Whether There Will Be Weather

Tomorrow is a "one water bottle, two layers of
sunscreen" day,  for those keeping score at home.

The last few days have been bad ones, in terms of getting through the day still standing. In terms of diving deeper into the soul-crushing side of grief. In terms of, I just don't want to do this anymore.

So when I checked the weather a few minutes ago, my second thought after, "Ugh, hot," was "Ugh, what does it matter?" It's something that seems so important, what the skies are doing to us at any moment, but checking it right now just looks like another weirdo human thing I do out of habit, a weirdo human thing Chad will never do again.

And of course, my more rational side knows that truthfully it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, what the weather is like in Austin one day in June, but tomorrow morning at 8 AM when I'm on a bike to ride to work, it's kind of something I need to know. And even more so at 5 PM when I'm headed back, so I know how many bottles of water I should take and how many layers of sunblock I'll need to apply.

But then I get home, and he's not here, and the 5 PM things pale in comparison to the overnight emptiness in my room. When will I get off this sad-go-round, I wonder?

Post title is a quote from The Whether Man in The Phantom Tollbooth: "It's more important to know whether there will be weather than what the weather will be." Indeed.