Taco Bell Hot Sauce

Dear Rick,

Matt stopped by my desk to discuss hot sauce. He mentioned remembering that Brandon had been saving Taco Bell taco sauce packets at one time.

Wow….remember when Brandon saved hot sauce packets and put them in a giant box and wrapped and gave it to you for Christmas? God, that was funny. You were genuinely thrilled to receive a giant box of Taco Bell hot sauce, that’s how much you loved it.

No matter what you were eating, you’d pull out a couple of packets and liberally drench the food – hamburgers, chicken, whatever…you’d add that hot sauce. And it couldn’t be “mild” or “fire.” It had to be good old “hot” Taco Bell taco sauce.

There were always packets in the car glove compartment, next to your keyboard on your desk, in your backpack, and sometimes in your computer case.

I miss you and your damn quirky ways, you and your hot sauce packets.

11/21/2017

About the author

Katherine Billings Palmer is a technical writer, poet, and essayist from Garden City, Michigan. She’s won several academic writing awards, including first place in the University of Michigan Dearborn Critical Essay Contest for her work about poet John Donne: “‘The Sun Rising’: A Lover’s Boast.”

In 2017, Katherine’s husband, Rick, died of complications from small cell lung cancer. She wrote a series of poems and essays about her struggles to cope with her grief. I Wanted to Grow Old With You is available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle editions.

Her latest book, A Widow’s Words: Grief, Reflection, Prose, and Poetry – The First Year was published in January 2019 and is also available on Amazon.com.

Katherine is a guest blogger for the Hope for Widows Foundation and writes about her grief journey at www.TheWritingWidow.com.

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