Real cynics aren't born, they're stewed.

[spatch]

This one's really dark, folks.

When you're in a growl and the whole state of affairs sucks golf balls through garden hoses and you're still mad at Zipcar for those insulting "sex vs parking" ads, your favorite entertainment is gonna be thinking ill of other people. IN YOUR HEAD.

Sitting on the T, then, pondering the fates of the happy couples around us. 6 months, tops. He's cheating on her. She's just not into him. Loveless trophy marriage. Ugh, fratboy love.

Then we spot the elderly couple. Together so long they feel comfortable in each other's presence, no matter where they are. Silver-haired, inwardly beaming. Her arm rests over his.

And we stop cold and reflect for just a moment. How can we possibly laugh off all relationships when it's clear just from looking at these two that yes, two people can make it together for so long? And we feel like heels for what we've been doing. And pause to make amends.

Heart attack. In his sleep. It's peaceful. And she goes on.

Comments

[glowkitty]

Wow.

[signsoflife.livejournal.com]

What the hell else is she gonna do? Throw herself on the pyre?

[spatch]

I actually knew a couple who died of natural causes within hours of each other. What I think Vonnegut called a duprass.

[saint-buddha.livejournal.com]

Great response. Ha ha ha ha ha!

[dcart.livejournal.com]

I don't think of surviving and going on as being the same thing at all. But it's pretty common for those long time couples to die within a year of each other, often with the latter of the two being kind of broken after the first one dies.

So, "and she goes on" is kind of ouch-y in that context.

[spatch]

I actually meant it as going on gracefully. It was the best I could do for her in the hypothetical construct.

My grandmother and grandfather celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in early 2000. My grandmother died in August 2000. My grandfather has gone on. He neither drowned in his grief nor forgot all about her. (He did plunge headlong into several Habitat projects, but he's always been rather tireless when it comes to that.) He's just continued to live his life, and he misses her, but he's still got living to do.

[dcart.livejournal.com]

Ah, given the darkness warning on this, I took it exactly the opposite way.

[spatch]

You're welcome to take it however you like, really.

[dcart.livejournal.com]

I like the way you meant it much better than the way I took it.

[signsoflife.livejournal.com]

me too.

[roody.livejournal.com]

I think when I find myself surrounded by couples, more often than not, my thought process is more similar to the "everybody's got a bike but me" scene in Peewee's Big Adventure (not that he says that but you know which one I mean).

[stopword.livejournal.com]

I think that's still a happy ending.

*hopeless optimist*

[spatch]

Perhaps it is.

And I mean that for serious.

[kyree.livejournal.com]

A hopeless optimist, with a LJ name like that? I am dubious...

[stopword.livejournal.com]

Heh, I was given this name in college as a hilarious juxtaposition of dissimilarities. Like nicknaming a large person "Tiny" or something.

[kyree.livejournal.com]

Ah! All becomes clear.

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

The thing is, in some ways that's the beauty of love. Even when it's awful, we live in the hope that this one will work, or that the next one will be better and we keep moving toward that. And once we find it, it's doomed--he could get hit by a bus, she could come down with a rare bone cancer tomorrow. But we whistle in the dark, light a fragile candle, and revel in the joy and beauty of that moment, however long the moment is. All things end. That's rather what makes them worth doing.

[moiread]

Amen.

[dpolicar]

Attachment is the root of all suffering, and all that.

I like it dark.

[mwittier.livejournal.com]

How do you know the Silvers didn't hook up last weekend at some wrinkly flesh swap meet, and that's just afterglow? Or that they're not siblings who waited all of these long years for everyone who might knowingly disapprove to die off, and now they have, so they're incestuously happy at last?

Re: I like it dark.

[jodied.livejournal.com]

OMG.

You win the dark award!

[crankyliberal.livejournal.com]

and she goes on glowing with the inner satisfication of spending a giant insurance check (he worked for one of the last companies to give out benenfits like that) on a new set of living room furniture because she always hated that recliner he insisted on keeping.

[spatch]

She couldn't keep it, anyway, because it wouldn't be right for anyone else to sit in it. Not even the grandkids.

[signsoflife.livejournal.com]

We have Barry's Opa's recliner. Darcy really liked it.

[hemlock-martini.livejournal.com]

What if one of them's a wrinkle-aged RealDoll?

[dogofthefuture.livejournal.com]

Whatever you'd said, "goes on" is what will happen in all of these cases, regardless of the pronoun.

I guess it's only a matter of the precedents.

[bismuthobsidian.livejournal.com]

Sad and beautiful but not dark. My grandparents were married for 60 years and my grandfather just died. My grandmother is coming to visit and she seems to be OK...

Or maybe they were just from out there space and wanted to hide their crazy blue fleshy bits with old people suites...that would be cool unless they eat human toes...then we would all have stumpy feet...