A brief interruption before we move on...

So while I’m positive that this blog is sure to become a veritable clearinghouse for everything depressing and gay, something happened to me today that I feel compelled to share first.

I think I may have watched an elderly man pass away at the Harris Teeter. And I’m going to be horribly insensitive and talk about how this is affecting me for a moment.

It was so weird to see, not least of which because it’s not the kind of thing one expects when one goes grocery shopping. I was just standing at the U-Scan, u-scanning, and there was this elderly man sitting on a chair next to a shopping cart at the front of the store. He starting falling over in his chair, and a cashier and a customer went over to help him. Over the course of several minutes, the man went from being responsive and talking to... well... not. At the end, the customer who was helping was saying he couldn’t feel a pulse (and checking both the man's neck and wrist) and the manager was calling the paramedics. And then I left.

I felt bad about leaving, but, in all honesty, there’s not much I could have done. I don’t know first aid, they had already called an ambulance, the customer who was helping seemed to know what he was doing... I also didn’t think that having a bunch of people standing around gawking was helpful to the situation. So I left.

So I walked out to my car, feeling overwhelmingly odd, and as I drove home, I started to get sad, for lack of a better word. That poor man… who came to Harris Teeter to do some grocery shopping… and it ended up being the last thing he’ll ever do. And how depressing it seems to endure your final moments in a busy supermarket, surrounded by strangers. It just seems like such a lonely, impersonal way to go.

I’m projecting here, of course. It would be sad for me, not necessarily for him. Maybe it wasn’t lonely for him.

For all I know, for that matter, maybe the paramedics arrived and were able to revive him. Maybe the customer checking his pulse didn’t really know how, and was feeling in the wrong spot(s). What I do know is how it looked when I left, which was not good… and how he looked as the whole thing was happening.

I don’t know if I’ve ever actually witnessed someone pass away. I’m not saying that so that anyone feels bad for me, because that’s entirely not the point. But I can still see the whole chain of events clearly in my head. And I think they’re going to stay with me for a while.

Anyway, I hope he’s ok… though, to be honest, I’m not optimistic. And I hope that, wherever he is (and I’m not about to start that particular debate), if it was as lonely for him as it would have been (would be) for me, at least he knows that someone is remembering him and thinking about him.

That’s all. Back to the usual misanthropy.