Your husband desperately wants a new and slightly larger backpack, one to replace the others. Despite his most fervent efforts, he cannot come up with even the simplest reason to justify such a purchase. But, by god, he is still at it. He might slowly be slipping into madness. At least he thinks he is. His mental state is ping-ponging with so many tumultuous thoughts that the thought of replacing the backpacks he uses and does not use with just one seems incredibly freeing and completely logical.
What about the seemingly suitable backpack you got last year you ask? Well, yes, that is a good one, but it could be just a little bigger and have a few more pockets. Wait. Selling a bunch of perfectly useful backpacks seems foolish.
That, my dear, is the plague of our consumeristic society which clearly has wormed its way into your husband’s brain telling him that this new shinier thing will make him feel better, subdue his depression. His rational mind knows this is a basket of lies. But will you look! It has an integrated rain cover. It is simplicity that drives this lust. Now that makes sense. Less is more!
Because the pack is larger, he figures that it is big enough for him to fit at least the top half of his body into it. This, to him, seems very useful for he can hide from the world when it all seems like too much. Which, he would like to add, is a regular occurrence as of late. He really does feel as if he is going batty and thus is worried that all this talk about a new backpack is probably driving you batty as well. For heaven’s sake, he is writing in the third person, that alone has to be some sort of red flag. You should probably check to make sure it is not someone else writing this. Like another personality. That would be bad.
Now he has begun to barter and promises never to ask for another backpack as long as you both shall live. Unless the bottom falls out of this one. But the company says they’ll replace or repair it even if it happened when you are both 90, well you’d be 91, and by then all he would be carrying in the backpack would be all of the pills you will both probably have to take, along with directions on how to get home, just in case. Perhaps some Ensure, hopefully not Depends, and a spare pair of agile dress socks. Which he plans to wear pulled up to his knees with white Velcro sneakers, shorts, and his Indiana Jones Fedora simply because he can.
As the lugs of my sneakers bite into the soft earth of the trail, I begin to compose the letter they would read should I die. The wilderness wraps around me, the river calls to me–two old friends welcoming me back. It is the letter telling them that I am now at peace because I have gone to our Heavenly Father. Telling them to hold fast to the belief that I’ll always be with them, waiting for them. My heart leaps at the prospect of seeing my dad again–I list the places I want my ashes scattered, all the spots I’ve loved and we’ve loved together. I tell them to have the kind of funeral party they want, encouraging a more joyous than dour one.