Today is not a good day. It’s four days after Christmas.The sun has gone into hiding again and I’ve got more things to do than I have time to do them. I decide I need to get out of the house so I take a trip to the grocery store and then to White Castle for some sliders. I was near a White Castle last night, got a whiff and the crave for my semi-annual splurge kicked in.
At the grocery store at 1 o’clock in the afternoon are a bunch of old people. I don’t know if it’s seniors day or what but I’ve never noticed so many old people in the grocery store. They’re shuffling around, bent over. I’ve never wanted to get old, I especially don’t want to get old now. The thought of living another 20 or 30 years is enough to send me into immediate depression and I already wasn’t having a good day. I leave the store and head to White Castle. I don’t go often and I’m pretty sure the last time I was here was with Shayna because Ty won’t eat their hamburgers and Kayla doesn’t eat beef. I think of Shayna as I order my six sliders. I think of the first time I took her to White Castle. It’s a story we have told over the years. It was just Kayla and Shayna and I. Shayna was only five years old, but I remember it like it was yesterday. As I’m eating my sliders I’m getting more melancholy by the minute. Maybe I won’t come back to White Castle anymore. These might be my last ones. I’ve been eating White Castle sliders since I can remember, but I won’t ever be able to eat them again without thinking of Shayna.
I get in the car to head home and on the radio comes The Carpenters song Superstar. Karen Carpenter can move me to tears on a good day, but today the tears just start flowing. I think of how Karen has already passed. Lucky. Then, comes George Harrison up next. George has already passed. I want to be where they are. I’m just bawling in the car now. It’s been a long time since this has happened. Sometimes it seems like the tears are over, but I don’t worry about how many tears there are or when they come anymore. They come when they come.
I decide I need to put my head down, stop thinking about decades out and just focus on getting through the day. One more day.
