returning to me over and over is this:

The grief of losing my sister has given me some tools to deal with this situation. Here are the parallels as I see them:

TIME

“It’s going to take time.” This is something I was told over and over when I lost my sister. People told me to not rush, grief takes time. I read countless books trying to figure out, “How much time? When will this end?” The truth is, there are far-reaching consequences to loss, just as there will be far-reaching consequences to this quarantine. Don’t worry, I don’t mean this as a doomsday prediction. I mean there will be both good and bad consequences, and we can’t see from where we are now what they will be. After much time, counseling, and soul searching, I have started to find peace with the not-knowing. I have learned, just a little, how to sit back and know that I just don’t know how things will go, or how long it will take to get to “normal”.

CONTROL

Many people who have lost someone they are close to will feel a tremendous loss of control. I remember telling a friend not too long after my sister died, “You know, we really aren’t in control of our lives. We just think we are.” This really upset her, and she started explaining all the ways in which she was in control of her life. I know what she meant, the choices we make lead to consequences in our lives, both good and bad. But what I meant was that in an instant, everything we know to be normal in our lives can change. That is a very hard idea to accept, but this quarantine has shown this to be true. My “normal” life consists of going to the gym, sending my kids off to school, having my husband drive off to work every morning, spending time with my friends, and occasionally catching a movie with my husband on a Saturday night. None of these things are part of my life right now. It helps me just a little to know that I have felt this complete loss of control before, and I came back from it. We all will come back from this.

ROLLER COASTER

There is a phenomenon in the grief process that a friend of mine who has lost a child, and I, talk about frequently. It is the roller coaster of emotions. I have noticed people on social media talking about having a “really bad day for no reason” or losing their temper one day, followed by being happy, joyful, and grateful the next. People who have experienced the grief process know these feelings very well. The roller coaster of emotions is just how things are when you lose a loved one. The people who have grieved and have identified this roller coaster as just part of life, have an advantage during the quarantine, because they have learned to identify the roller coaster feelings, and understand that one just needs to ride out the emotions to make it through. In other words, if you have a horrible day, that’s okay, tomorrow will be better. If you have a wonderful day, don’t think you’re going looney because you are having such ups and downs. Your emotions are okay. Give yourself a break and feel them, drink a glass of ice water, maybe take a nap, and keep going. (At this point I should mention that I have absolutely no training whatsoever in psychology, grief counseling, or medicine of any kind, I’m just someone who has been through grief.)

RESILIENCE

Moving through the grief process, just like moving through this quarantine, takes resilience. I’m seeing examples of human resilience everywhere I look right now. There are parents homeschooling their kids who have never done that before. There are people making face masks for friends, family, and even health care workers who never would have thought to do such a thing. There are elderly people (and not so elderly, like me!) who are learning how to use video conferencing apps like Zoom. We humans are amazing, and we are made to solve problems. Just like the widow who learns to take on a new task that previously her husband would always do, or a family who has lost a child finds a creative way to keep their memory alive, people in this quarantine are being remarkably resilient. People are brave, inventive, and creative when put into a position that requires them to be!

FAITH

And finally, there is faith. The pastor of my church recently shared with us that in an average Lenten season, the Maundy Thursday service at our church would have an attendance of maybe 50 people. This year the Maundy Thursday service she prepared and shared on youtube has well over 200 views. If you are feeling like you need to reach out to God right now and pray, because you just haven’t felt this much fear, uncertainty, and loss of control before, I would encourage you to do so. Part of my faith journey is that when I felt I had exhausted every other possibility of being able to save my sister, I turned to God. I went to church. I started praying. I know this isn’t how people are “supposed” to find their way to God, but it’s how I did. You might wonder how I can feel such faith in God when I went straight to Him to heal my sister, and He didn’t. All I can tell you is that I lost my sister, but I have made it through because He was with me. I have complete faith that we will make it through this trial, because He is with us.

Now, go ahead and binge watch some Netflix, cuddle up to that kid of yours who is always so busy with afterschool activities, or love on your dog (who, by the way, can’t believe their good luck that their people are around ALL THE TIME!) and know this for certain: we will make it!

Peace!

It’s A Day I Think About A Lot

“Can you pick up the girls from school? I just don’t think I have the strength to do it.”

My sister’s voice sounded a little shaky and I reassured her that I would be happy to do that. I asked for her to explain the pick-up procedures at her girls’ elementary school, because all the schools seem to have slightly different rules. I spoke cheerfully, but inside I was quietly devastated. I didn’t want to think too hard about what it meant that we were to a point in her illness that she no longer had the strength to drive the two miles to her kids’ school to pick them up.

Her health had been declining for a couple of years, but she had always been able to do what needed to be done to take care of her kids. Now, things were changing.

I was shaking as I drove to the school, holding back tears. I thought the least I could do is put on a smile and greet her girls happily as they came out of the school. They weren’t expecting me, and I was worried that when they saw I was there to pick them up, it would also occur to them that we were at a new low in their mom’s illness. The last thing I wanted to do was make this any harder on them than it already was.

“Stop overthinking everything,” I scolded myself as I made my way into the long line of cars waiting for school pick up. But still I held back tears.

I was confused about what was happening in the pick up line. My sister had explained that I should stay in the car line, and the girls will wait by the front of the school, and when my car got right in front, they would see me and get in my van. But it wasn’t working that way. A few people had stopped and gotten out of their cars to go get their kids and bring them to their cars, parked in the pick up line. I wasn’t sure what to do.

Then I saw the girls, looking in the opposite direction from where I was. I was afraid they wouldn’t see me, so I did what I had seen others do. I parked and walked up to them.

“Hey girls!” I called

“What’s going on?” the older one asked when she saw me, “Why isn’t mom picking us up?”

It was the question I was hoping they wouldn’t ask.

As we walked back to my parked van, I calmly explained that I came to pick them up because their mom just wasn’t feeling well enough to do it. I could see it register on their faces that this was new and scary.

Just as we reached the van, the woman from the car behind me in the line got out of her car and approached me.

“Oh my God! You are being a complete idiot! Do you not have any understanding of how the pick up line works? We have been in school for MONTHS! GOD! You don’t PARK in the pick up line!”

I told the girls to get in the car.

I turned to the woman, “No, I don’t know how this pick up line works, this is my first time here picking up my nieces.”

“Well, for starters you are supposed to drive all the way to the front and you don’t PARK and GET OUT OF YOUR CAR!”

She wouldn’t stop. I felt too devastated to respond. I got in the car, and drove the girls home. I drove them back to their house where their sick mom lay in bed. I drove them back to the place where they knew, and I knew, that their mom was dying.

I have thought of this story hundreds, possibly thousands of times. When someone in public does something frustrating, or isn’t following the rules, or acts rudely, I think about this experience.

I try with everything I have to be kind anyway. This woman didn’t know my story. She didn’t know I was using every single bit of strength to make it through this conversation with my nieces. She didn’t know I was staring the hard realities of losing my sister right in the face at that moment. If she knew, I hope she would have been more kind. I don’t believe every person I encounter in public is in the middle of dealing with some extremely hard realities.

But what if they are?

A Story About Some Rum, Chocolate, and Cold Medicine

Yesterday I went to the grocery store to do my weekly procurement of $500,000 worth of groceries. 75% of the kids who live in this house are now the size of adults, but they are also more hungry than regular adults. Therefore, to say they eat a lot of food is not just an understatement, it is laughable in how much it downplays our situation.

To continue my story, I will also note that because of my large, gigantic, freakishly huge grocery order, I feel tremendous amounts of sympathy for the person who gets stuck behind me in the check-out lane. So, yesterday I was way more concerned with the person behind me in line than the person ahead of me, but she is important to our tale.

There was no bagger on duty when I approached the cash register. This was a relief to me for two reasons:

1. I actually prefer to bag my own groceries, but I’m not assertive enough to tell the bagger this, and

2. There’s one old mean bagger there who I try to avoid because he always gives me a lecture about buying too many groceries (believe me, I wish I could buy way less too! I promise I don’t do it just to annoy you!)

So I happily started to bag my own groceries. There were two bagging stations. I was using the one on the right, when a bagger (not the mean one) approached and took over. His body language alerted me to the fact that he wanted me to get out of his way so he could get to work, so I moved.

After the groceries were all bagged, and I loaded them all into my car, and I drove home, and I unloaded them all from my car (whew!) I opened the bag containing three boxes of granola bars. But, alas, WITH the granola bars were: a sizeable bottle of rum, a good quality dark chocolate bar, and a box of cold medicine. The problem? These were not my items. I immediately told my two kids who were helping me, “These are not mine!! Where did these come from?”

My middle son proclaimed “I bet you won some sort of contest and they snuck this stuff into your groceries as the prize!”

Hmmm. Cold medicine? Rum? And a chocolate bar?

And so began our family deliberations about what I should do. I asked the kids, “What should we do? I didn’t pay for these things?” I texted my husband, “What should I do?” I texted a friend, “What should I do?”

To be honest, I was tired, the grocery store is a 15 minute drive away, and I just wanted everyone to say, “Just keep it. It was the store’s mistake, nobody will know.” I had already pictured myself eating the chocolate bar.

But I couldn’t bring myself to put away the items, so I left them sitting on the counter. Images of the woman who was in line in front of me started to creep into my brain. She had seemed frazzled and stressed. My friend texted, “Return the items or pay for them.”

I had a meeting to go to and I hadn’t decided what to do, so I bagged up the items and put them in my car. Throughout the meeting the image of the woman ahead of me in line kept flashing in my brain, so on the way home I made a side trip back to the grocery store.

When I approached Customer Service a young guy asked if he could help me.

“Here’s a weird one for you!” I proclaimed, as I began placing the items on the counter in front of him, “I got these by mistake, and…”

“Oh My God!” He said, “She JUST called us! She was frantically looking for these things and we told her there was nothing we could do for her unless someone brought them back! She was so upset because the rum was a Christmas present for someone! We can call her right now and tell her she can come pick it up! Thank you SO MUCH for returning this stuff!”

I’m not perfect, I wrestle with doing the right thing fairly often. But the feeling I had when they told me they were about to call her and tell her she could pick up her missing items is something I need to remember. I had been annoyed that it was a (very small) inconvenience to ME to do the right thing, but the reward I got by doing it was so worth it.

Merry Christmas, Frazzled-Lady-Ahead-Of-Me-In-Line-Yesterday! I hope you feel just a tiny bit cared-for and maybe a tiny bit less frazzled this holiday season!

Signed,

The Also-Frazzled Lady Behind You With The $500,000 Worth Of Groceries