Sudden Death Make Out Session

While leaving Wal-Green's I notice that the couple next to me in the Cutlass Supreme is making out. She is in the driver's seat and he is leaned over, over all that junk in the middle--the gearshift, the cupholders, the cd compartment, and they are kissing with their eyes closed and I can't help thinking about how much I'd like to press my body against someone else for a little while.

I was at Wal-Green's buying a sympathy card. I am getting to an age where people I know are dying more often and sometimes I can't help but see life as this huge cliff and we are all in this line that is the order everyone will die in. It takes your whole life to get to the edge of it, and then, that's it, you go over. Maybe I should think of death as a huge rollercoaster, and you wait your whole life ot get on. Grandpa just got on, now there's only eight people in front of me because death should be by age, Grandpa is the oldest he goes on first. There is no end of the line because people just keep on lining up, someday my kids will be behind me in line and my sister's kids. It's the main attraction, the ride of your life, death is.

This sympathy card was for an ex boyfriend's family. They all seemed stupid, or insincere, and I felt sincerely bad for his family. I noticed that there was a new section in the gift card aisle. The African-American section. I looked through all the sympathy cards for white people and then I checked out the sympathy cards for black people. They were next to the cards entitled, "Our People." They were basically the same because grief crosses cultural and color lines I suppose. They all said something about being sorry for the loss, that the person was special, that they should focus on the memories, that they should think of all the great things they'd done in their life.

When I hear about someone dying I always say, "I'm sorry." This is if it's the friend or family member of a friend or family member. And I am sorry. Now, if it is a member of your family or a friend of yours that dies you say different things. When my Grandpa died I said, "Okay," when my dad called and told me. I was prepared for it. He had one foot in the car of the rollercoaster for a long time. When my mom called and told me that my Grandma died I said, "What!?" and when Dom told me that Nick died I said the same thing. Even though I had heard them very clearly but it's like saying the words makes your world break into millions of little pieces and your tongue swells up so all you can do is look around and not speak, start to pick up the pieces.

Last night I got drunk with my sister for the first time in a long time and it seemed like everything she said was soaked in sentiment and seriousness. She said that we were lucky to have a multi-generational family. That we were closer to our grandparents than other people. That is was a good thing, but also bad, because now they are dying.

"Our mom grew up on a farm, " she said. I wasn't sure what it had to do with being multi-generational, maybe she was saying that things, through out our lives, change so much. She probably meant it like, nothing's impossible, because she kept on saying these normal things in a way that made them sound so heady.

"The only thing I love more than models are diaramas. You get all the spacial demension sensations of a model with a lot more detail. I wish I could just live in a miniature world."

Couldn't we be living in a miniature world now and not even know it? Somewhere out there are giants looking at us-- making out in cars, walking on the street, buying hamburgers and thinking of how cute we are because we are so small.