Waiting for the Last Gasp – Adam Overland

I recently had a new AC and furnace installed, a huge expense but one which I knew was coming for the past year, so I had saved up about $95 of the approximately $16,000+ bill. Both were 25 years old and the AC was struggling while the furnace was an 80% efficient model, meaning 20% of the natural gas it used for heat went up in smoke, as they say, except that it did the opposite and didn’t burn at all, heading straight into the atmosphere. The new one is 98% efficient, and instead of a traditional AC I got a heat pump*. 

The night before the HVAC people were scheduled to do the install and take away the old AC and furnace, I found myself thinking, “Well guys, this is it. Our last night together.” I’d hear the furnace turn on and I’d be struck with pangs of nostalgia. “Wow, we are really getting close to the end and so I should try to enjoy this because it is one of the last times this furnace, which has been good to me, will heat my house,” and so on. 

The AC I didn’t think about as much because it is still early spring and cool outside, and the last time it kicked on was months ago; we’ve had some time apart, some distance, and so the impending separation hasn’t been as acute. The furnace and I, on the other hand, had had some good times together recently, like when I went to bed in a warm house just last night. I was sorry to see it go. 

Besides my mom, I am the most nostalgic, sentimental person I know. I miss things and people to an extreme, often even before they are gone. I miss them in anticipation of missing them. And then when things or people do go away, I tend to look back on them with rose colored glasses, remembering mostly the good and wanting it back. For example, I’ll think about ex-girlfriends sometimes and wonder, “Why can’t we still be dating? It would be great if we were still dating. In fact it would be great if I was still dating all of my ex-girlfriends simultaneously.” Then maybe I’d be happy. 

But sometimes I also have this underlying feeling—a feeling that seems, by the way, like it should be more subconscious, not one that you can form into a thought—where I don’t want to get too close to people because it will just make it that much harder when the inevitable happens and they die. Which, let me tell you, leads to an inability to really enjoy and be present in the moments you have together with your loved ones and/or your aging furnace and AC.

In any case, as I said, these kinds of thoughts seem like they should stay more deeply hidden so that you don’t have to deal with how severely problematic and limiting that worldview is to enjoying life, and how crippling it is to the illusion that you are an emotionally mature and stable person. If it were below the level of consciousness, it could then simply be a ghostlike motivating factor, one that lurks just out of sight, a whisper that steers you in a detrimental direction, not one that you have to throw a sheet over and give form to in thought which steers you in a detrimental direction all the same.

In the end, of course, you can’t take things or people or ex-girlfriends with you, no matter how much you might want to, in part because a lot of your ex-girlfriends are married now, but also because there isn’t room in the coffin. So we have to let go … of things, friends, family—of everything, someday. 

But who knows what’s next, after the coffin? No one knows. So there’s hope, and just because what’s next is different doesn’t mean it will be bad. Like right now, I can barely hear the new heater at all, and so it’s not a thought anymore, just a feeling of warmth. 

*If you’re like me you don’t know shit about heat pumps, but you probably have heard of them. My house is nearly off natural gas now, and because I pay for renewable energy credits through Xcel Energy, I’m running my house using less and cleaner power—not 100% renewable (which isn’t really possible), but close. Heat pumps are one of the best things I can do for the environment, and since I just drove a truck and camper 7,000 miles across the country at 12 mpg, I took the plunge and paid a little extra. But there’s a $2000+ tax rebate, plus another $2,000 from the gas and electric companies, provided because the efficiency takes pressure off the grid. 

A heat pump uses less energy because rather than physically generate heat, say, by burning gas, it simply moves heat from the cool outdoors to warm a house—and there is enough heat even in cold air, believe it or not, that it can do this as long as the temp is above 35 degrees (which is actually a lot of the year, even in Minnesota). In the summer, it moves heat from the house to the outside, not unlike a regular AC.