Corner Store: Lessons in Life

He looked down at the pile of spilled smoothie resting at his feet, then up and into the faces of the line of frustrated students standing before him.  

It was just supposed to be a side job, something that would work around his class schedule.  After all, it couldn't be that challenging to work in the union. Right?

"I can't believe it takes twenty minutes to get a smoothie. This is ridiculous," a student muttered just loud enough for the student worker to hear.  "I mean, where do they get these people anyway?"

He knelt down to soak up the sugary fruit filled mess with a few clothes that were near by.  The immortal words and lessons from Dr. DeSanto replayed themselves in his mind as he attempted to hold himself from jumping over the counter and down the throats of the impatient patrons.

"It's all about customer service," DeSanto once said in class. "Everything is public relations and an opportunity to build a relationship with another person."

He stood up, forced a smile, and turned to the growing mob.  "I'm sorry ma'am.  It's been a long day. I'm sure you can understand.  This one is on me."

The "gift"

"He was the hardest worker I ever knew," they all said as they greeted the family.  "He was a great man. We're so sorry."

Death is a funny thing. It coerces a person into adulthood.  It allows forgiveness for years of pain and lays a thick silver lining on the things you thought you could never let go of.  It forces buried memories to surface.

When she was little, going to the farm was a treat.  Anna, Illinois was an emerald oasis nestled in the heart of southern Illinois.  Paw Paw's fields of beans, wheat, and corn stretched as far as the eye could see; he was so proud of that.  He wanted to own as much land as a person could see standing from the house. 

He had a work ethic like Lincoln, was stubborn as a mule, and had an attention to detail that would rival Martha Stewart in her heyday. He knew every inch of the land, every blade of grass.

In fact, he had the "gift."  Her mother had it, too.  Of the thousands of clover that grew around the farm house, they could always find a four leaf clover.  She remembered spending hours as a child combing through the grass and the gardens, hoping to find this treasure.  Hoping that she, too, had the gift.  Every trip she looked.  She never found one.  He would finally lead her right to one.  He knew exactly where it was all along.

Now she had finally returned to little Anna, Illinois.  She was older, hopefully wiser, more traveled - yet she still got a tinge of excitement as they rounded the corner and first saw the farm burst into view like she was a five-year-old all over again.  

She didn't spend the week crying.  She walked the property, spending time with old memories.  She breathed the country air.  Painstakingly, she looked through clover patches trying one last time to find a four leaf clover.  

She and her mother were about to leave.  It was time to go back to Kansas.  As the family said their goodbyes, she looked straight down to her feet.  She had finally found it, an almost perfect four leaf clover.  Her eyes welled with tears and she bent down to make sure it was real.  As a new parent counts for ten fingers and ten toes, she counted the four separate leaves.  She held it in her hands and smiled, assured that he had directed her to it. 

  

 

She carefully set her cell phone down on her desk and stared at the computer screen in front of her.

She couldn't feel anything.

She could only hear those two words replaying themselves in her head.

"He's gone."

Her grandfather, or "Paw Paw" as the grand kids had called him, had suffered a massive heart attack or possibly a stroke only a few hours before.  He was rushed from his country farm in Anna, Illinois to Union County Hospital where he was pronounced dead at 8:37am.

He was 74 years old.

She was angry.  She was angry for being upset.  She was angry for hurting for someone who had spoken to her once in the past ten years.  But mostly, she was confused.  She hadn't cried yet, she wanted to cry.  She wanted to hit him.  She wanted to run away.

She sat at her desk for a few minutes and stared at the now completely unimportant email she had been writing.  She began to email professors and calling to make arrangements to be gone a few days.