Mortality Revisited

I decided today that I needed a good yogic asskicking, so I drove down to Midtown for Camille’s 4:30 class. The class itself was challenging, but there were some newer students there, so it wasn’t quite the asskicking for which I had been hoping. The asskicking came on the way home. On the ramp between 83 north and the beltway, as I was enjoying a set of thoughts better suited for Misbehaving Tuesday, a large deer leaped out from the trees onto the highway. The car next to me swerved, but still hit the deer, sending it over my car, high enough that it didn’t hit me. I swerved to avoid the car next to me, swerved hard again to miss the deer as it landed, and I saw its antler break and skid across the pavement. The deer was trying to stand with its broken body as I passed it.

I think the car that hit the deer kept moving. I couldn’t tell. As soon as I passed the deer and the traffic was back to normal, I fell apart. I was barely able to drive, and there was nowhere for me to pull over until I got to my own driveway. I noticed that the moon was full. I held myself together long enough to get inside without my neighbor seeing the state I was in, then sobbed my guts out all over Scott for another twenty minutes.

Just when I thought I was so tough and centered – I can handle mortality, telling the world my secrets, my dog eating a rabbit, and all the complications in my life – I was totally undone by this. It was one of the most horrifying things I’ve ever seen.

Coincidentally, for the past few days I’ve been thinking about a story a friend told me in college, about driving down a dark road with his friends one night, and hitting a deer. The deer was suffering, but not dead, when they stopped, so one of them broke the deer’s neck to kill it. It gave me a chill when he told me (I was always a little afraid of him), and I can’t remember if it was my friend who killed the deer, or any of the other details. I tried to use it in a short story at some point, but it never quite worked out, and now I can’t remember which parts of the story actually happened, and which details I added when I tried to write it.

Anyway, when I calmed down, sat on the couch, and opened my laptop, the first story in my news feed was something about accordions and Mexican funerals, and it felt strangely fitting. I came back to all of this mortality that has been around me lately – literally and symbolically. The frivolousness has been fun, but I have been running long enough. Even on the way to teach this morning, I was revisiting the idea that death is the only thing that brings meaning to life. On it goes. It wasn’t the asskicking I expected, but I guess it worked.