R.I.P. Patrick Swayze

There is a supermarket near home. Mottsu and I used to shop there almost daily. We’d call in on the way home from gym red, puffy and sweaty. We’d run laps of the aisles to grab a few provisions before hurrying home to enjoy the rest of the evening.

If I noticed the music in the supermarket, it was to hum along. Maybe I said the words of chorus out loud or stepped out to the beat. Innocuous supermarket music.

After Mottsu left, and after hiding from the world as long as possible, there came a time when I needed to visit a supermarket. I thought I could do it, part of slowly re-entering the world and I needed essentials like tissues and toilet paper.

I steeled myself to visit the supermarket, our familiar memory laden supermarket. I used a trolley, leaned on it like a walking frame and shuffled up and down, adding the occasional item from the shelves.

I heard something, turned my head tuning my ears. Disbelieving. Somewhere between the tissues and the toothpaste, which supermarket aficionados will know as a step or two, a familiar song started to play.

You will probably know it:
Supermarket music: Oh, my love my darling…
Me: Oh my lord my… WHAT?
Supermarket music: …I’ve hungered for your touch a long lonely time..”
Me: What? You are kidding
Supermarket music: …and time goes by so slowly
Me: Thank you world – as if this isn’t hard enough
Supermarket music: …and time can do so much are you still mine?
Me: (Survival mode kicks in for me and I abandon the trolley). Give me a break, it is too much, I don’t need this
Supermarket music: …I need your love I need your love Godspeed your love to…
Me: Gulp, breathe, breathe. Exit supermarket (and without the damn tissues that I really need now).

My focus was making good my escape back to sanity, and my head was filled with thoughts of ghosts, pottery wheels and touching, holding – impossible images to deal with while grocery shopping.

Ohh, the longing and sorrow in the words of that supermarket tune. Ohh, the tissues and the toilet paper left in that trolley. I haven’t been back, unchained and not returning, not to that particular melody ridden supermarket.

Patrick Swayze died today. I don’t go to musical supermarkets anymore and below is the haunting song from Ghost.

R.I.P. Mottsu, my love, R.I.P. Patrick Swayze my darling. Wait for me, wait for me…