Death & Rabbits In Texas

Heliocentric XVI

He was on a trip through Texas, visiting a friend in Marathon, then heading towards Dallas Airport. He stopped in the small city of Odessa to see the 70% scale replica of Stonehenge his friend recommended.

Afterwards, a short distance away, he stopped at an IHop for lunch. Large as the restaurant was, it was packed, and he ended up sharing a booth with a woman.

Small talk led to conversations about the oil derricks bobbing all over the place and he learned that the city got its name from the local shortgrass prairie’s resemblance to Ukraine’s steppe landscape.

His mention of the rabbit roadkills he’d seen led to talk of human death. They imagine ideal endings, she said, in a bed with loved ones by their side. But every day people leave loved ones and never see them again. The ones who disappear have some startling experience with no chance to say goodbye, and the ones left often replay imagining what that other person experienced as they left their body.

You seem to have really given this some thought, he said.
Yeah, guess so, sorry — this is my lunch hour — I work over at the Final Sunset Funeral Home. I see it all— regularly. I got a bit dark there.