SOLSC Day 27: Spontaneity

I brought vanilla cream-filled chocolate eggs to my book group in Brooklyn today, and had bought a couple of extra to share with my daughter when she visited last Friday. But I forgot to give the extra to her. So, since she lives in Brooklyn, we agreed that I would come by after book group to hand her over her “cream egg.”

            I arrived at her apartment in early evening, and we had some very emotional conversation about grieving, sadness, loss, what it all means. As I was getting ready for the long subway ride home, she asked what I would do about dinner. We decided to go out to dinner in her neighborhood, to a quite good Indian restaurant. (I had tandoori fish, which I had never seen on a menu before.)

            As we walked her back home on the way to my subway, I realized that this sort of evening would not have happened were Jack still alive. He did not enjoy spontaneous changes in plans, so I might simply have left the cream egg with C. and gone on home, or not even bothered with the detour and given her the chocolate eggs the next time we saw her. It feels almost perverse that while grieving his loss, I now feel more freedom to do whatever I want to do, whenever I want to do it. Ambivalence, ambivalence, ambivalence.