I’m not mad about it, but I’m wondering why. Why now? It’s been 18 years. She died after back surgery. The surgery itself was a success, despite the odds, but she contracted some sort of virus in the hospital during recovery. Not pneumonia, but similar. It killed her.

I was an asshole. A teenager and an asshole with absolutely zero clue how to process death. I should’ve been with my family, at her bedside, when she died. I wasn’t. I couldn’t deal. Didn’t know how. God only knows where I was. Not there, though. Not where I should’ve been. After all the years she’d nurtured me, cared for me, watched after me while my parents were working or going out. That one trip to Kmart when I asked for both the Barbie and the best friends necklace, the kind with the zigzag heart broken in two, “best” on one half, “friends” on the other. She asked me to pick one. I did, the necklace. But she bought the Barbie too.

And I wasn’t there to say goodbye. A life regret, to be sure. But I’ve known that for years. Why’s it coming up now? Why do I stare at her picture in a frame at midnight on a Sunday, tears silently and uncontrollably streaming down my face? Why do I walk into a market on Monday morning only to hear one of maybe three songs on this planet that places me back in her arms? Roaming the aisles of cereal, produce, doughnuts, fighting the sadness, wanting the song to end, wanting it to keep playing over the loudspeaker forever.

It’s hard, sometimes, to surrender to pure coincidence. To not read into the nooks and crannies of daily experience, to not be convinced that seemingly random events are actually shoulder taps, nudges, eventually shoves to get you to fucking pay attention.

Last night, my dead grandmother did not appear in my dreams. Instead, there, I went shopping. For beautiful dresses, designer dresses, expensive dresses. I tried them on, magenta, cobalt, chiffon and short. And in the seconds-long crevice nestled between sleep and wakefulness, my mind scribbled a poem:

My heart’s sweetest fragrance
is the love that echoes
each time I remember you.