Going up and down the aisles in the
grocery store yesterday, I thought of what
you might like for dinner, if you were still here with me.

Then, I saw your favorite breakfast bars, there on the
shelf: that undid me. Agony is so unseemly in the
grocery store, isn’t it, Honey? It was good I mostly held back the
tears, I think, despite the
bereavement literature saying “cry when you must, in
public or in private.” When I came home, I imagined a

voice over the grocery store intercom booming out:
“an old lady in aisle 3 is making a spectacle of herself,
sobbing, someone help her out of the store.”

You would have been so embarrassed, your wife
weeping in public. Despite that, you would have come,
alive again, brave as always, to take me
home when they called on
you to
rescue me.

I know that for sure.

— Katie Lashbrook lives in Lawrence.