Beck Waits.

Beck hates waiting. Everyone who knows her knows that she is not a patient person. But as she waits today, she is more stoic than she has ever been, even though she shouldn’t be. She seems untouched by the events of the day, just patiently waiting. There is no sign of her usual jitters: no bouncing leg, no useless scrolling through social media, no trying to count the number of people walking past. Today, it was useless.

Today was a lot of things. Today is always a lot of things, but this today in particular is one that will not be washed away in the abyss. This happens to so many days. Not very many people can remember what happened on the second Tuesday last month or the Tuesday after it. This is human nature. We forget what is not important. And the truth is that so many todays are not important enough to remember every one of them. But Beck’s today will be scared into her memory because something important happened today. Every person has at least of few of these todays in their life. It is inevitable.

Beck waits. Her heart sits still in her chest. The picture of efficiency. There is no movement within her chest that is not necessary to keeping her alive. There are a lot of people whose chests would not be the picture of efficiency in her position, but, but Beck waits with her quiet heart.

All people have things that make them happy, even if only slightly. It is these things which bring happiness into the lives of men that have true power. The force of happiness and joy is overpowering. But with light comes a shadow.

Beck sits stiller than she has ever sat in her life. This kind of serenity, if you could call it that, was not something that Beck exhibited often in her life. Beck has always been wild, carefree, impatient. But today, she waits.

Waiting is often intolerable. It seems almost built into the human genome that patience is difficult to achieve. When someone can wait, and feel as if they are not waiting for anything at all, they have broken free of the ardent human spirit.

Beck breathes, slowly in and out. In and out. Her lungs feel no constriction, her nervous system feels no stress. Cortisol stays in its place. She fools her own body. Air tumbles into her lungs, as if it was drawn to her, as if it felt the desire to keep her alive. And so the air breathes for Beck.

There is not usually serenity in this sort of waiting. In this very room, some have nervously awaited the best thing that will ever happen to them. Some have left unchanged. And some leave searching for a purpose, as empty shells of what they once were.

Beck blinks. She blinks as if she isn’t staring down the second hand of the clock as it tick tick ticks it’s way around the face, because she isn’t. She feels no need to watch each second pass by as she grows numb, because she feels more at peace than she has ever felt. She blinks without fear.

People walk past Beck, with more stress in their tired joints than Beck will ever feel again. Yet, they are not waiting for the same thing that Beck is waiting for. They will all eventually have to wait just as Beck is now, but she is able to find more peace waiting patiently in her seat than they will in their entire lives.

Beck thinks. She thinks that it is unfortunate that it is in this situation that she has found the sort of peace she has been searching for her whole life. The kind of peace that makes you wish that you were no where else but where you are now, and that nothing else was happening besides what is happening now. Beck thinks that it is a joke that this utter content only comes now, in this moment of suspended anticipation. Beck thinks, contemplating this peace.

Much like Beck, there are several others waiting. Their waiting is not at peaceful as Beck’s. They find anything and everything to distract them, the children playing in the lobby, the quiet shuffle of the workers, the outdated magazines littered across the room. But none of this can penetrate their minds. They are too far gone.

Beck smiles. It is a stupid smile that is so out of place, that it makes her want to smile more. This contradiction is intoxicating. She has always loved contradictions. How people grow gluttonous while children die of starvation. These two things should not exist in the same space, but they always will. Beck hates that she can bring herself to smile. But is the contradiction of emotion as horrid as that of hunger? I shouldn’t be able to smile right now, she thinks to herself, but I can. So, Beck smiles.

If anyone were to see her smile, knowing what she was waiting for, they would likely call her crazy, out of her mind. But people are quick to call those they do not understand crazy. The greatest inventors and thinkers of history were often exiled because of their revolutionary thoughts. That is to say, others thought that they were crazy, dangerous. The very men who brought us the wheel and the modern understanding of the universe, were ostracized. It may be human to fear that which you do not understand, but it is also human to love. And love makes men crazier than even they understand.

Beck notices. She notices that she is not alone. Yet this is not comforting. She wishes she were alone. She wishes that she could be alone for the rest of her life, so that she could enjoy her peace, without the mess that is human interaction.

Humans are complex. We are so complex that we do not even know how complex we are. We understand more about the abyss that surrounds our world, so far away that we use a measurement of something without matter, than we do our own minds. But we all know what it feels like to love, to hate, to fall, to sleep.

Beck admires. She admires that no matter what is going on around her, no matter what she is waiting for, and no matter what she thinks, her body keeps her alive. A part of the brain devotes itself to only keeping the body alive. She admires that while the brain is so strong, the body is so weak.

While humans know so much about what it means to live. No one knows what it is like to die. Not really. This is something that will never be known to those of the living. And maybe if we knew, no one would want to live at all.

Beck looks up. She looks up because someone calls her name. She looks up because her heart thuds for the first time since she sat down, her peace nearly shattered. But most of all, Beck looks up because she knows what is coming.

A woman with kind eyes sits next to Beck and tells her what she knew all along.

Beck cries. Somehow, she knows that this was the truth the whole time. She knows that the second she walked into the hospital there was no other possibility. Plato once said that you do not learn things, you simply remember them from your past life. This is what this was. Beck remembers that her mother is dead. Beck does nothing more than cry.

Human grief is never uniform. Each human mind processes the world in a different way, through a different lens. And each human mind processes loss in a different way. But, without fail, humans wait. They wait for reunion, they wait for happiness, they wait for love. They wait for death and imagine the life after.

Beck waits. Beck waits just as she will wait for the rest of her life. And she knows this. So, she waits as if she weren’t waiting at all.