The Search for True Meaning in Allentown

We had one of those mornings. At the crack of 4:30, Cat exploded in a variety of meows, mows, and MERRROWRRRS until we woke up and gave him running water from the bathtub he felt he so richly deserved. As we didn’t have to go to work that day, we did as we do most mornings, drink our coffee while contemplating how we can ship Cat off to a more forgiving family. In Argentina, preferably.

As this point in the conversation can take a turn for the dark, we changed the subject to something lighter. We had just bought a new TV stand, and it was sitting in the living room all bright and beautiful. Our TV had been resting on the cedar chest, and in order to use it for the purpose in which it was intended, we had to lift the TV off to open the lid. Not so bad with the current LED, but before these days of lighter televisions, we had an old CRT which weighed roughly 14 tons.

“How long have we had the TV on the cedar chest?” I asked.

I immediately regretted it. The answer to that question was going to be far too depressing.

But that’s how the winter is in the north. It goes on so long that when you think back to a time it wasn’t winter, even that isn’t enough to cheer you up. This winter has been especially dark and cold, and on top of it, the two of us have had weird and annoying health issues. That and Cat’s regular mid-morning assaults on our slumber have made for a rough couple of months.

“We didn’t have it there in Chattanooga,” Laura said. “I think it was when we moved.”

I heard the word Chattanooga and saw a golden opportunity to change the subject. We were married there, and spent our wedding night at a bed and breakfast in town. It had been a long-denied plan of ours to go back to that place, but time and finances conspired against us. It looked like it was going to come together for our 15th Anniversary, but we ended up in Japan instead. No regrets, of course.

“Maybe we could go for our…” I said, and stopped. We looked at each other and had the same thought. The end to that sentence was going to be twentieth anniversary. Four years away.

“I don’t want to wait,” Laura said.

I smiled, “I don’t either.”

I can’t say as I ever thought that much about mortality. It was one of those subjects that was going to be put off for another day, most likely the exact moment where I realize I can’t get out of bed and function like a normal human being.

But the winter makes you question how long you have. The idea that you’ve lived for twelve and a half years with a TV propped up on your cedar chest will do that for you, too. And then, right around Christmas, my eye started messing up on me. Like every good American, I consulted the internet, the repository for all the world’s knowledge, and in its wisdom it has determined that I have either Dry Eye Syndrome or a rare flesh-eating bacteria that will devour my entire head within three days.

I was still around after three days, so that’s good. But the problem hasn’t gone away. Even though I’m almost certain that this is not how I’m going to leave this Earth, the question of when and where and why that’s going to happen looms larger.

One day a long time ago, Laura and I had a conversation about people we knew who were older, and how it seemed that one person we knew was older than the other, even though Person A was much younger than Person B. The answer to this was easy: attitude.

As we sat in the living room in the morning, watching Cat wander in from the dining room and wondering what size box is appropriate to ship a mammal to Buenos Aires, Laura said: “I want to wake up every morning, and celebrate the fact that I’m alive”

It took me right back to what we talked about years ago. The fact of the matter is, we all hit this moment in our lives where we are faced—to a large degree or a lesser one—with our own mortality. When that time comes, we really have two choices: we can either mope around and tell everybody we’re going to die soon, or we can wake up in the morning and enjoy the fact that we did, in fact, wake up that morning.

Because of a Cat.