Too Much

It’s the old man at the deli counter that gets me. I’m waiting in line today, the kids behind me clamoring for donuts and cheese slices, and I happen to glance in his direction. He has been waiting quietly, head down, feet shuffling. My eyes take it all in with a glance, and I can’t help but stare at the brown dress shoes. Worn with work-out pants that zip at the ankles, it makes a strange sight. And I wonder who is not there to help him dress.

He is eyeing the containers for the take out foods, and even now I choke up as I recall. He just looks lost, his eyes like my son gets when he loses sight of me in a crowded room.

“May I help you?” the clerk finally comes to take his order.

“I’ll have a small tub of….of Grandma’s Potato Salad.” The words a bit halting, and his eyes still kiss the floor.

“May I help you, ma’am?” another clerk calls impatiently to me, and it is obvious that I had missed the first request.

“Ham, the one on sale. I’ll have a pound please.” But my eyes are drawn back to the man at the end of the deli as he shuffles away with his small tub of potato salad and mini-loaf of Italian.

I choke up as he passes by my mounded cart of groceries.

This has certainly been the month for grief and I to tango. In the past few weeks, two local police officers have died in the line of duty: one collapsed while running, an apparent heart attack victim on a foot chase, and the other was shot in the head several times while responding to a neighborhood dispute in a nearby town. The perpetrator was angry about a discrepancy over his fish pond, clearly a reason for snuffing out a life.

My friend’s dad died last week after a long, heroic battle with cancer. Hospice was there at the end, and the entire family was present to witness their father, business partner, and confidant breathe his last.

In Cleveland, a little girl close to my son’s age was killed by her mother; the little angel spent her last days in a motel bathtub being scalded by the mother whom Social Services had recently let back into her life.

Natural disasters fill the earth. I had barely registered the devastating earthquake in Haiti before I turned my prayers to Chile after Mother Nature detonated her latest there. Snowstorms and floods continue to wreak havoc in ravaged areas.

The world is filled with vats of grief; and surprisingly, I have no choice but to turn away. I just can’t take it all in. I simply don’t have enough emotion for it all. Perhaps it is self-preservation, a stoic wonderment, an unwillingness to rock my own world. I am content with the runny noses that never leave and the crushing snubs at recess. And the hangnails. This week I even had a bleeder.

I cannot feel everything; I am not a caustic woman, (unless you ask my students of whom I demand much) but the typical grief-worthy events do not grab me. It is only those moments, uncalculated and unexpected, that find me catching my breath and dabbing my eyes.

And so it is with the man at the deli. I have no idea of his circumstances; there is no way to tell if he is lonely or at peace. But somewhere between the zippered work-out pants over dress shoes, my heart is just a bit more broken today.