The Man Before The Desert

Wind brisk as it ruffled my hair

I scootched my chair a bit closer to my fire ring

Crackling brightly with the scrap pine I'd thrown inside

My feet were hot

My midsection fairly comfortable

My head was cold

That's the way life is

I think to myself

Never quite perfect

Everywhere

All the time

Over my fairly comfortable midsection I held the piece of paper

The piece of paper that defines how my life has changed

A kind of summary for all the tests and doctor's office visits I've been making

All over the last three months

There seems to be a lot of Latin on the page

And symptoms

And expected outcomes

Latin Latin Latin, blah blah blah

Loss of motor function

Progressive nerve damage

Negative prognosis

Within twelve months time.......

I'd failed my yearly physical three months ago

I still couldn't believe it

The doctor couldn't believe it either

He claimed all the other doctors

Well, they should have caught onto this years ago

I'm just as glad that they didn't

After almost twenty years of flying

I'm grounded

Officially

Permanently

Grounded

With a capitol 'G' my friend

Can't have people like me flying things around in the wild blue

What with the possibility of whatever new thing my body might do

To betray me

Which is what this felt like

Betrayal

I'm almost glad I never had children now

It would kill me to not see them grow and have kids of their own

I haven't told my ex-wife

And I probably won't

Why bother her

Pity?

I think I'll give enough of that to myself

Fuck that

She'd left me for the gold standard reason of my profession

The AIDS

Aviation Induced Divorce Syndrome

It's pretty common

We like to pretend it's just about the airplanes

But it's all the time away from home

All the missed holidays

The missed dinners

The interrupted vacations

She's happier now

So I'm not going to tell her

What I am supposed to do

Is get rid of all my stuff

And move into an assisted living community

I had several pamphlets in the box next to my chair here

But I've been putting off looking at them

I'm barely forty

I don't want to go into what equates in my mind as an "Old Folks Home"

I toss the medical summary sheet into the fire

It blackens up very satisfactorily

Leaving a dark ghost image of it's former self

Almost

I can make out the words still

Standing just a tiny bit darker than the ash that used to be the paper

I poke it with a stick

Smiling as it falls to pieces

I grab the box

Full of the rest of my medical bullshit

The pamphlets

Some get well cards

I throw it on the fire

A shower of sparks goes up with the smoke

Into the night sky

I follow it up with my eyes

Settling my head back against my chair

The moon shines at my face

Hazy as seen through the hot smoke from my fire

I wish I could go there

Or do anything real

Interesting

Something they could tell tales about

I haven't done anything like that in my life so far

Being born is pretty common

Normal schooling

Normal relationships

Became a pilot

Still pretty normal

Flew for several small airlines before landing a job at Eastern

Normal normal

Married, divorced

Normal, normal, normal

Now I'm going to die

All perfectly normal

I close my eyes

Listening to the fire

Baking my feet

Freezing my head

And I think

I'd say daydream

But it's night

So call it what you will

The moonlight shines through my eyelids

I can't get away from it

Now there's a thought

My eyes open

I stare at the moon some more

I might just have enough time to do something like that

Have to sell all of my stuff though

Good thing I was going to do that anyways

I sit up and poke the fire some more

Laughing lightly at the sparks raised

Like angry little hornets

Flying in a swirl

High fast and hot

To the Moon