What Happens At Rite Aid...

I'm convinced Rite Aids exist so single people who are never home can experience One Stop Shopping.

On any given day I'm in need of: dog food, cat food, cottage cheese, peanut butter, hairspray, nylons, an Oprah magazine and various prescriptions to keep my blood pressure normal and Basil my only child.

There's a Rite Aid directly east of my condos and I'm therefore there a lot. A 'regular' if you will and due to my habit/nature of being overly friendly, overly sociable, and an incurable chatterbox, I know roughly 99.8% of the staff on a first name basis

Sherry is a massage therapist and lives in the building behind me. Dave also works as a handyman. Natalie is undergoing a nasty divorce and Brent, who also works as a home health aid and also lives behind me, is my favorite.

You can ask Brent how his day is and he'll give you the absolute truth: It's awful. He's tired, he's owed some overtime he hasn't received and his cat lost her lunch on his patio furniture. "But hey," he always adds, "I'm just glad to be here."

And that's all you hear from Brent except, being a single person like myself, he intuited enough and maybe just worked up the nerve one evening to ask why all I ever bought were nylons, cottage cheese, bread, peanut butter, animal food, and Oprah.

"I am perpetually single," I said. "At least until I meet a man with my dog's devotion and sense of humor."

And for whatever reason, Brent offered up a personal thought. He was busy all the time, he admitted, caring for his wife.

His wife had cancer. So when he wasn't working Job Number One or Job Number Two, he was taking care of his wife.

Thinking what a beautiful example of 'in sickness and in health' he was, I was dumbfounded when he added they'd been divorced the past twelve years. But still, she was sick...

"You do what you do," he said. "I wouldn't want to not be there."

And that's Brent.

Just happy to be there, everyday.

Basil was leading me out for my walk tonight on a steady course to the dog park, when I noticed Brent en route to the garbage dumpster.

"Hey," I called out, "fancy seeing you actually not working."

"Well, it's been busy," he said, hoisting his Hefty bag into the dumpster and reaching down to pet Basil.

"How have you been?" I asked, expecting to hear the standard, "Terrible. But happy to be here."

"My wife died on Easter Sunday. We buried her Wednesday. In all that snow."

Spoken with so much heartbreak, as if she could feel the cold (I choose to believe not.)

"Brent, I'm so sorry --" Mark that as yet another occasion the English language disappointed me because its words are puny and ineffectual. I said the same to Holly when her husband died, mentally kicking myself to the curb for having no better words. In the end I hugged her and said everything. The English language may consider itself redeemed if it ever finds words for a hug but until then remains in the doghouse for being ineffectual.

He shrugged. "I was sitting in the recliner and thought, 'gosh, she's awfully quiet,' and reached over, and she was gone. "

He was sitting on the curb now and Basil, dog park temporarily forgotten, loomed in for a pet and a lean against his legs.

"I don't know...what to do without her," he said, scratching Basil's ears. "You get used to that voice every day..."

"Brent, she's in a better place. " Spoken from the heart but still very, very peeved at the English language.

"She made the best fried chicken," he said. "I have the recipe, but you can never make it like she did."

He sighed, stood, smoothed his shirt, looked me in the eye. "Twelve years married. Twenty-four years together. I'm getting all her furniture, her antique stuff. There's a clock...a small world clock...a grand kid wants it, but I'm not giving it up."

"You shouldn't."

"She made the best bundt cakes," he finished. "Every time I saw her, she made me a bundt cake. I'm going to miss those."

"You should make them for you," I said. "And remember her."

Not the same," he said, but smiled very only slightly. "I made myself dinner tonight. I haven't really been hungry."

"Life does go on," I said. "Not always quickly, but eventually it does. I'm so sorry."

"Well..." And it hung there and he shrugged.

"Gosh Brent, I'm so sorry. You need a hug." And just like that this Rite Aid regular gave a huge hug to the Rite Aid clerk she would know nothing about if she werent overly friendly, an incurable chatterbox, and too-attuned, as her colleagues reminded her, to miscellaneous people.

But that hug, as with Holly several years ago, was from the heart and meant to convey only that loss hurts and you're not alone in the unverse.

Basil and I proceeded to the dog park where she was soundly swatted by the Danish lady's schnauzer and ignored by Marta's tiny poodle, Napoleon.

Undaunted, she proudly marched her owner home, knowing tomorrow was another day and there was time for her to re-assert her position as Alpha Female of the Old Dutch Village Condominiums.

As for her owner, I was walked home hoping Brent was having an OK evening -- as much of an OK evening as possible. I was very glad he held onto that clock. I hoped he would try to duplicate those bundt cakes and that fried chicken.

And I know you shouldn't go around hugging store clerks, but I give myself some slack here and say if you are ever presented with an opportunity, no matter how small, to let another person know they are not alone in the universe, you should take it.

That's what I believe.

And I'm sticking to it.