The death notice arrived as I stood -— fittingly — in the women’s hygiene aisle at the grocery store. And it was a death notice; this was a thing that was going to be gone, and, once gone, irretrievable.
I hung on the handle of the shopping cart and wept there between the pads with wings and the Mydol. “Mercy is closing next year,” I texted my sister, because while she might learn the news of the execution of our high school electronically, as I did, I would at least spare her the discovery in the middle of her Facebook feed, in the middle of the day, in the middle of the women’s hygiene aisle, with the Lean Cuisine melting away.