|
|
|
in my existential daze to Chipotle
Saturday, September 9 2017
After losing the dogs in the forest not far from the second-highest peak ("Funky Pond") in the West Kingston Quadrangle, I called Gretchen, and she sounded terrible (and a bit cranky). I eventually drove out to Northern Dutchess Hospital in Rhinebeck to spend some time with her. When I walked up to her hospital bed, she looked asleep, but she wasn't. She was in a profoundly weakened state, unable to talk to me and keep her eyes open at the same time. Gretchen is a strong person in any context, and this was as helpless as I'd ever seen her. She was coherent in what she said, which was full of complaints about the nurse on Friday night (she'd made some inappropriately judgmental statements about Gretchen's IUD and had failed to catch a spike in her temperature). I stayed for an hour or two, though at a certain point we were done talking and Gretchen drifted into a twilight state somewhere between wakefulness and sleep. I eventually said goodbye and left.
I was in a weird state as I drove back west across the Hudson. Part of this was from the ephedra tea I'd been sipping all afternoon, but there was a component of existential dread. Was Gretchen dying? It seemed possible she might not even make it through the night. I decided to drive to Lowes for the distraction of a retail experience, and Lowes was as close to my ideal retail experience as I could imagine 9W supplying I wandered the aisle, buying butane for a butane-fueled soldering iron I'd recently bought, some titanium-oxide drill bits in the size that I always use and break (1/8 inch), a small router bit for sideways-sawing, and a battery-powered motion-sensor light. I continued in my existential daze to Chipotle, where I got a nicely-overstuffed burrito and ate it while reading an article in Slate about the Trump administrations arguments in favor of homophobic cake bakers. Then I went next door into Beer World and bought a sixpack of an unknown IPA in cans. (Avery Brewing Company's IPA - it was pretty good.)
When I got home and climbed out of the Prius, I was met with the drone of late-summer insects. The sound they make on a cool fall evening in the northeastern US sounds like a headache.
I wasn't much good for the rest of the day as I smoked pot, drank booze, and watched teevee. I started with the final episodes of season three of Halt and Catch Fire and ended with the 1967 version of Guess Who's Coming To Dinner. Periodically I'd think about Gretchen and how lost I'd be without her and I'd start to cry. It was embarrassing even there, alone by myself, because it felt more like I was feeling sorry for myself than worrying about Gretchen. On some level (even when she's completely healthy) she doesn't even want to be alive and is just staying here because she knows how important she is to the people and critters in her life. As for me, I hadn't realized something about grief: that it can come even when the loss is a statistical abstraction. Chances were good that Gretchen would pull through, but even so, the devastating consequences of her not were such that my brain felt it needed to hedge its bets and start preparing for the worst.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?170909 feedback
previous | next |
