A Day Exactly Like Another

The emergency medical team transported her body out of the deafening cafeteria on a stretcher rolling her from Queens to infinity. She’s dead, could she be? And the shock was evidently reciprocating between two individuals. Two individuals out of the crowded arena of onlookers, yet it was only us that saw.

I was not surprised. It was not surprising to me that a person could literally die, terminate, cease to be, stop living, and observers can go on to finish their hearty meals. Laughter, and boisterous jokes continued to sprinkle the air with lightness despite the obvious gravity of the moment. A paradoxical display of two extremes, and I could not decipher which feeling was real. Was she dead? Could it be so?

I was questioning her viability; rather I should have questioned her callous audience. Could we really be so detached that a person dying in front of our eyes cannot shake our hypnotic infatuation with ourselves? Perhaps she was dead, and even in her death she could not distract for a moment the people around her. The same people that found much to engaging their slice of pizza to share that indulgent instant with another human experience. Imbibed by their bubbling caffeinated beverages, was it too much work to shift their gaze for a seconds time to something other than themselves? So alluring it must be to get lost in ones own vanity.

It was a dark moment magnified by man’s seduction with oneself.

It was a chilly February afternoon, cold for more reasons than the weather. I found their icy stares, and hollow smiles reflecting the chilling reality of our plight. I could not grasp the concept, and struggled to shake the feelings of despondence. After all, my eyes were open to the tragedy. The devastation became less about the life lost, and more about our dead hearts. It was apparent to me that the crowd had so relentlessly distanced themselves from the possibility of death, that they were rendered incapable of even acknowledging it when they saw it. Even death could not distinguish this day from any other for them; it was a day exactly like the others.

Perhaps she was not dead, or maybe she wasn’t there at all. Perchance the girl just fainted, I hope so. Dead or alive, it is about time we reacquainted ourselves with the inevitability of death, the one certainty that humanity can agree on.