I nearly tripped over the shards of my broken heart as I pushed my cart through the local Wal-Mart. They were everywhere, threatening to send me tumbling head over heart into that black hole of depression. They were in the basketballs, toy cars and bicycles. The greatest amount lay among the skate boards and boxes of fruit juices, tempting me to let my mind stumble carelessly over them and into my past, cutting even more deeply into my already scarred and bleeding heart. 

“Hi, can I help you find something?”

Through the sunglasses still intact on my face, my eyes arose from the cart to meet those of a young man with a big, wide grin on his face. His blue apron revealed he was a Wal-Mart employee. I’d been limping down the main aisle between Toys and Housewares and was standing aimlessly at the edge of Housewares when he jolted me back to reality. 

“No, I’m just thinking right now . . . thinking about what I need.” 

I couldn’t help match the sparkle of his ear to ear grin with a weak but upturned mouth of my own. Tall and lanky, he appeared to be in his early 20’s. His short blonde

hair was neatly styled and his clothes were fresh and clean. He was most definitely the epitome of the one from whom my grief was caused. “So, this is what he would have

looked like,” I thought as I quickly sized up this one who had unknowingly interjected life into the lifeless. 

“Are you sure?” he persisted with genuine interest.

“No thanks, I’m OK.  I’m just thinking about what I need.”

Liar. 

Not being able to recall why I was in that department, I moved on to the grocery side of the store. Painfully passing by the young men’s pullover shirts and cargo shorts, I continued to limp past all the items that cut into my already shredded heart—the box juices, the cheese sticks, the lunch meat, the favorite breakfast foods and the yogurts.

The weight of grief in the store was as oppressive as the Texas heat outside that late September afternoon. Completing my round through the grocery section, I headed back to Housewares to get what I had failed to pick up on my first pass through—canning jars. I finally spotted them ahead of me at the end of an aisle. Then I heard the voice with that familiar positive ring.

“Are you sure you don’t need any help?” 

My turning around revealed that same ear to ear grin from that same young man. I had noticed something different in him before, but now it became more apparent. Sincerity.  Genuine sincerity. He wasn’t just doing his job. He was truly friendly and really trying to help me.

“Oh, I’m OK,” I lied again.  “I just . . . I . . .” 

As great droplets of heartache spilled down my cheek, anger at myself filled the spot in my heart that once held the tears. What a sight. Here’s this kid trying to help some woman in his department, and she falls apart on him as a response to the simplest of questions between a salesperson and a customer. How does one recover? How can one’s innermost existence be transformed into language? Not only that, but put into words that correctly express what the mind and heart want them to?  And why would he care? With my heart lodged in the quicksand of grief, I was unable to recover.  

Expecting kind indifference to be his response to the tears falling below my sunglasses, I was instead surprised to see compassion in his expression. It was then that it all came forward; my heart used more than tears to purge itself. The words finally came, and I hurt too much to care. 

“I have a son that’s about your age. He’s 18. He looks a lot like you. Well, he used to, he once did. But now he’s just a hard-core meth addict. It’s really bad. Coming to Wal-Mart can be so hard. I see all the things I used to buy for him through the years as he was growing up, and it’s just so painful. Everywhere I go in the store it’s difficult, but the grocery section is the most painful. It’s been going on for four years now. It’s hard because I will never buy those things for him again—not because he grew up, but because he’s gone. The drug world sucked him up, and he embraces it. Shopping has finally gotten easier, but, I don’t know, for some reason, today it’s really hard.”

Wow, that was quite an answer to, “Are you sure you don’t need any help?”

Unexpectedly, arms of compassion wrapped around me without hesitation. The sparkle in his eyes did not subside as much as would be expected, but had now made room for empathy to emit from them as well. 

“I know what you mean. I’m older than your son—I’m 23. But when I was 18, my mother was killed in a car wreck. I know what you mean about the stuff in the store. Holidays and celebrations are especially hard for me. Like Halloween. Soon there’ll be all this Halloween stuff in the store, and it’ll remind me of how she’d always dress up and have fun. It really is hard. And I’m not really all that happy today myself, even though I’m smiling and stuff.”

Just for a moment there, he didn’t look so good. And just for a moment, my starvation for empathy was glad to see it.

So here we were, a mother grieving for the loss of her 18-year-old son, and a young man grieving for the loss of his mother when he was 18 years old. God had graced us with each other’s understanding of loss. 

Kyle and I became good friends, and after that day I looked forward to my trips to Wal-Mart. Instead of dread, my shopping trips became filled with the anticipation of a youth whose eyes would light up to see me instead of despise me, whose mouth would grin instead of grimace, and whose arms wrapped themselves around my neck instead of emphatically push me away. He shared the ups and downs of his life with me, and when I offered advice, I often cringed at myself, waiting for the disgust that was the usual response from the lover of drugs. But disgust never came. Instead, he soaked up advice like a sponge. I never told him how much he filled that son-shaped void in my heart, and I only hope that sometimes I filled the mom-shaped void in his.

Empathy works both ways, and so it was that my holiday thoughts and actions always included the one that not only understood my void, but had a tremendous one of his own during those times of the year. I loved to show up at the store with surprises for such celebrations as Christmas and his birthday.  

“How’d you know today was my birthday?” he asked as he approached the Customer Service desk from where I had paged him.

“I asked you a couple of months ago when it was and made note of it,” I replied as I hugged that likeness of the one for whom no more birthday celebrations existed. 

When Easter was approaching, Maundy Thursday brought with it a sinking of heart, for there was to be no Easter church services or Easter baskets that involved my son that year. Kyle’s shift ended at 4:00 that afternoon, so I headed to Wal-Mart around 3:00 to grab some last-minute items for the weekend. I soon found Kyle. We chatted for a bit and then he clocked out early and shopped with me. As we looked at everything from beta fish (I collect them), to camping gear, to produce, he talked of his life and his girlfriend. As we compared the fishing lures we each had fished with, he pointed out one that was especially large, while I pointed out a much smaller one I had used, complaining how I hadn’t caught much on it. “Well,” he said, holding up the large one, “I’ve caught big bass with this one. It’s like this: big lure—big fish; small lure—small fish.” His fishing advice was followed by his hallmark grin and my outburst of laughter. How bittersweet that moment was. Bitter because it reminded me so of how my son always gave fishing advice, and too sweet a moment for me to mention it. 

It was inevitable that our trek around the store would lead us to the vast array of pre-made Easter baskets. We picked out the cool ones—those with racing cars, toy cell phones, and—our favorite—little fishing poles. It was now his turn for memories to coming flooding to the forefront. 

“Before my mom died, my dad said, ‘Oh Jackie, he’s too old for an Easter basket.’”

While I had restrained myself from voicing a memory in the fishing aisle, he had just spilled his own memory all over the little boy Easter baskets.

“Oh, Kyle, you’re never too old for an Easter basket,” I said with an attempted cheerful ring to it. 

I repeated that same phrase to him the next day—Good Friday—as I handed him a small, homemade Easter basket. 

Kyle was soon promoted and began working at another Wal-Mart. I missed him terribly. The only time I saw him was if I drove across town to that store. We still kept in touch, though, and I always recognized his number on caller ID. 

One evening I received a call from a number I didn’t recognize. Because of my son’s lifestyle, it was with dread I listened to an unknown woman’s voice as I checked my voice mail. As she spoke of an apartment complex on the other side of town and a wallet she had found, I cringed and weakened. I automatically assumed it was yet another horrific issue concerning my son. But I softened with relief as she continued. 

“Hi, my name’s Aretha. I just found this wallet outside by my car. Do you know a young man named Kyle? Yours is the only phone number in it, so that’s why I’m calling. Please call me back if you know him . . .”

Only by the grace of God could such a thing happen.

“Kyle, it’s Kim,” I said as he answered his cell that Friday night. “I know you’ve lost your wallet and I know where it is.” 

Astonished by my announcement, he informed me that at that very moment he was outside in that same parking lot looking for his wallet. A few phone calls later the two met and the wallet was returned, complete with approximately $200.00 in cash intact. 

So many blessings have resulted from the kindness of one to another that hot afternoon in September 2003. It was during my time of crippling despair that God chose to change not only the dynamics of the moment, but of my life. Not the reality of it, not the heartbreak of it, but an aspect of it. Graced by the empathy of another, and by one who was the physical epitome of the one from whom my brokenness had come, I was given a lifting of the spirit, and a reminder that God often blesses us when we least expect it.