Last month, my friend finished shopping at Trader Joe’s, and while the cashier was ringing up her purchases, the cashier in the next checkout aisle, handed her a bouquet of sunflowers.

“These aren’t mine,” my friend informed the cashier, we’ll call him Zack. She mistakenly thought he assumed she had left behind her flowers.

“You look like you can use them. I bought them for you.”

Literally as well as metaphorically speaking, need I say on a cold day, a sunflower bouquet is like a pretty arrangement that can blanket the chill with a soft layer of faith?

As we later discussed the incident, it turns out that my friend had seen the cashier before, speaking to him only in passing. All she knew was his age, 20. We had no idea if he was an agnostic, atheist, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or who-knows-what and who cares? All that matters is that Zack cared enough to pay attention to someone else. Buried in our busyness, it can be an impossible task. Little did he know that my friend recently underwent surgery and was dealing with a host of other challenges. In other words, the sunflower bouquet added the much-needed color on the drab, gray tablecloth that life laid upon her. Come to find out, sunflowers symbolize “power, warmth and nourishment.”

Somehow Zack had a sixth sense, a spiritual knowing that equates to nonsense in the rational world. God in skin, my 12-step community would label Zack.

My fellow Michael G. always said, “If a god embraces me with love, then that god is for me.”

If you aren’t debilitated from mental illness, and you don’t believe in a particular god or higher power or harmony or the spiritual realm of things, I hope you can still believe in GOoDness. Out of everything, GOoDness has carried me through on this 17-month grief journey.

And, the best magnet channel to attract GOoDness is to perform kind acts. For me, the gesture means breaking free from the bondage of myself and fleeing my tiny, sesame seed of a world, so I can pass on sunflowers to a stranger.

If sunflowers are out of season, extending an over-sized candy bar and a few singles to a stranger in the CVS parking lot might work. Wouldn’t you know this is exactly what happened to me this past Sunday? Earlier in the day I start to write this post about my friend’s experience and Zack’s kindness. Then, later I go to CVS, stroll outside, and I have a burning desire to dodge the toothless, rotund woman heading toward me like a frantic meter maid.

“Need help with your groceries, mommy?”

“Nope.”

The last thing I want is an intrusion into my insolated bubble of a world, pandemic or not.

Journalist at heart, however, I want to probe: “Do you like your life?” “Did you ever think about ending it?” “Are you freer from the monkey mind, a jumbled hot mess of thoughts, than the rest of us?”

Why did she look so happy and carefree? How did she carry on? Why did others like my brilliant, gifted, handsome son throw in the towel?

“Tell me the answer!” I heard myself shout in my mind. “Tell me the answer to this awful, perplexing existence!”

The answer is to imitate Zack at Trader Joe’s. Reach into my purse and offer her a reason to believe in the kindness of others. If she didn’t believe I was a kind person and simply laughed at me behind my back, so be it, I had to believe that in this world drowning in cruelty and noise, solitude and love could win, and it starts with Zack. It starts with me.

She began to converse with me. My old self would have jumped headlong into an esoteric conversation with her. My new self wants the comfy privacy bubble.

“It’s a nice car,” she comments, beaming.

“My son’s.”

The minute, I say that, I can’t erase the PTSD flashbacks and the memory of my son telling me how unworthy he felt especially in the last 30 days of his life, and how he did not deserve to drive such a beautiful shiny sports car that he had purchased on a whim in those final days.

Dry eyed, I want to say, “This is my son,” in the same manner Mama Sandra said in the temple, pointing to the turtle in the glass case.

“This is my son.”

“This is my son, you know.””

But, instead, I don’t murmur a word.

The woman replies, “That’s nice, mommy!”

Even though I have his name on a teal-colored decal on the back window along with his birth and death dates, I do not point out the commemoration to the clueless pedestrian. Instead, I squeeze that solidary moment and derive the last sweet drop, as if I had sneaked out for a joy ride behind my living son’s back, as if death had not crept in, pilfered and shattered my sheltered world, and spring had sprung as it did in the old days, and the hummingbirds returned to drink fresh nectar in our backyard feeder.

“Can I have the twenty?” she asks, spotting the bill in my wallet as I handed her my dollar bills.

“No.”

“You need it.”

“Yes. My allowance for the week.”

“Thank you, mommy!” she calls, satisfied with the singles. I climb in and veer the beautiful blue sports car, smelling like roses, out of the parking lot.

In the old days, I would have shouted, “Pray for me.”

Now, no words form.

I realize, this is our own kind of private prayer when I see her reflection in the rearview mirror, waving the dollar bills as if they are part of a beautiful bouquet. From her toothless grin, she heralds, “thank you, Mommy.”

Her toothless gums somehow seem as if they represent the GoODness of the world. Faith, after all, is believing in things you can’t see. For me that means missing teeth.

Later, I have a sense to beeline back to her and forfeit my sole twenty. But I stay on route, realize you can only give what you have, whether it be to pan handlers or your own flesh and blood. My PTSD subsides. My guilt dissipates. A sense of GoODness fills the air, and the road home opens before me like a smooth pedal surface.