A Smoke at Sunset
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The sun is setting. Its dying light shimmers on the ocean, and in the sky, orange bleeds to pink and then to purple. There’s not much time left. Before long, all will be black. All will be night.
I’m leaning on a low wall separating the beach from a bike path that snakes up the coast for many miles: a bicyclist’s version of the Pacific Coast Highway. You’re not supposed to smoke in public here, and, in a broader sense, you’re not supposed to smoke at all—but I do, and I am. I watch the tip of my cigarette glow as I inhale what must be the millionth lung-full of smoke of my lifetime. Yet, surprisingly, this nasty habit hasn’t done me in yet. Life is funny like that.
When I was a kid, the man who lived across the street was a marathon runner. He was in tremendous shape. He ran several miles a day, kept his diet in check, and was as thin as a fishing line. You know what? He dropped dead at 52, face down in a bowl of quinoa. Can you imagine? I’ve often wondered if he would have spent more time sitting on his ass eating hamburgers if he knew how it all would end for him. Think of it: all that running, all that bland, expensive health food, only to drop dead halfway through the only marathon that really matters—life.
Et tu, Quinoa?
Down by the water, a family packs up their beach umbrella and folds their towels. Shivering children swipe at stubborn sand clinging to their legs. A brazen gull sneaks up and steals an empty chip bag. The father watches, scratching his hairy belly, indifferent to the crime.
I remember days like this in my own life. Trips to the beach, trips to the snow. Trips to the desert, trips out to the forest. Both as a child and a parent, these memories stick in my head even decades after the fact. I don’t remember the time that I closed my biggest sale, or whether I was ever employee of the month. I don’t remember all the cars I’ve honked at in anger, or all the drinks I’ve spilled on myself. I do, however, remember my dad smacking his fingers with a mallet while attempting to drive a tent stake during a camping trip and yelling “fuck” so loud that birds took flight from nearby trees. He never liked the outdoors.
The cigarette burns down. The light changes slightly. I start to think about old friends, most of them long gone. One of them, a buddy named Lyle, allowed me to visit him in hospice. He spent most of our time together carping about how his kids wouldn’t visit him because he cheated on their mother decades ago and broke their family up.
“Time moves forward,” he kept saying. “Why aren’t they here? This is the end.”
Time does move forward, but so do people. Sometimes they even do it in ways you might not appreciate, like growing past you and your mistakes into their own bright futures where you play no part. Of course, that’s not what I told him. Instead, I said “you did the best you could.”
Which, obviously, was a lie. If Lyle had done his best, he never would have cheated on his wife and ruined his family. But what’s the point in rubbing people’s faces in such things at the end? I think he knew he screwed it all up. Complaining about his kids was just his way of working through it.
I don’t want to be like Lyle when my time comes. Self-pitying, bitter. Then again, who doesn’t have regrets? Show me someone who has lived a perfect life, and I’ll show you a five-carat diamond pulled right out of my ass—neither one passes the smell test, if you get my drift. Yet the idea, maybe, is that potential regrets shouldn’t be what you focus on in life. Keep them small, if you can. I missed a flight. I said the wrong thing. Not “my kids hate me.” Maybe I’m being too harsh on Lyle, I don’t know. All of this is easier said than done.
I had another friend who believed in heaven. She never talked about it much until the last year of her life. Then, it was all she wanted to discuss. She had this almost child-like conception of it, with golden gates and angels and loved ones waiting to introduce her to celebrities. Probably some kind of endless buffet, too, knowing her.
That all sounds well and good, but personally I’ve never been for the afterlife stuff. Why bother? We’re all living here. We’re all living now. Every moment that goes by might be all we ever consciously experience, so why waste time dreaming about some other thing down the road? I don’t expect to see much in that department when the veil is finally lifted (or closed, depending on how you look at it).
The cigarette is burning down to the end now. Its smoke is hot in my lungs. The family on the beach is gone, and dark clouds move across the sky, gloating at the sun’s retreat. I look behind me and see the streetlights have come on. I can smell seafood from the restaurant across the road as they open its doors for the dinner rush. All of these things ending at once: my smoke, the beach trip, the day itself. I look back and watch the sun dip below the horizon, gone for good, and flick my cigarette into the sand. A salty wind blows and it tumbles away.
All things come to an end eventually. And one day, I will too.
But not today. Not just yet.