Road Kill

        "The way we deal with death depends on how its imagined for us beforehand, by our parents and the people who surround them and what happens to us early on. And if we believe properly in death - the way we actually believe in taxes for instance - and did not insist on thinking that we did have it beat.... Instead, we believe the lie that death, unlike taxes, can be postponed indefinitely and we spend our lives defending that belief. Some people .... like me, for obscure reasons, see the lie early for what it is, fake it for awhile and grow bitter and then go beyond bitterness to ... to what? To this, I suppose. Cowardice. Adulthood."
                                 quote from .. The Sweet Hereafter by Russell Banks


Yup, thats cancer
ya, I knew it was
You seem pretty calm about it
Oh well, no big deal. People die from strep throat.

And so the lighthearted conversation flips through the moment like turning the pages of a comic book. You quickly glance over the pictures drawn out on a few pages and there it is - your life. Or the way you sometimes want to imagine it. You don't really have to read the words to get a sense of whats happening. Hell, you don't even have to try to read between the lines. Its all there. It can even be in black and white,  just shooting by, pictured pages, one day after the other.

Even puke can be simple. That groggy feeling when you wake up, like a cloudy day .... another maritime morning. The headaches lingering on, picking up momentum like the slow increase of traffic sounds . Its just another day. Pages flipping by. And then the release over the toilet.

I'm sure a lot of people feel the same way. Stuck in traffic, crawling along, and there, another accident. You turn your head, poor thing. You keep on driving. Another black and white picture.

Except for the blood. Which instantly and completely throws me for a loop. There it is, splashing on the toilet rim mixing bright red with the black and white of my comic book day. The common debris floating in the bowl but now with deep crimson blood mingling with it.

Now I can no longer watch aimlessly at the carnage all over the road. The colour has bolted me out of the comic book as I have to face the fact that it is now me laying on the side of life's highway and my comic book life feels like it has taken an irreversible turn into reality. 
Full of colour.
Full of pain.
Full of fear.