I am known, in some circles, as a fairy.
The Beet Fairy.
For years, Vive supplied the cold-pressed beet juice that quite literally helped keep me on this planet. Not as a luxury. Not as a lifestyle accessory. As medicine. As ritual. As one of those stitched-in things your body comes to trust before your mind has even caught up.
This morning I was waiting for my juice delivery.
Then it didn’t come.
So I did what so many of us do now when something beloved suddenly slips sideways. I went looking for the answer myself. No text. No email. No little human tap on the shoulder. Just absence. A missing delivery. Then the quiet discovery that after nearly thirteen years, Vive Juicery had closed.
That was how I found out.
No goodbye. No handoff. No soft landing. Just poof.
Maybe that is why it hit the bruise so directly. I am apparently still one giant exposed nerve ending over being let go from the acupuncture clinic in much the same fashion. Another Irish Goodbye. Another community I was inside of until suddenly I wasn’t. Another place where I did not get to say goodbye. Another thread cut so cleanly it somehow bled more.
I have not recovered from that.
Not really.
Maybe not at all.
I miss helping.
I miss it with a force that startles me. I miss it in the marrow. I miss it like phantom limb pain. I miss the direct, human, ordinary holiness of being useful to another person in real time.
Yes, I still help. I help all over the damn place. I help in line at Coffee Garden. Let me sort out the pastry case with you. Tell me what kinds of sweets you usually love. Let’s find what’s just right.
I help at the Apple counter at Costco, explaining to a stranger that the employee doing spreadsheets, shipping, data sheets, all of that, probably does not need the spaceship. The graphics or web person absolutely does. Get the more robust machine. Get the memory. Get the AppleCare. It is a business expense anyway, right?
I help at Warby Parker like it is my god damned job, choosing frames for a woman I have never met as though her future face is somehow my responsibility.
I keep doing this. Everywhere. Like some feral customer service department roaming the earth in search of purpose.
I miss people.
I miss service.
I miss usefulness.
I miss the tiny spark that passes between two people when one says, “Can I help?” and the other one exhales, relieved, because the answer is yes.
I miss the community of helping.
I miss the rhythm of it.
I miss the feeling that my care had somewhere to go.
Yes, I gather signatures. Yes, I show up. Yes, I speak up for affordable housing, for democracy, for the vulnerable, against cruelty, against ICE, for all the jagged broken-hearted things that matter. I do all of that.
This is different.
This is the grief of not getting to be of use in the ordinary, intimate, daily ways that once shaped my life. The grief of no longer being inside the circle of care. The grief of being built to help, only to find yourself standing there with your hands still full of help, nowhere to set it down.
So when eight little bottles of juice did not appear on my porch this morning, it was not just a delivery glitch. It was one more vanishing. One more touchstone gone quiet. One more place where continuity dissolved without a goodbye.
That sounds dramatic, maybe. Grieving a juice company. Fine. Call me dramatic. I am not really grieving juice. I am grieving what happens when the small, reliable rituals that hold a person together simply stop speaking. I am grieving the shock of finding out that something woven into the fabric of your life has quietly slipped out of the loom. I am grieving the way endings arrive now with no witness, no handoff, no human warmth.
This is what I keep thinking about:
We are living in an Irish Goodbye economy.
Businesses vanish.
Communities vanish.
Jobs vanish.
People vanish.
You are in relationship, however imperfectly, until suddenly you are not. You are of use until suddenly you are outside the door. You are waiting for the thing that has reliably arrived, until it doesn’t. Then you are left to piece together the ending by yourself like some emotional raccoon rooting around in the dark for context.
I understand all the arguments. Protect your peace. Preserve your energy. No one owes everyone every explanation. I know. I really do. I understand that people are tired, burned out, underwater, overextended, one hard conversation away from becoming a puddle in public.
Still.
At what cost?
At what cost do we keep disappearing from one another like this?
Trust is not built in grand gestures. Trust is built in continuity. In small acknowledgments. In the dignity of a heads-up. In the simple human instinct to say: hey, this is ending. Thank you. You mattered here.
When that does not happen, something erodes.
Not just loyalty.
Not just goodwill.
Something softer. More essential.
The belief that we are actually in this together.
That may be why so many of us feel so untethered right now. Yes, the world is on fire. Yes, democracy feels like a folding table in a windstorm. Yes, we are out here gathering signatures, speaking up, protesting, trying to keep one another fed, sheltered, seen.
Underneath all of that, another grief hums.
The grief of disappearing from one another.
The grief of institutions, workplaces, businesses, communities, all using the language of care or family or service or belonging right up until the moment they evaporate.
The grief of no goodbye.
The grief of no witness.
The grief of being left holding love with nowhere to place it.
Maybe that is why I keep helping strangers in random retail environments like a woman possessed. Maybe I am trying to stitch myself back into the human fabric one tiny interaction at a time. Maybe I am trying to prove that service still exists. That tenderness still exists. That someone can still look another person in the eye, say, “I’ve got you,” and mean it.
I wanted my juice this morning.
Yes.
More than that, I wanted continuity.
I wanted the medicine to keep medicining.
I wanted one small beloved thing to arrive exactly as expected.
I wanted not to lose one more thing.
Instead, I got another lesson in impermanence. Another reminder that the world can change shape while you are standing in your Uggs on the porch.
Thank you, Vive, for the years you nourished me.
Thank you for the medicine when it was medicine.
I mean that.
This hurt.
Deeply. Weirdly. More than I would like to admit.
Yet not weird at all, really.
Sometimes eight missing juice bottles are not eight missing juice bottles.
Sometimes they are every goodbye you did not get.
Every room that went dark without warning.
Every place you poured your care that disappeared before you could say:
I was here.
I loved this.
This mattered to me.
NAKEDJEN 