'New Normal Me'

The 'new normal me' now sees people differently.

At the mall. At the grocery store. At the post office. At the neighborhood dog park. At the bus stop. Inside BART. Inside cars. Inside a church. And everywhere she goes. She sees them differently and wonders.

She wonders if that perky, middle-aged lady, manning the cash register, has experienced a loss of a loved one, of a child perhaps. How about that white haired executive in the coffee shop, buried in paperwork, his laptop always on? She wonders if he has kids who died. The yuppie-looking woman, smartly dressed and a bit fidgety, sitting across her on the train? Excuse me, she asks with her mind, but are you a BLM too?

It's crazy. And she knows that. Not everyone around her has experienced the same loss she had. Many are living in their happy place, just like she was not so long ago. No worries. No loved ones dead, except for that cousin twice removed or a best friend of a friend. No dead babies either.

But she's sure there are others. Those who suffered a death so devastating it shook their lives to  its core. A death of someone so dear to them that they could never completely get over such a loss. They who are going about their normal lives now despite years of grief.

She knows she's among them. At the mall, window shopping with their families in tow. At the grocery store, contemplating ingredients for dinner. At the post office, juggling letters and packages. Inside BART, thoughtfully looking out the window. They are everywhere, too, just like the many who are living in their bubble worlds.

Only it's so hard to tell. Who would have thought that elderly gentleman with a jolly laugh at the other lunch table lost a 4-year-old son long ago and has recently lost his only daughter to cancer? Who would have thought that young successful career woman at the health food store had multiple miscarriages? Who would have thought that lively retail clerk is a grieving mother of a teen-aged son who died in a car accident?

Yes, who would have thought. Their grief has become so enmeshed with their "new normal" that she can't tell them apart from the many. And she wonders. Can people see her grief underneath the perfectly built facade of her own 'new normal'? Who would have thought that this woman, whose face has a ready smile and whose attitude is as laidback as a sunny Sunday afternoon, is a recent childless mother?

No one can tell. Really. But she wonders anyway.