Killing yourself to live

I sat in a grimy mechanic shop in rural Montana, watching the lights above me flicker questionably.  My Honda Civic was giving me trouble, as it had become quiet fickle when it came to starting up in the morning.  Luckily, the motel I had stayed at last night was right across the street from a mechanic shop.  Unluckily, said mechanic shop appeared to be short on resources and manpower, and was run by a solo elderly man.  Especially because I was trying to make it back to Michigan in time for finals week.  As the stress of impeding finals hit me like a wave, a Ford Taurus pulled into the driveway.  A man emerged and conversed with the mechanic.  After a few minutes he parked and sat in the only open seat, which was beside me. 

            Soon we began talking. He was traveling the country in a rented Ford Taurus (that had recently blown a tire) and he seemed to be obsessed with death. What a morbid man, I thought. Then I considered my own circumstances.  I had left school and driven across the country to visit my ailing father.  In a sense my own journey was not dissimilar to that of this mysterious stranger.  I had essentially traveled the country for the sole purpose of saying goodbye to my father, and now that I was on my way back, I could think of nothing but the inevitability of our own deaths.  The inevitability that everyone refuses to talk about, yet is constantly present and impossible to ignore is something that I and this stranger have chosen to acknowledge on our journey across America.