I spotted my dad in the produce aisle. The first thing I saw were the arms with their paper-thin skin. A fragility I knew so well, that I’d learned how to bandage with non-stick gauze and wrap rather than apply anything sticky, which would pull ugly at that cutaneous covering. The landscape leading to the hands that had held scraps of collage paper, books, golf clubs, martinis, me. But this particular pair of arms were resting on a shopping cart. And I was there. Or rather another woman was there who said, not unkindly but maybe a little impatiently, “dad, I bought one of those last week” as she walked back to him. I watched them move slowly into the dairy section and I didn’t altogether know what to do with myself. That I turned to face a mountain of grapes just brought the flush and sting, ache and awareness of my missing him on more solidly. My dad loved grapes and even when he wasn’t eating much, he would eat those.

They catch you off guard, these moments. This is clearly no surprise given right now I imagine a large amount of you readers out there are nodding your head in recognition. But even given that, it’s still so individual. Imagining the amount of folx walking through waves and puddles of memories, navigating various sites, smells, sounds that are splashing up sensations around a person no longer on this planet makes me think we’ve all gotta be a lot kinder to strangers who may appear frozen in place causing pedestrian traffic jams as they swim through a memory moment.

It’s wild. I have to remind myself to stay in it, stand in the Barnes & Noble where we went before Christmas and I first realized bookstores were, for the first time in his life, overwhelming, confusing. Michael’s Art Supply, where we went after his birthday in January and it became clear he just wanted to be in the store even though he wasn’t really creating collages anymore and couldn’t think of anything he wanted to buy. These were turning points. The juncture of where were were headed. Now, as a solo adventurist, I step inside those places and try to just stand. (Try is the operative word here. For anyone at Michael’s last Tuesday afternoon, you might have wondered why the lady with the blue hair made it only as far as the second set of double doors, then turned and walked quickly out. Apologies to the lady trying to maneuver the shopping cart around me that I bumped into.)

I had lunch with a friend last week and he asked me whether my dad had visited me in a dream yet? The operative word there was yet. No, I answered. Not yet. And then, as if all that needed to happen was an invitation, that night there he was. He wanted Italian food so he, Dennis, and I went to a place with a bar and sat at a high, round table, my dad and I on one side, Dennis across. My dad then turned to me and told me to order a lemon drop. Then we were on a roof trying to watch a movie, which was down in a parking lot so we couldn’t see it and when he stepped beside me toward the edge, I put out my arm to make sure he wouldn’t fall over the side. The caretaker in me still in full effect. The next morning, I looked up Lemon Drop + cocktail and saw that it’s a type of martini. Well sure, of course it is. The man whose ritual for near-on seven decades was a nightly martini would suggest that, wouldn’t he? Although my dad was a traditionalist whose fanciest addition to the classic vodka, vermouth combo would have extended only to how many olives to add. So further pondering on the sweetness of his suggestion will come. Or I’ll just order one and toast him.

So each day has become an open invitation to memories with anticipated apologies to anyone I may trip over on my way in, out, or over the places where emotional quicksand may pull me under too quickly. Learning how to walk on the surface, dip my toe in, float rather than flee. Stay. Put. Hold. Please.