The Last Box of Jujyfruits

In Walgreens, I succumbed to the purchase of a box of Jujyfruits.  This will most likely be the last Jujyfruit candy I ever have again for the rest of this life, and I find it odd but realistic to think so.  It was an impulse buy for 69 cents, this last box, and I am glad I did for some things don't change much.  Happily, this is one.

The shapes are still the weird vegetable and fruit combination, there are bananas, raspberries, tomatoes, asparagus, pineapples, grapes and pea pods.  Asparagus shaped candy?  Any of the flavors can be any of the shapes; the only apparent change is that green is no longer mint flavored, but has become lime.  How can one get sentimental over candy?  By imagining that it is the last one of anything?

So many never agains, you wonder as the final pea pod is thoughtfully chewed and gone, if it matters.  There is the last dog, the last high heels, the last time that you pick your child up to carry him to bed.  The last piggy back, the last make the bed with him in it, lifting the blankets up to billow over the laughing child.  The final conversation with anyone dear, the final walk down a favorite street to a neighborhood store.  Change moves you ahead, sometimes kicking and screaming.

You must teach yourself to look forward, for there is so much more to do.  Continuously looking back turns you to salt, and you know that we have been told to cut sodium from our diets.  Enjoy the memories, but don't dwell on them, they are only a pleasant visit to another time that is the foundation of who we have become, and isn't that neat?

Some finalities have no regrets, such as the last butterfly fish which is a species that takes its food live, so you have to wiggle the raw liver on the surface with a toothpick to entice the thing.  Beautiful and lacy-finned are they, but in any aquarium you wonder where the expensive glass catfish have gone only to see Igor in the corner, smiling.

I will never downhill ski again, much to my eternal delight.  I never have to take another algebra class or go to a musical.  I have promised myself that I never have to cook a whole turkey ever again.  Looks good, smells hypnotic; too much of a mess to wrestle a dead carcass of a fifteen pound animal, then let the headless skeleton linger in the fridge till it turns greenish for soup that never shows up anyway.  Country music?  Never again.  Whee.  I can take Rascal Flatts in small doses.  Sunday church?  Ha.  Had enough of that when I was younger to the point where I get nauseous and panicky inside a pew, so I just don't go.  However, what triggered the above nostalgia?

I guess that hindsight is twenty-twenty, and there are many things I wish could happen again.  I miss the Grant Street ice cream stand that sold honeydew flavored custard.  I miss the wooden floors of the A & P and the blind man who played an accordion while his boxer dog in harness sat by him out in front.  There was a metal water utility marker in the cement that had salamanders cast in iron.  There was my Grandma Ida, who walked me up to Miller's Drugstore in the rain to buy me a gauze frog mask for Halloween night.  I miss reading bedtime stories, making supper, growing vegetables in a garden.

Here I am, with the last box of Jujyfruits.  There will be other things to try one last time, like maybe Necco wafers.  Riding a bicycle.  Making bread.  Other adventures beckon, and they look delightfully interesting.  You'll hear about them later.  Right now, it's come to be time for turning in.

Your turn to think about where you have been and how you have affected those around you, created harmony, made peace, raised a ruckus.  What represents the last box of sweets for you?  Be happy that you were able to be there, then lock it away and turn the little gold key.  Tell the memories that you love them so, but they should take a magazine and sit down in the waiting room until you want them again.  Skedaddle.

The headlights of the cars glide back and forth over the highway as people head to ending journeys begun during day.  Heads shall find pillows, blankets will be pulled up to chins.  I wonder if the child become a man wishes for one last time of bedtime stories and billowing covers.  I did it for my mom when she became confined to her bed, and she laughed as if she were little again.  Sleep well, sleep deeply, with the innocence of the peaceful.  Everything will be alright.  I promise.