It's a beautiful day
I’m sorry that I can’t be with you right now
You don’t have to wait for me
Every minute I love you
Every day It fucking Hurts
I go to visit my dying uncle and I bring him pies. The sky is blue the trees are turning a bright orange and it is the most beautiful day of my life. The leaves on the trees are as orange as the sweet potato mash on the Shepherd’s pie.
I press the elevator button in the lounge. It is flooded with sunlight. The shiny beige floor stone with patterns from the 80s sparkle back at me and warm my body. I see my full reflection for the first time in weeks in the mirrors that line the walls. I don’t look half as bad as I’ve imagined. The elevator takes a long time, the female maintenance worker is skittish and can’t stand still as she’s waiting. The door opens and there, inexplicably, 5 well-dressed New England women over 55 standing inside, apparently not a single one of them getting off at the bottom floor but all going up together with me. They’re all wearing thin pink lipstick on their half smiling open mouths, looking at me as if I’m Joe Biden about to make a speech about eating children. They watch me excitedly, eyes wide open. This makes me feel Meaningful and Young. It’s a beautiful day.
I bring my uncle two pies, the second option a mediterranean pie. He shrugs at the word “mediterranean”. The Shepherd’s pie is more his speed. He eats half the plate and whispers rumors about the family, his voice like a piece of paper. Complains about his sister who called that morning to complain about the opening hours of a store in her town in Maine following the shooting. He said that he almost hung up on her. He’s a sensationalist, just like my grandmother was. Stores closing to mark the start to years of communal grieving is not only an appropriate disaster response but also a national tradition that must be honored.
My uncle has been dying for years. Both him and my late grandmother have had the same problem, where they doze off during the day and then struggle to sleep at night. He tells me that he was sitting at the same table that we’re sitting at now at 1:30am that morning, drinking coffee. Can you imagine. It opens a depth in my stomach to picture him sitting at his table in the dark when it’s too early to make phone calls, tell my aunt about his ailments or wish someone a happy birthday. I can handle late nights because I still have a heart made of steel, but I wonder what it’s like to be Uncle Mike, wide awake at his table at 1:30am on an unusually hot October night.
My uncle’s smoking might have saved him from dying of cancer. He has had stage four cancer for four years. I find this aspirational and ask him about it. He says “I do not smoke outdoors”, and that he won’t smoke while I’m there. At least he only smokes indoors. Then he urges me to direct any questions about his cancer to my aunt, his safekeeper. I love her for storing all the chronic details of our family but worry that she takes care of the people in her life a little too much.
After eating, my uncle retires to his room to smoke a peach cigar, $3.25 a pack. Then he falls asleep, leaves me sitting alone at his table in his sunny elderly housing apartment, wishing it was mine.
Before he falls asleep I hear zaps of different tv channels from his bedroom, combined with zaps of information from my social media scroll. I register this, I feel close to him, both perceiving the world through zaps, half-noticing
Two days later it’s a Sunday and I’m in the car on my way back to my city-life-apartment-job. I listen to U2. This fall has rendered me a female version of U2; sappy, clingy, poorly mastered, heartbroken. A British android circling through emotions and responses. I don’t know. It’s my parents favorite band. We’d listen to it in the car when I was a kid and it makes me think about their love. I don’t know what I’ll be in spring. Hopefully there’s another side.
I stop at Costco on my drive back. Inside, Everything is Radiant. I wish I was walking around Costco with you, taking in all the large TVs, sound systems and snippets of conversation between staff and family. As Naomi Klein describes, ironically enjoying places like Disney Land is today’s only true radical freedom. There are no unbranded public places left. Instead, I make a voice memo on my phone as I walk through the layers. I can’t find the product that my company just launched in any of the aisles. I wanted to take a photo, it has the photos I styled on the box. I look it up online, turns out it’s not in stock in Yonkers.
Apparently you need a shopping membership to shop here. That’s not how I remember it. I’m watching all the people and families shop and push carts of fantastic deals and among them the 2 cartons of 5 dozen eggs strapped together with plastic that I used to like getting here when I was a chubby college sophomore. The families eat hot dogs together after checkout. I feel like I’m really missing out. Membership costs $60 dollars and I have to return the half eaten plastic box of mega grapes back to the cashier.
I’m sorry I’m not ready
I’m sorry I’m so incomplete
Tomorrow I will wake up and I will be good at my job. It’s not enough. I promise that I’ll change something, I’ll make something better than this web site. Thanks for reading.