The morning after my mom died, I needed toothpaste.
Even at the end of the world, you still need to brush your teeth, so I headed to the nearest pharmacy, feet heavy and chest, empty. I’d lost my heart the night before, somewhere between the hospital room bearing my mother’s lifeless form and the lonely walk to my car in the garage, paperwork crumpled in my hand. Releases. An autopsy waiver.
I still had teeth, though, and for some reason, morning came and brought with it morning breath, so I headed out to get some damn toothpaste.
Outside, the world carried on. The sun came up and the birds were singing, but my mom was dead.
There should’ve been an earthquake, right? A storm, some sort of cataclysm that sucked the world in and everything good in it and ground it to dust barely worthy of spitting back into a cold, empty galaxy. The sky shouldn’t have still been blue, the sun shouldn’t have been a pale golden yellow, and my mom shouldn’t have been dead.
But they were. And she was.
And as I floated between fluorescent aisles and offering too many varieties of toothpaste, I waited. I waited for someone to look at me, to know the devastation and ruin that the last twelve hours had wrought, because I felt it. It choked every breath in my chest, engulfed every nerve, every fibre of my body and as I was burning, I was certain everyone else was, too.
An old lady passed me and smiled. Down the aisle, two teens giggled at an assortment of products gathered under the “family planning” section. A box of toothpaste crumpled easily in my hand but no one noticed. I couldn’t breathe, but no one noticed. I was standing alone, gasping and grappling for any part of my old life before it drifted away, but there was only air. Dust, floating in the sunbeams streaming through a Walgreens window, because the damn sun was shining and it wouldn’t stop.
I paid for my dented toothpaste and the cashier thanked me for coming in. I walked across pavement that wasn’t broken to my car, and drove home on roads that were still in tact, through traffic lights that still worked.
Because the morning after my mom died, there were still pleasantries to exchange and birds to sing and toothpaste to buy.
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