Year III: Of loss and Pain

You probably know this about american store chains and franchises. They all look the same. Thanks to Macdonald’s legacy and the dynasty he created with Walt Disney, [and then a system with which the affairs of selling and buying are to be conducted in the rest of the world], thanks to them you shall not be “wanting” for anything [with money in the bank and the uncanny ability to find a place to park when the going gets tough] by moving from one part of the country to the other. [Except maybe an authentic mexican cuisine the further south of the border you drove; then again you can miss out on worse things than mere heart-burn]. They look the same, they feel the same, they are even situated in the same kind of neighbourhood. They own the same type of buildings, with the same setups, the same cafes and the same disabled Greeter ready to check your receipt on your way out.

They are the same, that is, except when they aren’t. Or.. when you aren’t, to be exact. Except when you walk down a Walmart isle, for example, and grabbed something off a section marked “sale” (with $4 following it, most probablly), and having made your way to the middle of the store, as you should, tried it and decided to buy it. You wait in line, barely escaping being hit by a cart wheeled by a 4 year old who just mastered the art of walking, then refused to give up learning how to drive [drive his mom crazy, she’d tell you!] with cries and screams of protest [proving your point for you that when it comes to putting kids where they belong, nothing beats the power of the rod]. You stand back politely, smiling at the long-suffering mother and whoever caught your eyes, remembering the movie “10 items or less” and/or Morgan Freeman and his voice, wondering if it was too late to switch lanes/or if making a dash for the next one was worth the attention it would draw; when a cashier (that reminds you of some other “eshee beGide” cashier.. from some other time) greets you jovially and asks how we are today. You give the tailored answer, digging into your purse for the plastic bearing your name (and whatever you own with whoever you are dealing with), you swipe and you walk out .. trying to balance yourself between the purse on your shoulder, and the shopping bag in your hand, your heart cozy in the knowledge that nothing has changed, that everything is the way it used to be (should be), having slipped, as it were, into another era.. another day.. like a feet does in one of those senselessly disturbing dreams.. when something shocks you back into reality, into “now”, the present day, and you realize that this wasn’t the Walmart/5th Avenue you went to that first time he decided to take you there, and paid for your first pair of jeans [and made the lady behind the counter laugh, in his insistence that you try another one, and then another one; running between isles of clothes, like a kid in a candy store, picking for you all the things he thought you needed.. bras, lingerie, sandals, shorts, bracelets; having forgotten in his excitement, it seems (in the knowledge that here was a time you are entirely dependent on his knowledge/experience/money), that you can’t tell from a lingerie, that you are too self-concious to sport a short just yet and that bracelets were much cheaper and more exotic from back home]. That this Walmart was smaller, more close to the clouds, and their muggy heat, that it has that restaurant missing across it’s street, a parking lot which looks less populated by that brand of tree Walmarts have, metrons who are less than friendly, less smiling, less rejoicing at the blissfulness of your love. That this wasn’t the Walmart you went with him that first time, that first day, in that first city; in those days when he still came home for lunch, just to see you. In which he called every half an hour to ask “so… whachu doin?”. In which he, and not yourself (infront of the full-length mirror in the rest room of where you work), took endless pictures of you looking up and looking down. Until he stepped out of your love, like a wet cloth, and walked out; never to return [the way he was].

“You shall know our velocity!”, Dave Eggers’ second book [he is the enigmatic writer about whose “What is the What” I made this post few years back] has the following three pages that describe .. ever so perfectly.. the bewilderment and pain of a person left behind; the survivor, so to say, of a death (or it’s ugly little cousins), a break up, a separation, a divorce. This is for all of you who have to live, survive & hope to stive, with a hole in your heart. And realities you get yanked out of every.minute.of.every.day.

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