The real crux of the ZA is present in what I saw next. This woman's two sons, who she'd birthed and raised up, spent countless numbers of hours tending and loving, were pounding on the glass and trying to come inside to eat both of us, and we had to decide what to do. I suppose if I had to do it over again I'd have stepped back out into the yard and shoveled them around a bit. I guess that's what I was supposed to do. I kind of briefly forgot my raison de etre for existence and panicked. "Shit! Shit! Shit!" I said, turning back towards Bernice to see what she was doing.
Bernice had taken my moment of indecision to sneak around to the door and lock herself out. I watched her approach her two sons, walking slowly towards them with her arms raised, like it was straight out of a movie. You know what they always tell you in these kind of scenarios is that you just have to realize that your loved one is gone that you're doing them some kind of favor by putting them out of their misery. But I can tell you, from up close. It is all just very sad, which I suppose is one of the main things the ZA has in common with our normal everday life. It is just terrifically sad. I guess the difference is that in our real life we are just disconnected, or riding around in a car listening to a sad song when it suddenly occurs to us that kids are fucking starving in Africa all the time or addicted to crank, and here we are, driving to work misting up to some stupid song, and after the ZA, the deaths are right on your front door. I don't know if life has fundamentally changed. I'm not one of those types who thinks individuals or our species are capable of making any sort of rapid change. I think we do things slowly and poorly.
She died quickly.
