Dude, I think my meds might be actually working. The inside of my head is quieter in this moment than it has been in years.

This afternoon my parents and I went out to see my aunt & uncle & my cousin. This was our outdoor socially distanced much belated Christmas, and it was a nice time.

We snagged burgers and milkshakes and onion rings at the Tom Wahl’s halfway between us. The elder generation swapped bottles of wine, and I recieved a book with old annotations in the margins.

Later, we walked down the trail that begins at the old railway bridge by the pasta plant. As we walked, we talked about death and dying, about science fiction and fantasy books and movies, about British TV shows.

I don’t know that I’m free to share the reason we talked about death and dying, but the conversation sure went to some interesting places.

Witches of the Discworld were referenced on multiple occasions – the ones who sit up with the dying and play Cripple Mr. Onion and lay out the bodies in the end. I talked about the first time I experienced death, when my dog was dying and I was 16 and my parents told me they wouldn’t help her go to sleep until I was ready to let go, and I was too young, and I didn’t let her go in time. We talked about hospice care, about the resilience of the people who do that work. We talked about the way people cling to any scrap of life that’s left, sometimes, and how hard it is for loved ones to let people go. We talked about pain, suffering, about the possibility of a difference between a murder and a difficult variety of kindness. We talked about the wish that more people could be somewhere comfortable and familiar in their last moments, instead of spending years in sterile plastic halls, trapped in places where they don’t want to be, like my Grandfather. I don’t know if it was insensitive, but we talked about the last things each person wanted to be aware of in this lifetime. One person says they want to smell baking cookies fresh out of an oven. I decide I’d like to smell the sulfurous smoke of a match that’s just been lighted and blown out. But I’m not too attached to that wish.

We talked about dying, and it was comforting to the person who needed to have that talk.

Later on I was met with incredulity and a tiny bit of lighthearted shaming when I said that I hadn’t read anything from Ursula Le Guin. Funnily enough, I have gotten similar reactions in conversations with every single person I have ever met and liked on Tinder, which I’ll grant you was all of two people, but that has nothing to do with my point. The priorities of the certain items on the reading list have been rearranged accordingly. I also might be borrowing some books.

I’m back in the car right now, and my toes are slowly thawing. Gradually finishing a milkshake.

This evening I’m going to bake an almond cake. ❤

I hope it’s a good night.