Disconsolate

And now I sit trapped—a prisoner of both distance and time—a thousand miles and three and a half days away from my best friend of nearly fifteen years, who lies slowly dying on a grassy patch of land back in Minnesota as the outside temperature prepares to plummet to winter-like levels and the days shorten by leaps and bounds, ostensibly still on “vacation” even as I was assailed by horrific news and the proverbial walls came crashing down around me the evening last.  And what viable options remain open to me now?  Really, what options of helpful consequence?  None that matter, I tell you.  None that would make any sense to a person who is thinking rationally, which I currently am not.  All I can think of now is getting back to Minnesota as expeditiously as possible to nurse and attend to my dying friend, but expense and logistics render that option grotesquely impractical and therefore not worth pursuing.  And so I sit here in a seedy motel room in downtown New Orleans, Louisiana, rhythmically clenching my hands into balled fists and gnashing my teeth for want of anything better to do, wishing like a lovelorn sailor that I could immediately be back home in Minnesota but grudgingly resigned to the fact no amount of such wishing will alter this dreadful fuckin’ predicament that currently holds me hostage, at least until my wife’s and my regular airline tickets become valid in three plus days. And at that point in time…………..….well, by that point in time my quest to see and console my old comrade one last time will undoubtedly be too late…..