"Still getting used to the fact they're not here"

One Friday afternoon in late June there was a debate going on in my head about whether or not I could afford to spurge on a $5 pizza from Subway. Work had consumed me all day, and I was really hungry.

I had a taste for a pizza with roasted chicken, so the debate didn't last too long. But that Subway, under new management, no longer allows customers to stray from the printed menu.

While entering the restaurant on U.S. 90 in Pascagoula, I noticed a young woman and a friend ... relative .. I didn't really know ... laughing and talking while deciding their choice of subs.

The one who entered the restaurant went ahead of me. She was sleeveless so I noticed a tattoo of a child on her upper right arm. The little boy's face looked so familiar. Like I knew him for some reason.

It was really odd because I could not recall her face at all. Had never seen her before; for sure, had never met her before.

She was making her food order while I stared, though trying not to gawk at the tattoo.

“Is that your son?”

“Yes,” she said.

“How old is he?”

“He died two years ago,” she said.

Oh. Awkward moment. ... You know, that pause when you feel embarrassed and sympathetic at the same time but don't really know what to say.

But he looked so familiar.

She said her other son also had died, but she had not yet put a tatto of him on her left arm. But she's had another child. (She already had a daughter when the boys died.)

I said her son looked like a child I knew or had seen before.

Then she introduced herself. She was Claudia Johnson, mother of two boys -- Phillips Burts Jr., 3, and Keshawn Burts, 2 -- who died in November 2006 during a house fire in Moss Point.

Now I knew. I'd seen the faces of the brothers on the media, and had written several news reports last year when the Hope Has A Face Foundation and the South Mississippi Red Cross had built a new home for her parents on Tucker Avenue.

“How are you doing now? Are you OK?”

She hedged, and then said, “I'm still getting used to the fact that they're not here.”

Words and hugs of sympathy were offered. She gave permission for her sons to be added to Memories Always. There were inquiries about her family, some personal information provided.

She paid for her subs and left. Finished my order and went back to work.