the end is not yet

Two people from Christa's Mississauga circle of friends died last week. He was 27, the papers said she was 21 - though I thought at the funeral her dad said she was 20. They were a couple. A car turned into the path of their motorcycle.

I'd met them only three times over the last two years, yet it upset me. Her death more than his, which seems odd because they were together each of the three times. Probably because Christa was closer to her than to him and probably because we went to her funeral and not his. And maybe stupidly because her name was Chrissy, short for Christina (and similar to Christa).

What I can't believe is that it keeps hitting me. She's dead. It doesn't compute.

I don't know why I can't believe that. It's the same way I've reacted to any of the deaths of people I've known, even if the intensity of the reaction is naturally less than some of them.

It's not a lack of maturity about death, or a lack of experience with it. I think it's just the way I - and probably others, though I won't speak for anybody else - react to it. Like the person who has died was a part of one story and that the story changed or ended without any kind of transition or climax or even a conclusion. One second this, the next something quantitatively different and intangible that is utterly, and by definition, inconsistent with everything that came before.

It doesn't seem to matter whether the people I know who have died were young or old, healthy or ailing. It doesn't matter whether the death was sudden or expected. Nor does it matter how intensely their passing affects me. That sense of a new reality constantly jarring with what came before is always the same to me.

Yes, I recognize that I'm not talking about Chrissy anymore. Really, that's as it should be since I didn't really know her and have no right to go on about her when there are so many people who did know her and who are devastated and shattered by her passing. I won't talk about her, but I will talk about how I'm reacting as a result of her death.

What gets me the most about this death is how much it scares me. It could have been Christa, or my sister or anybody. Hell, it could have been me. It's not that this taught me the fragility of life, or instilled an awareness of how death can come unexpectedly. I've been dealing with that constantly since I watched that guy die in a car crash when I was fifteen. For years, every time I say goodbye to someone, there's a part of me that whispers this could be the last time. Either because I die or they do.

What I'm saying is that death is never far from my mind, though 90 per cent of the time I don't feel anything about it. But ten per cent of the time it scares me or makes me absolutely bloody furious.

This is at the core of my little raging freak out a couple weeks (and two posts) back. As Jer pointed out, I'm only in my twenties.

But who knows how much time I have to do what needs doing?

So apparently there was a television series in the 1984/1985 season called E/R.

It took place in a Chicago emergency room.

It included George Clooney and Jason Alexander in the cast.

It only lasted a season.

It was a comedy.

Why didn't I know this?

A minute ago I was reading an article on The Walrus web-site and planning my journalistic 'career'.

One had little to do with the other. They were just two separate tracks my mind was on.

I was listing the things I need and want to do in my head when I felt an eruption of rage from somewhere deep in my skull. This wasn't mild frustration. It was break-things-with-hands fury. I spun away from the computer because I wanted to break the monitor with the keyboard and away from the desk because I wanted to sweep everything off it and into the cubicle wall.

I ended the swivel with my back to the screen, my hands on my knees and my heart in my throat.

There's just too damn much to do before I die.

Moose may be the culprit in mammoth extinction.

Grizzly-polar bear hybrid.

A ruffed grouse flew into my car yesterday.

It upset me, but I need to write about it. It's what I do to let go of things. Skip this entry if you want. It's long, overwrought, unedited and I'm writing it for myself anyway.

---

Christa and I were on our way back to the city from getting some work done on my car. I was driving, she was in the passenger seat looking somewhere off to the right. We were passing through a lightly wooded area at about 100 km/h.

In my peripheral vision I saw the bird take off like a missile from the ground on the left as we passed where it was hiding. It shot across the road at an angle as I turned my head to watch.

For an instant it looked almost as if the bird was flying along beside me. It was similar in size to a small chicken, with grey feathers flecked with black. I saw its eyes.

A detached part of my brain had time to say "partridge" before the bird hit the door an inch below the bottom of the window as I pulled my left hand off the steering wheel in an instinctive and pointless effort to shield my face from being hit by the bird.

I felt the impact through the car and cried out. Christa asked, "What was that?" I said, "A partridge," and pulled into the first driveway we came to. I tried not to remember kneeling in a ditch over my dead dog so many years ago.

Cars sped past as I looked back at the road behind us. The cars back there were swinging wide into the empty oncoming lane and back again, all at the same part of road. I got out to look at my door. There was somebrown gunk stuck to the door, but no blood and no dent. I'd been sure there'd be a dent.

I didn't know if it was dead. The angle had been oblique enough that I couldn't be sure. What if it had only broken a wing? Or worse, what if it was alive, but dying slowly in agony?

"I don't know what to do," I said.

Cars continued passing.

When the way was clear, I backed out and went back the way we came.

We passed it after a moment, a ball of feathers that cars kept driving around. Christa made a small noise when she saw it. Traffic was too steady to stop on this side, so I drove on and turned around at the next sideroad and went back.

I pulled over onto the wide gravel shoulder beside the bird. It was on the road, about a foot on the wrong side of the white line that edged the pavement. I watched and thought I saw it move once. Wind rustled its feathers, so it was hard to tell. I watched more and couldn't tell if it was alive. Christa watched too and said she thought it was dead. I still wasn't sure.

"I don't know what to do," I repeated. Christa squeezed my hand.

Every car that passed pulled out around the grouse. It hadn't been hit a second time yet.

The button for the trunk release was near my left knee. I pushed it and got out of the car as the trunk flipped up. I went around the back, pulled the rubbermade bin toward me and pulled the lid off. I took out the gloves I keep in case I ever come on an accident and have to wrench open the door of a burning car.

Cars kept passing in a steady stream. I took the gloves off, threw them down into the trunk and waited. Christa was right beside me. Finally there was a break in traffic. I pulled the gloves back on and took the lid of the bin with me. Christa came to the corner of the car to watch.

"Please, don't watch," I said. "I can't..."

I couldn't finish and went toward the grouse instead. I didn't know how to explain that I didn't want to do what I was about to do, that I needed to know it was dead, but that I was afraid it was alive and afraid of hurting it more when I lifted it off the road. I didn't know how to explain that if I knew she was watching I couldn't pretend to myself I wasn't afraid and then wouldn't be able to go through with it.

It's so stupid. If it had been a person, I wouldn't have thought twice. But there's something about an animal's pain that is qualitatively different in my head. A person would recognize me as being there to help. An animal would be terrified because it would see me as a source of pain. At least, that's what I think.

I put the bin lid on the ground beside the grouse and lifted it with my left hand. It was beautiful and limp and soft and delicate and broken and still. I knew then it was dead. I gently eased it onto the bin lid and held it still as I went back around the car to place it in the long grass of the ditch.

That's when I saw its head and the blood and the bone. I stood and turned and walked away. I looked at Christa and the tears started to flow. She came forward and hugged me as another endless stream of traffic passed.

"Mexican President Vicente Fox will sign into law a measure that decriminalizes the possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other drugs for personal use, his spokesman said Tuesday."
- globeandmail.com

Can anybody tell me why drugs are so 'bad'?

(For the record, the only drug I use is alcohol.)

Imagine seeing this on your way home.