Baby, Come Back!

I have struggled for years with the unavoidable truth. When a piece of your heart falls away into oblivion, you can find yourself adopting desparate measures to delay the inevitable realization that something precious is gone forever. Even as late as last night, I searched in vain for a substitute, a surrogate, anything to fill the empty space in my longing soul. Passing door after door, staring through the condensation-stained glass, I find nothing.

I come at last to the door that once led to the sweet delicacy for which I pine. Upon pulling the door to me, the residents of the unit present themselves and mock me with their wrappings, so eerily familiar yet so grotesquely different. Many voices sing, but no song reaches my ear.

Am I alone in my loneliness? Are there others who share my pain?

Turning to technology's collective voice, I search the name and scan through page after page of fruitless text until, at last, my suspicions are confirmed. Men and women alike have shared my desire, only to find themselves abandoned in the aisle. Cast adrift on an ocean of sameness, plucking unsavory satisfaction from the pretenders, we gather together on our virtual island to console each other with empty words.

An errant click of the finger pulls up the once glorious home on the glowing screen towering before me. The funny little surname arcs in a gentle curve on the striped awning that stretches along the top of the page. A strange assortment of offspring are on display, but none holds the appeal of that which is missing. The name is erased, the visage removed, my hopes abandoned.

For weeks to come, perhaps years, I will walk the desolate path through the freezer aisle of my local grocery store, clinging to the futile hope that I shall one day delight in the reappearance of my lost, my sweet, my Edy's Swiss Orange Sherbet.



© 2011 Mark Feggeler