One picture/One paragraph.
Standing across the road to take this picture, the smell of fried chicken heavy in the air, I drift back in time. More than a year since my mother passed away, I am still mourning her loss. Grief comes in waves, often triggered by something simple like driving passed this Dairy Freeze in Montross. The food offered here is not my favorite, but it was hers. A chicken basket and a banana milkshake. In those years when her dementia was still new, we’d drive rural roads and she'd tell me stories from her childhood. She was easy to please and delighted with every good thing. I can see now there was a stage where she knew she wasn’t herself, a time when she could see what was coming — days of fear and quiet desperation and tears. I’ve wondered what more I might have done to comfort her. But in the end, I’ve decided the trip to Dairy Freeze was probably just what she needed.