In the autumn of her days

I watched her without focus, bent sideways in the foyer, washing the windows as high as she could reach, her diminutive form working quickly in the cold February night air. The blue-green fluid took longer to dry than usual, fixing into streaky swirls as it decided whether or not to freeze. I sat alone in an empty bay room at a nearby round table, hunched over my Whopper with both hands, worshipping it and the comfort it gave me, adding to nirvana with the occasional fresh hot crunchy and salty fry, no ketchup tonight. My timing had been perfect, late night, few customers, everything made to order. It had been a long day of travel and I was still about half an hour from home.

 

I could only see her from behind as she worked the inside door windows, up on tippy toes. The rest stop's bright lights illuminated her. Her hair, short cropped bleached blond with a couple odd tails bound by rubber bands sneaking out from under her black Burger King ball cap. It was dry and thick, and might be a wig, but I doubted it. Her outline struck a contrast with the late night void that filled the clear cloudless parking lot sky just beyond the doors, her khaki colored shirt splitting the black field of her clean black jeans, the doors, her cap, and the night that threatened to swallow her as she moved to the outside door windows. I watched her, spray, spray, spray, spray, wipe, wipe, wipe, wipe, the pattern broken only by the random customer visibly stymied by the polite way to pass through her handiwork without engaging her as she spread across all eight doors.

 

She stepped inside, turning, and as she walked in, I was captured by how old she was, likely in her late 60's to early 70's, with the patina of a life that had not been easily lived and a hint of scandal. A photograph of her fixed in my mind, clean, tucked in, but a face with too much rouge and blue eye shadow that spoke of an edge of madness, and a broad thick band of breasts in the middle of her body where her waist should be, that had weighed her down and bent her, so out of proportion with her small frame and held in a poorly fitting bra, adding to the caricature she was. She was dulled with age and history, but not by infirmity, and she moved with a grace and strength that had allowed me to think her much younger than she was on first seeing her.

 

She finished her work and I continued to watch her, reaching the bottom of my diet Coke but trying to find that last pocket as she walked past me, casting a simple glance towards me and my gurgling childishness as she pulled off her rubber gloves, and disappeared into the storage room next to the Starbucks. I smiled at her as she passed, but I had the feeling she didn't see me anymore than a piece of the moving furniture that made up her otherwise constant tableau.

 

I sat for a moment shaking the ice in my cup, driving the straw deeper and wondered about her story. When she was younger, had she any idea that one day she would be here, in the autumn of her days, washing windows in an Atlantic City Expressway rest stop in a Burger King uniform? How does one get a job in such an isolated place anyway, and for that matter, how did she get to work? Was she afraid all the time, on the brink of despair, without healthcare, barely in a home? Was she lonely, or loved? Was she safe, warm and happy, and was my growing sadness for her a narrative written only in my own mind? Somehow I felt my story of hovering destitution struck closer to the truth, and my sadness for her deepened. I had become fond of her, for her perseverance, her struggle to live with some dignity, and I wondered if I had somehow failed her.

 

I gathered my holy tray and buried the bones of my meal with reverence into the bin, one last struggle to sip another drop before tossing the cup in after. I walked through the doors, careful to keep my fingers off the glass, out to my car in the nearly empty lot, the few cars sitting together as if for warmth. The chill was reaching for me, and I moved quickly. As I drove back onto the expressway and left her behind, I decided that I would choose a good story for her, and that it became truth for my thinking it. It made me feel better, though I was sure I had somehow failed her...

 

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The meaninglessness of ripples

"Killing myself?", the other asked, not so much because clarification was needed, but because the question was deeper than the asker could know. "What I was doing, what we were doing, was killing me... Some would say that my taking a stand was suicide, since effectively, I am dead by my own hand."

"Speaking out about things you could not change by yourself and being punished for it is not unique", the other noted.

 

"Neither is no one noticing even as they mop up the blood muttering to one another. Self preservation has it merits. Suicide only matters if someone cares that you were sacrificed to your demons. Surely I would care, albeit there are those moments I feel failure overwhelming me, but if no one else cares, does suicide make a sound?"

 

"Of course! Every life has meaning!"

 

"Nothing could be further from the truth. We tell ourselves these lies, and there are so many of them, so that we can feel better about those things we should care about but cannot be bothered to do anything about. Change only comes from pain, small or large, feeling it or moving away from it. Hard change requires hard pain. If I killed myself, being that I am a coward with no need to martyr myself, it would be painless," laughing at his cleverness.

 

"What, you a coward?"

 

"Life is a series of changes that mostly have no meaning in the scheme of things. We fear insignificance, so we are prone to hyperbole. A finger is pulled from a bucket of water. A few ripples, then it was never there, nothing reminds us. When one dies, literally or figuratively, history ripples and one is gone, even if one falls on ones sword, the ripples are no more precious. Why are we surprised to be so easily dismissed?"

 

"Surely you cannot argue that all deaths are equal?"

 

"Of course they are. A thing was living, now it is not. How is not important. Death only has meaning to those who remain alive, and if in essence they too were already dead, then there is no sound in the dying. The dying ripples and then there is nothing."

 

"This is depressing. You are depressing me...", the other offered.

 

"If you were a thinking person, you would already be depressed. The thing is, the way to give life meaning is to celebrate it while it is alive, not mourn it after it has died. We are too busy fighting our meaningless battles for ego and pride, to save face, that we cannot see the value every other person brings to our lives, agreeable or not. If we see in the poverty of another our own shame, we are brought down by it. We deny it, or we lift it up. All too often we make their sadness about us, and we step on their necks trying to keep our own heads above water. The sad thing is, the water barely reaches our knees. If we just stopped and held out a hand we could all be saved."

 

The other sat pensively, hands crossed. "So you do not want to die"

 

"That's what you took from this?"

 

"Sorry?"

 

"And that is why I would not gut myself,"the other said softly, deliberately. "Those who most need to understand it are dead already. I would never want to give that pain to those remaining, struggling to live. That I have meaning in someone's life, beyond the usual kind platitudes, that I might have left some indelible mark for good in their souls, I would not know, but certainly I hope not to have lived without having engendered some meaning. They have never really convinced me I mattered while I am alive, and certainly I will not be convinced when I am dead. But surely my life has had some meaning to someone, however silent and unseen, and more to that, my life has meaning to me."

 

The other did not interrupt at the pause, sat unmoving, a slight ruffling of fabric in the breeze. "I did what I did because I would not sully my history, my being for an inconvenience; yes, to a degree my own pride poisoned me, but I think it a noble pride that some things matter. That no one else cares enough to speak up in spite of the risks cannot be the end of me. They have their reasons, no less real. I would not kill myself because I do not matter, and that I died would not, in the sum of things, matter. That I have figuratively already died, and nothing has changed as the ripples subside, says that this is the truth. One kills oneself in order to force someone else to find their meaning. If they have not found it themselves, how can my dying find it for them? They were lost while I was alive, they will not find their way lead by my corpse."

 

"Many would consider it, suicide."

 

The other took a sugar and set it into the brown, deep tea, allowing a finger to slip under the burning water for a moment, then pulling it free from the pain, watching the ripples run across the top of the teacup, subside, and disappear.

 

"Not enough ripples in it for me... and I am already looking for another cup of tea."

 

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Insignificance

Falling

He never felt quite safe staring at the thread that held him above the darkness. No one heard him. It did not surprise him when it was cut by an unseen hand. There was the intense moment of joy for no longer being dangled, but then quickly a fear that enveloped him thickly suffocated him as he fell. In a moment he was no longer afraid of falling, for that moment had passed, but his profound fear was that he would land poorly... or not at all.

 

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Valentine

The wind drifted and set down upon him,

aloof to the point that he had ceased to exist,

and it stirred him to the understanding

that pain was there to keep him alive,

to wake him and make him want something else.

That he chose to love made it seem

that he did not really understand pain,

or that despite knowing he embraced it anyway.

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Narcissism of faith

The night sky spread expansive

stars shining though its dark weave

an embrace we ignore thinking ourselves grander

than anything else the universe has to offer.

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A mighty girl

She spoke in a voice

the shared dreams of her former selves,

all more and less than the others,

but not one of them

was any less special than she was now.

She had lived a good life

and she was not done living it.

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