Setsuled's Journal

At around 6:30pm on Tuesday night, I decided to pop over to Starbucks before it was time for Buffy the Vampire Slayer to start.

While I was getting out of my car, I received a voice mail. It was Ted, my biological father, informing me that there had been a death in the family.

I had listened to this voice mail through the nearest pay phone to the Starbucks, which had been on the other side of the trolley tracks. Dodging an oncoming trolley on my way back, I tried to analyse the situation.

What could it mean, that he refrained from telling me who had died? I decided that it probably meant my grandmother Ruby Dean, who’s Ted’s mother, and who sends me money to help pay for my school and basic needs, had passed away.

She’s always been very generous to me and as I got back in my car, I thought to myself how horrible it would be if she was dead. But, I also reminded myself, I didn’t actually know if it was her. Any relative Ted would have mentioned would most likely be one of my relatives in Tennessee, of which there are roughly a thousand.

I didn’t have Ted’s number with me—unable to call him back, I elected to simply drive to his house to find out who had died.

As I went along, I slowly grew more anxious, and became more filled with dread. I thought about how I had just registered for classes a few hours earlier, and about how I would probably need to drop them so that I would be able to attend the funeral in Tennessee. I thought, I admit, about how I wouldn’t be able to pay for classes, or nearly anything anymore, if my grandmother was dead. I wondered if I had ever properly expressed to her how grateful I was that she has effectively enabled me to go to school and work on my novel without also being forced to carry a job to financially support myself—that she did this even though I’ve only seen her on rare, sporadic occasions throughout my life.

I kind of clung to the Smiths album I was listening to as I began contemplating how horrible it is that people die so visibly unfulfilled.

As Death of a Disco Dancer was reaching its somewhat oppressive instrumental climax, I pulled up to the curb outside Ted’s house.

As it turned out, the message was about an aunt I barely knew who had actually been dead for four or five months, and I had already known about it.

I left there at around 7:30pm, very agreeably listening to Girlfriend in a Coma.

I reached home at 7:56pm, in time for Buffy.