Wonder Women

Two weeks before my dad died I was in the dress department of Lord and Taylor.

A dear friend had lived her dream of becoming a social worker into reality and needed a graduation dress.

There are many ways women show up for each other.

I’m an honest and efficient shopper, happy to run back and forth to dressing rooms, arms piled high with hopes and rejects.

On one to and fro my practical self stopped short in front of a solid, plain, black dress, on sale in my size.

Suddenly my friend was at my elbow. “We do not need to do that today,” she said.

We did not do it that day.

When I went back two weeks later the dress was in the exact same place. I didn’t even try it on. We were destined for each other.

I’d found tiny linen, end of the season, summer blazers, and khakis shorts for my two sons, and a simple plain dress and shoes for my daughter. My youngest son had begged for teal shorts with sharks on them and cried at my emphatic no.

He threw my choice, “these are the shorts of my MISERY!”

You and me both, little man.

Because grief brain is a real thing, in the twelve hours before a plane took me back to my mother and to my father’s funeral, finding a necklace for my perfectly bleak, black dress took over my thoughts.

I was wandering a series of overpriced women’s boutiques when my graduate friend called.

“Just buy any necklace. You will never wear it again.”

Good point.

I saw something in the window of a store filled with jewelry I didn’t like and walked in.

“This will be perfect. I hate everything in this store,” I chattered to my friend.

“You hate everything in this store?” I turned to the hurt, doe eyes of the sincere twenty-something sales girl.

“Call you back…”

I took a deep breath and decided to care more about my feelings than this young woman’s. She was making thirteen dollars an hour in an overpriced jewelry store. My dad was dead.

“I need something for my dad’s funeral. I need to not care if it offends you that this jewelry is not my jam. I need a necklace I will never wear again.”

She opened her mouth, thought better of it, and closed it again. God love her.

“I know exactly what you want.”

The picture above is the one I took to confirm my purchase with my graduate friend.

We texted:

“Looks heavy”

“It’s heavy as hell. Like death.”

“It’s perfect.”

The saleswoman somehow created an additional 10% funeral discount and wrapped the necklace-of-death in black tissue paper.

“Do you honestly hate everything in here?” She asked.

“Those bracelets aren’t terrible.”

“We call those the wonder woman collection.”

And for no reason at all, probably because kindness is almost intolerable when you are stripped down to your emotional studs, I started to cry.

She ushered me to the employee bathroom, handed me a bottle of water and said, “I am really sorry about your dad.”

As I packed for the funeral later that night, I pulled the necklace-of-death from the small, store bag and noticed it seemed an odd shape.

It was an odd shape because wrapped up alongside the heavy, black, hematite…

Was the wonder woman bracelet.

There is a lot of death, and hate, and pain out there.

But there are also wonderful women.