Talk about being mentally ill . . . .

I ran into my dad at Trader Joe’s yesterday, which is odd because he passed on last year. “Passed on” is a term I used to disdain, but now that most of my family has done it (passed on, that is), I'm a big fan of euphemism and hear the word "died" as far too crass and corporeal. Inaccurate too, because what I’ve discovered through the surprisingly lively process of grief is that my parents and sister have not died at all. They have passed on—but only to an iffier venue, the mismanaged locus I know as my brain. I watch them in my dreams every night, and often run into them during the day. Indeed, the Trader Joe’s sighting of Dad wasn’t new (I've seen his white head bobbing through Mollie Stone’s too) but, since grief is no more static than life, it had a new aspect: he was a baby. A dark-haired baby Ukrainian sprite, looking out from his seat in his mom's shopping cart.

The sprite was one of those babies who looks adult early on, with his well-defined nose already pronounced and ears that stuck out like wings from his head. But it wasn't his features that made him my dad so much as it was his worried expression. His little brow was already knit, and his mouth was pursed in a perpetual O. His black button eyes were wide open, as if on alert, and, frankly, he looked astonished to be there. And what else could this baby dad be? He never believed in a Christian afterlife, never mind in the shock of reincarnation.

I stared at the sprite so hard and so long I thought his mom might have me arrested. And what excuse could I make for myself? That I wanted to be introduced to this creature who was surely, no question about it, my dad? They'd have had me hauled off in under two minutes--either to jail or a loony bin. And since the only goals I ever set for myself were to do my best to stay out of both, I forced myself to get out of the store. I did not even wait to check out my groceries. I left them behind along with my dad, and drove home feeling, at alternate moments, ecstatically happy and grievously wretched.

At least, I thought as my mood swung both ways like a pendulum on crack, this will be a good thing to tell Dr. Mars. Dr. Mars, my excellent shrink, has been keeping me sane--okay, vaguely functional--for over two years now. I like him because he's older than god and also because he has an M.D. This means not only that he can prescribe, but that once, long ago, he cut up cadavers.

That, plus his being ten minutes away and covered by my overpriced health plan, makes him the best shrink a mental could have. For this and many other such blessings (the very existence of Trader Joe's, for example), I am almost always humbly grateful.