Olivia Nicole Rogers
Beautiful, smile a little more, please. You can do it. Love ya
—Darlene Sanders, Facebook
It’s funny.
About a week ago, I was a counselor for a small summer camp that I have been going to since I was 10. It was almost time for campfire, but the kids and staff members were first allowed to buy sodas and catch up with each other about their days. I, of course, wanted a Dr. Pepper (because, yes, I am one of those Dr. Pepper superfans), but we were out of stock. I instead settled for a can of Pepsi and found a solitary plastic picnic table to drink it at. I popped the tab. I took a sip.
They say grief hits you like a truck, but that’s not really what happened. It crashed into me like a friend I haven’t seen in years or a lover in an airport: colliding recklessly, running up and wrapping its arms around my body.
I’d missed it.
When my grandmother passed away about a month ago, I cried from the shock of it happening on an ordinary day. I’d cried because our estrangement from her side of the family caused additional trauma for my mother; I’d rammed my fists into the dashboard because my grandmother’s biological daughter’s first impulse when my grandmother took her last breath was to rifle through her purse for the key to the safe containing her last will and testament. I’d lost the right to feel it—to miss her.
As soon as the Pepsi fizzled out on my tongue, I tasted the two-liters of it we’d bring to her house along with breadsticks from the local pizza place. I tasted moments in her kitchen, where I would sit on the floor under the faltering lights and play with her dogs while my mom sipped coffee (I still remember the mug), knowing it wouldn’t be long before we went home. I tasted the rare days when we’d get to visit that old house that was three hours away from us, which she clung to steadfastly, keeping spare bedrooms and corners for the memories of whom she loves. The shrine of her son; her husband’s bed, his things piled high; the old toys and clothes of my mother, and eventually my sister, then eventually me. Her house always felt like a place where nothing bad could happen, like we left time at the door with our shoes until we waved goodbye in her garage and loaded up in the car, where my mom would cry in the driver’s seat, putting into tears what nobody wanted to put into words. I realized that I could probably draw an exact floor plan of her house if asked.
I realized that I didn’t immediately remember the oxygen tank she was hooked up to most of the time— its hollow, mechanical breaths finding their way between her sentences, or the bottles of warfarin, scattered and tipped on the table, or the thinning of her hair and stomach as she smiled for me in an act of rebellion against her sickness, telling me to smile too. Those were afterthoughts. The soda didn’t taste like her pain, but the love she gave me: in words, in gifts, in texts that linger in my inbox. I know that she is probably somewhere now—miles and miles away, or close by, I hope, but there’s no way of knowing. I still feel the residual of how she loved me and the fear that all I have to offer in return is this little requiem that may also dissolve in my mouth.
I haven’t drank Pepsi since.