Eblo

Another Breakdown

It hit me again today. There are a lot of reasons.

His 30th birthday should be next Tuesday. I've been working with some others on a secret project to try to mark that event, but it's slow, frustrating going, and I have literally been losing sleep over it. Lots of it, so that doesn't help, obviously.

In working on this 'thing,' I've maintained a cool distance from the emotional significance of what I've been doing and why - like a surgeon operating on his or her own child, perhaps. You know it's going to hit you like hell later, but for now, you get through what has to be done. Well it hit me today.

On my drive in to work, I was feeling pretty nostalgic in general. A B-52's song reminded me of an old girlfriend. A reuniting outing several years back was thwarted by a big snowstorm. Who knows, maybe we'd have gotten back together. Maybe not, but perhaps a meeting would have had some kind of negative impact on my relationship with A. My life changed, at least in a small way by a big snowstorm. A big snowstorm. A big snowstorm.

Yeah, we're supposed to have a big snowstorm today, in fact it was already coming down on my drive in, while I was thinking. And the thoughts lead to Mike. He was killed in a big snowstorm. The last time I saw him - that many of us saw him - was for his birthday dinner. That day, there was a big snowstorm.

While sitting around the tables shoved together upstairs at The Firehouse in Evanston, I looked at Mikey for one of the last times and jokingly said, "I hope you appreciate we all risked our lives to get here tonight!" He assured me, in his flip but genuine way, that yes, he most certainly appreciated it. A week later, he risked his life to visit a friend for a Monday Night Movie Night in yet another big snowstorm. We all fared much better on his birthday - 2 hour drive to Evanston and all.

But it wasn't the snow, or the idea of lives changed/altered/shattered by weather, nor reflecting on the project that did me in. Again, it was a song. This time, R.E.M. One little line from "Leaving New York,"

Well doesn't that just sum it up. And with that, I wept. And sung. And drove through the beginnings of a big snowstorm.

A few addenda:

1. Two songs after "Leaving New York," as I was parking my car at work, "The Outsiders" started up :
   You took me to the restaurant where we first met
   
   You knocked a future shock crowbar upside my head

   First met. Last met. Crowbar. Lead pipe. Now I'm supposed to work?

2. A coworker of mine, on days like this, often brings up the episode of The Simpsons in which a newscaster declares, "The Weather Service has upgraded Springfield's blizzard from 'Winter Wonderland' to a 'Class III Killstorm'." He likes to describe the graphic of a snowman wielding an icicle. Typically, I can shrug it off. Today I wanted to shove an icicle in his eye.