I needed to fill an hour or so, mum was visiting so I took her out for one of our long time favourite shared activities, op shopping.
I know there are some who shudder at the thought of op shops, others who like them, and still others who are ... Ahem... Slightly obsessed.
We're of the latter persuasion. Mum and I look at every shelf and every hanger. Many are the times people would say, of our purchases, 'I was just in there and I didn't see that!'... And we'd smirk because we knew.
We know the difference between looking and really looking.
Gaudy, fancy, horrible, dainty, ugly, beige.. It all counts for a look.
Stuff is hidden under stuff and behind stuff and someone else didn't even see that stuff you saw because they were only looking for blue...
And nothing was ever beyond the reach of our potential purchase...
Clothes - for barbie dolls, baby dolls, ladies in the outback, ourselves, our friends kids, the dog who liked to wear silly hats.
Coffee mugs - like the time we filled my brother's cupboard with mugs bearing people's names... Barry, Warren, Judith, Brian... Not one name from his friends list but all the names on the rejected mugs in the salvos.
Garden ornaments - that time we hid garden gnomes all through someone's house so they'd find them for months.
Books - Serious and silly, quaint titles, quirky covers.
Used and unused birthday cards, just so we could give the dumb pictures and jokes another life... there isn't much that can't be repurposed.
For good or for bad.
We have a few op shops in town, one is reasonably new, I took mum there first. We had a good poke around but something was off. Mum was looking and seeing but she didn't seem quite herself. She bought a few oddities; I figured she had reason though they weren't her usual trinkets or style. I was a bit puzzled by her detachment but figured it was one of those things.
I drove to the next shop, she gets breathless if we walk too far. As we drove, I pointed out a few changes to the Main Street shops, she made appropriate noises and seemed interested.
Nothing out of the ordinary.
She stared into a shop window at dresses; I said 'not quite this one, mum, that's the boutique' she laughed, replying that that was a good thing, it looked 'pretty fancy for an op shop'
We walked into the arcade, past the boutique on the right, the takeaway on the left and to the shop at the end, where if you go a few feet more you're in the carpark.
In the second shop, she wandered and touched things, again, she didn't seem to quite understand what we were looking for. She found a few things she thought were nice, one or two things she didn't. She smiled, said hello, and made a bit of small talk to the ladies on the day's shift. She seemed distracted yet detached. Quite beside myself by this time, unable to concentrate, I smiled at mum and said I thought we'd go home for a cuppa and see dad. I think she was relieved.
She said she liked that op shop, the ladies were friendly. But 'I'm glad you brought me here, I'd never have found it on my own. And I wouldn't find my way back to the car'
This second shop is one of the 'good' op shops. The prices are reasonable, the stuff is of decent quality and proceeds go to local community groups.
The location hasn't changed, nor the layout neither have any of the fittings. In fact this is the same op shop I used to go to when the kids were growing up, with exactly the same layout and the same ladies at the desk as it did back then.
Back then... when my mum volunteered there at least one day a week. For many years. When it was one of the main interests in her life.
When mum was one of the ladies behind the desk sorting out the clothes, taking money, walking around the shop tidying it and helping people, and not getting lost finding the shop in the Main Street.
I felt my gut fall, my brain screamed and my stomach twisted. There was not even one flicker of recognition. Not of the shop's sign, it's angled entryway, it's location or... Anything.
There had back then been the boutique on the right, the takeaway on the left and the shop at the end, where if you go a few feet more you're in the carpark.
But it might as well have been on another continent. The shop was entirely new to her.
And that's when 2 plus 2 really started making 4. When the grieving started for the mum I knew I was losing and missing and would continue to lose and miss. The mum who made shopping so silly we'd often be cry laughing.
I hesitantly told my daughter. She said 'well it's been a while, they don't live here any more, she's forgotten, that's all'. I said maybe it was so.
But me, as the daughter of her, the mother, knew that it wasn't all; that it was the start of something I didn't want yet, I wasn't ready for yet and couldn't believe signalled the beginning of this dreadful journey that she is aware of now, but soon won't be.
And we, the family of she the mother will look at her and wonder. And wish and watch as she fades even further into herself, distracted yet detached.
