The Recently Dead; Waning Crescent Harvest Moon

Dawn is just a promise as I finally pull off into a rest area along Route 90. There are three cars in the parking lot and as I move into the building, the lights and music assault me; too loud, too bright.

A toilet in the women's room keeps flushing itself on automatic pilot, but otherwise I am alone, in silence, in the woman's room.  In the stall, I wonder if this is how the recently dead feel upon entering the afterlife. Does U2 sing too earnestly about a beautiful day?  Are the recently dead agitated by a flickering fluorescent overhead light? 

Heading back to my car, it strikes me as unfair that my spouse, the Buddhist, will be in Chicago before my car has crossed into New Jersey. Yet, this arrangement was my suggestion. I thought we could extend our vacation by one day. I thought we would continue to have fun. I suggested he fly from Logan International in Boston while I finished the drive solo.

But something shifted once we left Maine.  Yesterday found us in suspended animation, waiting for the real world to unfurl before us.  Waking this morning at 4 a.m. and dropping him at the airport at 5 a.m. was dreamlike and hazy. Driving on 90 in the dark felt surreal. Anubis, are you near?  Is this reality or the veil?

Yet, here I am, the awakened, pulling back onto the highway, the rising sun and waning crescent Harvest moon sharing the sky.

I take a breath...the real world rushing into me.  Everything, even vacations,  eventually finds its end and I've got many miles to go.