It was a square box, not the rectangular kind. It was the seasonal, whimsical kind, meant to be displayed and add cheer. My gaze locked onto one with gingerbread cookies and frosting-covered houses in bright reds and greens.
"Dad would like that," I thought. "I'll get three for him." He, like me, and like his granddaughter, Rose, loves "cute" things.
Only Dad's gone now. In his final years, he was a prodigious user of paper products. Sometimes it annoyed me to have to replenish the supplies. Yet I stood, frozen, transfixed by those festive tissue boxes.
That's the thing about grief. It isn't something you do and check off your list. It lingers. It burrows. It hibernates and, if prodded, springs into the light and takes your breath away. Then the thoughts of all the many times on cookie and product-buying trips faded as I refocused on today's grocery chores.
The memory of the smiling gingerbread tissue boxes lingers, still. We made sure he had tissues. In seasonal cute boxes. Did he notice? Probably not, as dementia isn't a memory-dwelling place. But I remember. For him.