Bundled Up In Blankets

Drove by Steepleton General, our new hospital, today. It is the place I may just croak in if I do not get out of Steepleton before it is too late.

There was a man and a woman at the edge of the parking lot getting some air. Hospital air smells like Death. The woman was in a wheel chair, all bundled up in blankets. She did not look too fucking happy. The man, probably her husband, was behind her and the chair looking off into nowhere.

It was a scene that was happy and sad at once; a scene I quickly dismissed from my mind until after I had eaten dinner, heard the latest news about the Canucks on the television and had six beer. As I opened beer number seven the scene from the edge of the hospital parking lot re-played itself in my in-house movie projector; the same movie projector that plays pornographic Anne Murray films. The Whips 'n' Furs Cinema.

The sadness on the couple's faces told me they were happy to have stuck it out together in the face of much adversity over a period of many decades. If life is a book they knew they were reading the chapter where one of the characters gets buried. The couple had put down the book because they knew what they were about to read and were not ready to read those pages just yet.

I would like to go out with a drink in my hand. That is a lie. I would like to go out with a drink in each hand. Too bad you do not usually get to write your last chapter.