Waiting for the Last Gasp – Adam Overland

Two days before I was supposed to get on a plane for a trip with some friends to Colorado that we’d been trying to put together for nearly a year, I got Covid. After avoiding it for more than 3 years, it has struck at the most inopportune time. As my friends headed from various points around the country to the hills outside Fort Collins, I canceled my flight and hunkered down, hoping for the best. 

Today I’ve changed shirts three times, sweating through one after another (for some reason, most of the sweat comes from my neck). Additionally, several large flies have gotten into my house, despite the fact that I haven’t gone outside for two days, and it worries me that they may soon be expecting an excessively large buffet of decay. 

The first evening I made grilled cheese and tomato soup for dinner thinking that an excessive amount of cheese would coagulate and suffocate the virus, but I’m no doctor. This afternoon, I woke up on the couch after a two hour nap and there was a wet outline of my body. Now too lazy to make any food and not particularly hungry, I’ve stuck mostly to liquids and half-a-dozen spoonfuls of peanut butter. 

I’m incredibly disappointed to miss this trip, and it also happens to closely coincide with my 46th birthday, so I’ve of course been thinking about aging and mortality, a favorite place of mine to wallow. I’ve realized that, more than halfway through my life, there likely aren’t many more of these excursions, and so missing one feels particularly crushing. But there are no “do overs” in life or “we’ll make up for it down the roads.” There’s no trip or adventure that will replace this one. But it doesn’t do any good to actively regret what you can’t change, either. And so I’ll enjoy the trip vicariously, through photos of the good times being had by good people. 

Which is, for me, the most important lesson here. The mere fact that I can gather up and go on a trip with half-a-dozen good friends is something you cannot put a price on. Good friends are not something many people have, but if I’ve been fortunate with anything in my life, it’s that: friends, and not just the ones on this trip, but many others. I cannot think of anything in the world that I’m more thankful for. 

And suddenly my neck is sweating profusely again and it’s almost time to change shirts.