life is ripped away and you're reborn into an existence of undeath, nothing seems real. Not what's happening to you now. Not what the future holds. Not what you remember of your past. Now is too surreal, the future too bleak, and the past has been inherited and sold and donated and auctioned and stored in a place where you can't be reminded of everything you've lost.
It's even more unreal when the wife and daughter who shared your life are gone. Poof. Like a magic trick. One moment you're in a car driving home from a party and the next, you're a zombie staggering home on the side of the road. Except you have no home. You have no wife. You have no daughter. They've been erased from your existence. No good-bye letters. No keepsakes. No pictures. Nothing to let you know they ever existed. Sometimes you wonder if they ever did. Sometimes you wonder if it was just a dream you were having until you woke up into your present nightmare.
I never saw Rachel's body and I missed her funeral, so I have to take my parents’ word for it that she's buried beneath her headstone under six feet of prime real estate in the Soquel Cemetery. But at least I have a headstone. A marker. Some kind of tangible proof that Rachel existed, that this is what happened to her while I was temporarily dead.
With Annie, there's no proof. Nothing tangible. Nothing Ican point to and say for certain that I know what happened to her. That she's still alive. That she ever existed.
I'm thinking about this as I'm watching a young girl about Annie's age who is staring at me with big, blue O's, her curiosity framed by blond pigtails like the ones Annie used to wear. She's wearing pink pants and pink boots and a pink zip-up sweatshirt with an undeployed hood. All around and behind the little girl, in the periphery that extends a good thirty feet from the park bench where I'm sitting, more than a dozen adults are yelling and screaming, horrified at my presence. Not the little girl. She's less than ten feet away and as calm as the Dalai Lama.
And why shouldn't she be? I'm not hurting anyone. I'm not threatening anyone. I'm just sitting on a park bench with my dry erase board around my neck with the words
Zombies Are People Too
written on it in bold, black letters.
A few of the adults yell at me from their safety zone, threatening me with bodily harm if I so much as touch the little girl. Funny how none of them are brave enough to approach the inner circle and actually rescue the little cutie from the big, bad zombie.
The little girl looks at my face, glances down at my sign, then back up at my face as if she's trying to figure something out. Finally, she points at my chest, at my proclamation of equality, and says, “Is it true?”
I nod.
Before the little girl can ask me another question, her mother sprints in like a rugby player, scoops up her daughter, and carries the little girl away, leaving me alone in my thirty-foot radius of Breather buffer.
Given more time before her mother showed up, I wonder how much progress we could have made. I wonder if the little girl would have sat down next to me. I wonder if I could haveanswered more questions. I wonder if it would have made a difference.
I'm sure the little girl will ask her mother and father about the zombie she saw in the park today and the sign he was wearing around his neck, and she'll ask them if it's true. Are zombies people, too? I'm sure her parents will explain to her that zombies are not people. Zombies are dirty, disgusting creatures and she shouldn't ever touch or trust them. And I'm sure that, as time passes, she'll grow to believe it.
But I'm hoping she'll ignore her parents and think for herself. I'm hoping she'll persuade her friends to think the same way. I'm hoping that eventually I'll be able to sit on a bench in the park without a thirty-foot boundary of fear.
I'm still hoping this when the Animal Control van pulls up.
'm sitting in my room Wednesday night, eating Oreo cookies and
It's even more unreal when the wife and daughter who shared your life are gone. Poof. Like a magic trick. One moment you're in a car driving home from a party and the next, you're a zombie staggering home on the side of the road. Except you have no home. You have no wife. You have no daughter. They've been erased from your existence. No good-bye letters. No keepsakes. No pictures. Nothing to let you know they ever existed. Sometimes you wonder if they ever did. Sometimes you wonder if it was just a dream you were having until you woke up into your present nightmare.
I never saw Rachel's body and I missed her funeral, so I have to take my parents’ word for it that she's buried beneath her headstone under six feet of prime real estate in the Soquel Cemetery. But at least I have a headstone. A marker. Some kind of tangible proof that Rachel existed, that this is what happened to her while I was temporarily dead.
With Annie, there's no proof. Nothing tangible. Nothing Ican point to and say for certain that I know what happened to her. That she's still alive. That she ever existed.
I'm thinking about this as I'm watching a young girl about Annie's age who is staring at me with big, blue O's, her curiosity framed by blond pigtails like the ones Annie used to wear. She's wearing pink pants and pink boots and a pink zip-up sweatshirt with an undeployed hood. All around and behind the little girl, in the periphery that extends a good thirty feet from the park bench where I'm sitting, more than a dozen adults are yelling and screaming, horrified at my presence. Not the little girl. She's less than ten feet away and as calm as the Dalai Lama.
And why shouldn't she be? I'm not hurting anyone. I'm not threatening anyone. I'm just sitting on a park bench with my dry erase board around my neck with the words
Zombies Are People Too
written on it in bold, black letters.
A few of the adults yell at me from their safety zone, threatening me with bodily harm if I so much as touch the little girl. Funny how none of them are brave enough to approach the inner circle and actually rescue the little cutie from the big, bad zombie.
The little girl looks at my face, glances down at my sign, then back up at my face as if she's trying to figure something out. Finally, she points at my chest, at my proclamation of equality, and says, “Is it true?”
I nod.
Before the little girl can ask me another question, her mother sprints in like a rugby player, scoops up her daughter, and carries the little girl away, leaving me alone in my thirty-foot radius of Breather buffer.
Given more time before her mother showed up, I wonder how much progress we could have made. I wonder if the little girl would have sat down next to me. I wonder if I could haveanswered more questions. I wonder if it would have made a difference.
I'm sure the little girl will ask her mother and father about the zombie she saw in the park today and the sign he was wearing around his neck, and she'll ask them if it's true. Are zombies people, too? I'm sure her parents will explain to her that zombies are not people. Zombies are dirty, disgusting creatures and she shouldn't ever touch or trust them. And I'm sure that, as time passes, she'll grow to believe it.
But I'm hoping she'll ignore her parents and think for herself. I'm hoping she'll persuade her friends to think the same way. I'm hoping that eventually I'll be able to sit on a bench in the park without a thirty-foot boundary of fear.
I'm still hoping this when the Animal Control van pulls up.
'm sitting in my room Wednesday night, eating Oreo cookies and
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