an encounter

She's there behind me and I take a breath before turning around. With the force of a few simple words and the insistence in her voice she has already barged right into my comfort zone. As I turn around she plows forward, oblivious to space allotted to me in our retail relationship.

I need a box for my stockings. My husband died and now I have this ...closet. She holds the words out at arms length, placing them between us as if she only wants to watch the interaction. She turns to look at me, challenging me to offer my condolences. But that's not my forte. People do not go shopping for sympathy, they come for the escape. I have no experience here and in the absence of my response she charges on to fill the space, explaining how her friends disapprove of her new closet. She likes to see all her items; they say it's too messy. I wonder what business they have in there at all. We parade around, looking at everything but making no decisions and her boldness is exhausting me.

I learn of the holiday party she is having catered in lieu of a funeral. He loved Christmas and he never got to have one in this house. She casts out clues with every breath, but she never explains and I can tell the words aren't meant for me. I watch her intently as she spouts off words in my direction, and when I follow her eyes I realize he is there in the distance, looking right back at her. Each sentence ends with a lurch as she pulls herself back and we each try to regain our balance in the silence.

In these moments I realize this is not her. She is not distant and cold, not used to not having the answers, to wandering directionless, to be trapped in indecision. This persona is her coping, like one who finds herself faced with a road paved in coals. Overwhelmed, she forces her feet to move, taking each step because it is the only way forward. Her words are her affirmations, the ones she grabs onto to pull herself across the void, to keep the momentum going for fear that a second's pause will cause her to lose her way.

In the end, the woman heads back to the box that she initially liked, the one that her friends will disapprove of, but in buying it she is regaining her self. She thanks me for my help and I wish her a beautiful party, but my words are flat and I doubt they convey the strength of my intent. And with that, the whirlwind is gone and I am left in its wake, trying once again to catch my footing on this unsteady ground.