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experiences that make our heart swell to sizes we didn’t even know could happen without an explosion. Other times are profoundly sad, taking us to depths that make that same heart feel as if it is crumbling away into dust that will then slip into our veins and grind away our cells until everything in there is nothing but a pointless, useless mush. I have endured all of that and everything in between. That is what makes us the beings that we are. Turtles feel some of that, sure. Squirrels and lady bugs and grass and clouds, too. But the full experience, the rainbow of our senses combined with what we think is the knowledge and understanding of it all, that is what it is to be human.”
I stood there listening while holding an old sign for Ofren’s Bakery, a local business that I’m told baked all my birthday cakes when I was a kid. Paul’s cousin still owned the place.
“Okay, you had this life, this full, human life that you’re still in the middle of,” I stammered as I tried to comprehend his message. “But why does that mean your best option at this moment is to turn away from the accumulated evidence of all that and let someone else be the one who removes it from your life? I don’t want to get all philosophical or psychological, or whatever, on you, but aren’t you kind of ignoring and running away from something this way?”
He laughed. It started with a chuckle, the kind that comes out as one quick blip from the gut and can end there. But then the second one happens and it builds on itself, rolling up and up and up until it’s hard to stop. He pushed sunglasses up on top of his head and he cleared away a tear that slipped from his eye. His cheeks blazed red with a combination of sunburn and cheer. It was contagious and I couldn’t help but join too. I had to put the sign down so I didn’t drop it. After a minute or so we both got a hold of ourselves (delayed by a false stop that descended again into laughter when we made eye contact). He took a big sigh and smiled at me in the kind way of a proud grandmother.
“Maybe I just don’t want to stand and die for hours,” he said.