“Never underestimate the kindness of strangers, though sometimes overwhelming,” her grandma used to say while holding her small hand as they walked across the church parking lot every Sunday. And only on Sundays. She also said to look for laughter in awkward places.
It wasn’t until years later she understood why it was only in the church parking lots after they’d dropped off baked goods the church would sell to raise money for the hungry, and even longer to attach the awkward of baking food to sell to raise money to buy food for hungry people. As if bound by duty, her grandmother spent every Saturday afternoon curating fresh ingredients from local farmers to bake cakes, pies, and cookies then give to someone else who would sell them to another someone to raise money to give to someone who felt the pains of hunger. And every Sunday, she’d shake her head with a respectful, quiet chuckle as she walked across the church parking lot with a list of baked goods to bring the following week.
She walked past the line of patrons waiting in line at the Post Office to the hot desert air, hands shaking and chin trembling, her grandmother’s words repeated in her head. When a stranger gets what we’re going through as those we love do not or refuse to acknowledge the control they carry and the power it’s taken from us, it heightens our feelings of loss even more. Grandma didn’t prepare her for love’s disappointment on the 33rd parallel.
Grandma never prepared her for cleaning out the refrigerator of rotting leftovers after an abrupt runaway-like departure. She never expressed the depths of hurt while sorting through a pantry of foods she won’t eat herself left behind without thought or care for who may have to remove them one day. Grandma never explained the profound loss she might feel one day overcome with rejection and deception and no explanation. She never imagined just how heavy emptiness would weigh and the number of tasks that would mount as a result of being left alone without the gift of time.
Grandma never talked about the mail or the kindness of strangers and the ability to almost laugh at a most awkward moment with the stranger over the mail. At first, the mail didn’t bother her. Love is love, and when one loves, mail is just mail. When love failed, mail became her monster. A name staring her down from the mail holder on the counter, then overflowing, falling and spilling out with love’s name tossed in her face each morning over coffee and each evening. No different than the rivers of color selectively customized into their kitchen counters, the mail, the leftovers, the food she’d never eat, the rivers of blue, the mail… all mocking the life she built filled with hope and love shattered in one conversation where nothing was said. The earth quaked on the 33rd parallel splitting the river of blue, causing bleeding hearts and lungs crying for air. Huge stacks of mail grew day after day, cascaded week after week, the stack pulled her down month after month, accumulating on her kitchen counter. A reminder of time passed, love lost, and responsibilities forgotten.
The stranger behind the counter at the post office seemed to understand more about love and the enormous weight love’s loss carried on her. She walked in two days after she decided to protect her space, uncover the rivers again, bleed through her last breath and listen to the masses who advised everything she didn’t want to do. She walked into the Post Office, two grocery bags in hand. One not quite full with mail from the family before her. A running joke for five years wondering why the walls of her home still claimed its previous owners. Annoying but simple resolve. Christmas cards from New York. Statements. Junk. Mattered no more, she turned the small bag over to the bearded man with a simple story of owning the home, and therefore the address, for long enough that Christmas cards for the previous owners should no longer appear, but since they do, pass them back to New York and beyond, please.
With a chuckle, he took the bag and made a note before looking at the second bag. Another day or two of collected mail would have meant another grocery bag.
“That’s quite a bit of mail you have there,” the bearded man said as she placed the second bag on the counter.
Her hands shook. Her voice cracked. “This mail belongs to my partner… she left. I’m not entirely sure where she is now, but…” Her chin quivered. The bag on the counter, her hand on the bag. Once he took it from her, it would be another connection severed. Lost. Just as love left the house, her mail no longer belonged.
“Okay. We’ll get this bag shredded for you.” He didn’t miss a beat.
Her eyes widened as her finger curled around the plastic bag again. The bag with birthday cards from her family, left unclaimed, checks, statements, marketing materials… it was almost as if her life, the things that should have mattered, like old food left to rot, well wishes for a wonderful year to come and congratulations for surviving the last year from those who love her, were simply lost too.
Gripping the bag, she was still protecting love. The same love that let food rot, love die, deception seep in, and someone else fill the trusted, beloved spaces of vulnerability she still protected after love stopped protecting her. She could have taken the bag back home and let it all continue to accumulate. Everyone told her two weeks before to start sending it back. Everyone who loved and supported exactly where she was didn’t understand just how natural it was to keep protecting, keep loving, keep keeping her mail, her food, her clothes that hung in the closet they’d shared while the ones she wore quite possibly pooled on the floor next to another woman’s bed. She still protected love. And it hurt worse than protecting herself. She loosened her grip.
He recovered quickly from the joke she almost missed, lost in mixed emotion. He handed her a form and took the names of any mail that may come in her name. Then he said with an understanding she’d gotten from everyone except the one person she yearned to receive, “I will give this bag to the carrier now, and though it may take a day or two, you don’t need to see this mail coming to your house anymore if your partner just left you. I’m sorry.”
She filled out the form claiming the space inside her mailbox as hers alone and walked away in tears.
How could he understand? Without many words, without explanation, just one simple sentence, a quivering chin, broken voice, and watering eyes… how could he understand when love doesn’t seem to care?
She was not chosen. Not anymore. Broken on the 33rd parallel, she was no longer chosen. Without pause, without a doubt, in a heartbeat, she was no longer chosen. Love stopped choosing her. Love left everything in place and rebuilt a life elsewhere without regard to the dismantling inside the refrigerator, the pantry, the closet, the rooms, the heart, the lives of those who love her most… the mail, the most motherfuckingest shit she’d ever seen… the mail piling up as if love would come home. The stranger got it, how she needed to protect her personal and private spaces, but love, now the loudest quiet her home had ever heard, deafening on the 33rd parallel.
A holiday arrives soon. There will be no mail. She sighed at the grace and inhaled a sob, reflecting on the paradox of her own empowerment and vulnerability.
Click here for Part 1 of this story.
~Stella Samuel~