Death and vacations

  • Doesn’t it seem like death would be like leav­ing for a vaca­tion? Or is it just like that when I do it?

    I’ve known about this trip for half a year. I’ve been plan­ning for it for months. I’ve been set­ting aside time from my job and tak­ing care of all the nec­es­sary pay­ments, details, paper­work for weeks and weeks. And yet, when I came down to the last day … well, that’s where the death thing came in.

    There had been so much time. Even when it was finally three days before, then two, then one, I would have peri­ods of time (though they got shorter and shorter) when I would think I was fine for time. More than fine, that I had too much time. And then things would re-align a lit­tle or I would think of one more thing I hadn’t attended to, and sud­denly time would be the one thing I had nowhere near enough of. And since that came in fits and starts, there are some tiny details that got my full atten­tion and got done to a fare-thee-well, and other impor­tant things that got done too fast or left undone.

    The pace sped up and up and up, with mis­takes or with­out them, with guilt or with­out it, with panic or with­out it.

    And then you get to that moment when you actu­ally leave the house. You put all the bag­gage in the car, you take your last look, and you go. Know­ing that things were left undone, with some con­fi­dence that you took care of most of the impor­tant stuff. But in any case, it’s just plain past the time when you can take care of any­thing else. There’s noth­ing for it. You leave.

    Dri­ving to the air­port for a big trip is one of the qui­etest times I know. You see all the things around, but you’re already not part of it. Other peo­ple are going to work, kids are going to school, and you don’t have any­thing to do with that any­more. You start to look at the city you live in as a stranger would. There’s increas­ing busy-ness, anx­i­ety, stress on one side of a vaca­tion and (hope­fully) there’s hap­pi­ness and refresh­ment for your soul when you get to it. But in the mid­dle is just quiet. You’re between worlds and aren’t quite account­able to either one. (Which is the kind of impres­sion that lets me belt out “Delilah” with my Tom Jones CD. The week­day Grace could never do that.)

    Any­way, as I say … maybe that’s just me.


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    May 21st, 2005 | Grace | 1 Comment |

One Response and Counting...

  • QC 05.21.2005

    It’s not just you.

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