airport pickup

At the appointed time today, I stood up from my desk chair and walked out the door towards the parking garage. I stopped for a moment to greet coworkers eating lunch. It seemed so normal. How could such tiny, harmless actions add up to this huge, life-changing event? How could something I've done dozens of times be such a final and permanent end to an era, this particular time?

The highways unfurl behind me in the heat, flapping in the wind from the windows being all the way down. The music is a protective bubble of noise inside the car. I keep going, the car keeps going, the whole thing marches on unstoppable. I wonder why my feet don't slam the brakes, why the scene isn't played in reverse.

I switch highways over the river. The past ten years have been so sweet, and I am speeding toward their definitive end point. It's so mundane. There's no point to fighting it. The end is inevitable in all things, and it's a whimper rather than a bang.