Slicing Life

I watched a friend react to bad news yesterday.

It was a few moments after the actual moment, so what I saw, really, was not the reaction, but the beginning of the "after." It was imperceptible, the sign that life had suddenly changed in some significant way for someone in our midst, except maybe he seemed a tiny bit less enthralled with the pizza we had all been sharing. No matter; more for the rest of us.

I have to leave, he said. I was confused. I thought he had loved the pizza. I could swear he just ordered another one -- same toppings, same doneness. He must be joking. I pinched another section of charred cheese and sausage between my thumb and forefinger and shoveled it in. Most people eat pizza from the tip to the crust. I eat mine from top to bottom. Topping to bottom. I can't really think of anything that would make me stop, right in the middle.

I just got some horrible news, he said. His face was a mask of nothingness, his tone deadpan. Suddenly, the pizza, with the perfect toppings and the perfect doneness, seemed unappealing.

We all have our "befores" and "afters" -- the moments in our lives when a shock carves an indelible crack deep within our psyche, a permanent reminder of the moment when one thing changed everything. The bigger the shock, the deeper the gash, the nastier the scar.

It was a cousin. An adult cousin. A victim of a senseless car crash on a beautiful Thursday in May, at a time in his life when everything seemed right with the world. A single moment, and then the "after." I had met him once, briefly. He had given me a Dr. Brown's diet black cherry soda, my favorite. That's all I remember about him, really. Other than he played the drums, and he and his wife seemed very happy.

I have experienced my own devastating moments, shocking instants that have cut so deep that nothing has ever seemed quite the same. Mercifully, they happen with a relative infrequency, at least relative to garden variety tidbits of sad news. But it's the kind of thing we all dread, that text or that phone call that lets us know life has done a one-eighty. An inexplicable and unimaginable seismic shift.

This morning there is a lot of leftover pizza, perfect toppings, perfectly done. And there is that reminder, even for those of us whose lives remain largely unaffected by this particular tragedy, how important it is to savor every bite.