Contemplating death at the Wendy's drive-through

Please pull through.

I am an indulgent mother • Photo by Batu Gezer on Unsplash

Sitting in a Wendy’s drive-through is not something I usually do. I haven’t ordered food from a fast-food joint since the Clinton administration. My son (in his 14-year-old, endearingly insouciant way) asked me to pick him up some dinner. He’d asked me the night before, but I was entirely too tired and bribed him with pizza instead.

He used to eat well when he was younger, but I am an indulgent mother. On the (increasingly common) occasions he wants to eat junk, I raise a feeble voice to the dangers of additional hormones, preservatives, high processed carbs… But he’s heard it all before. I can’t fault him; I lived on Burger King quarter-pounders with cheese when I was his age.

The author in 1982. Probably going to Burger King after this.

As I waited in the 6 p.m. pitch dark of a January evening in New York, inching my pathetic way through the snaking Wendy’s drive-through line, I thought about what it might be like to be dead.

More accurately, in that precise moment I began to contemplate how I was spending my precious now-moment of time: Fretting about how the cars were leaving gaps between each other when it would be so much more efficient if they pulled up closer so that I—I—would not have my car’s rear end dangling into the surprisingly active parking lot, risking the ire of other drivers who have other places to be.

We’re not on a highway; we’re in a drive-through. This should be like a chain of elephants in a circus! I opined at my windshield. The New Yorker in me even tooted my horn once, encouraging the lady ahead of me to lift her head from her phone screen and scoot up.

That was when I started thinking about death.

Because it’s hard to look at death directly, the thought came conversely: This is life. Idling in line in the dark, listening to NPR while waiting to order processed food for my beloved only son.

Indra’s net, the holographic symbol of our connected cosmos • Image: Gail Atkins

So then, what is death? “Maybe it’s not so bad,” I said out loud in the confines of my car. “I mean, so many people have done it.”

My father came to mind, then, as did all my grandparents, and the billions and billions lost to wars and natural disasters and illness and old age…

Could it be I’d been looking at death the wrong way? Perhaps it’s just a different way of being. Or not being. The point is, I won’t know I’m dead because my particular energetic iteration of the universe experiencing itself will no longer be.

No more self to be aware that anything is wrong or horrifying or blissful or as boring as waiting in line with fellow energetic iterations for shit food.

Now, I’m aware of the theory that our individual spirits continue to exist after physical death. The scientist in me can’t fully get behind that theory solely because I haven’t experienced it. Although I’m not sure I need to.

If we are all interconnected, what difference does my personal consciousness make? Vis-à-vis my contribution to the collective? I’d say a whole hell of a lot. As does yours. For without diversity of experience, how can Consciousness expand?

So, then.

What if I just let myself be here? Fully. Waiting in line.

As the chain of cars continued to chuff and chug along, and I rolled my window down to order the chicken sandwich, medium fries, and Jr. Frosty, I thought, This is the most wonderful and hilarious thing in the world.

I smiled as I handed over my $12.66 and received the greasy bag and the little cup of frozen chocolate plastic sludge.

And on the way home I ate a good third of those fries as payment for dragging my ass out into the night to provide my son with shitty food.

And he was grateful.

And I was grateful to be home and warm and with him.

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