Sanctuary yet Mausoleum

Breckinridge is a small town just far enough from the middle of the Michigan mitten that it can't claim it as fame. The clean, main corridor of town consists of a number of shops perched copse like along the shores of the M46 car-flow. I take my seat in a corner of its main diner at a table spotted with red and white overlay shapes that remind me of boomerangs. Music from the 1950s plays in the background, with the firm expectation that it will bring some life to this place. I watch as an old man and woman sit down between me and the door. They are framed by the noonday sun and appear as shadows in my view, silhouettes with no features but the bowed backs and sparse hair of age. I strain my ears to detect their conversation, but the only sound I am rewarded with is the dull hum of do-wop leaking from the speakers. They conduct their meal in silence, and though I cannot distinguish their features, I imagine they scarcely make eye contact. Have these autumnal spouses moved beyond the stage of speech's usefulness, even beyond the stage of emotional connectivity? I imagine that once you have shared every memory worth sharing with another, you must become a creature which benefits only from a shared present, or the twinkling of a shared future. But here, at this table, I believe I see a new stage of companionship. One where the twinkling future has been cast aside as unreachable, since the end of their time here looms so close it must seem self-evident. One where the present, in communique, is naught but a series of misfortunes of friends, of banal family occurrence, or of the foggy recitation of the morning news, things better left unmentioned for the sake of good humor. And, of course, one where the past is so well known that to share it again would be offensive to one's mate. What I see is the terminal stage of a relationship, when nothing beneficial remains but the sharing of silence, the building of either an agony or an anticipation, the object of which is unclear or unwanted. This is a shared and living death and, to me, the most frightening but also most revered part of a union. As the couple rise to leave, I cannot help but think they have been slowly enacting their funeral here over toast each morning for the last several years, with no one to witness it or pay respects but the wandering strangers who find this place, a quaint sanctuary yet mausoleum.