Life Carries On

Life carries on. That's the first thing that anyone in this world needs to know--life carries on. Mick is sitting by the fire, grandma is drinking some tequila thing, mom is cooking, dad is watching ESPN.

People have died, people have gotten sick, but most of the time, ninety nine percent, they-I hate to say it-forget about it. I walk around and see the countless people, everyone, and know that they will all die.

All of them. And I know that it might not be...right to think that, that it probably isn't even humane to say that, but it's true. And it should hurt, but it doesn't.

This moment is one anchor in a long line of unsteady waters, just a simple family sitting together watching television. Friends over, secrets somewhat forgotten. It's all unbelievably endless.

Mick will go back to his home far away, Daniel and Julia will go and travel and go to whatever home they have left after nineteen seventy nine. Grandma will go back to her place where I will see her increasingly sometimes amount, and mom and dad will return to their perch of adult responsibility.

One, two, three, maybe four years will pass and we will regroup together again. In a settling similar to this. One of us may die, two even, some of us will be unhappy, it may be a different house, but it's completely inevitable that we will be together like this again.

I look around at all the faces. Dan is...I don't even know. Drunk, or something. He's stuck in the past and you can tell. Mick is slipping in and out of his "old" life. The no worries type thing, and into this new terrible universe. Dad is seeing himself in me or something, in a sense that I don't even want to figure out. Emma has this whole life ahead of her, and it's so close. She'll be above us soon. Mom is holding us all together, being strong because she has to.

And I don't even know what to feel.

I, Chris Huntington, can barely even feel anything anymore.

I'm supposed to have a sense of where to go, what to do but I don't have that anymore. If I ever had it. Every time an idea comes I take it and I make through it about what...a week? And then I'm lost again.

Lost and then found for a few seconds with people like these.

It's time to say our goodbyes, and I'm sad. Really sad. I know the tensions, the agony and the hope for another visit that are going on this time. Four years ago, things were different, but now, we'll be moving on.

By the time that we all see each other again, Emma may have graduated. Someone may have moved. Locations lost. Someone may have...died. I know all of this, so all I can muster is a vague goodbye to all of them with a hug and a kiss.

Outside this door, Mick can return to his old life for a while. But the time he has in it will be exceedingly shorter from visit to visit from now on. Outside this door, Daniel and Julia will go and relive the glory days.

Outside this door, everything will change.

Outside this door, life carries on.