Life and death and the Teviotdale Truck Stop

 Me and my old pal Kipling have been getting together at the Teviotdale Truck Stop for quite a few years now, ever since I moved to the sticks up here. Teviotdale is kinda sorta half way, although my half of the drive is a little longer than his.

Not that I'm complaining; I get a pretty good price on Kipling's primo home-grown. In fact, if he's in a particularly expansive mood, I don't pay a cent, as was the case today. Thanks buddy!

The three-egg "Big Breakfast" is still only $10.95. Amazing how they can do this after that massive job-killing hike in the minimum wage. The "Breakfast Special," where you get peameal instead of regular bacon, is still $12.95. If you're ever in Teviotdale, check it out.

So we get together every few months, and the first order of business increasingly becomes comparing notes on funerals we've been to since our last breakfast. The conversation goes something like this...

Remember what's his name? His daughter died. Killed herself. Thirty-eight. Nobody seen it coming.

That's fucked up, man. Remember what's her name? Ya, her... I worked with her a few years. Had a boy, only child. Went off to college. Offed himself before the end of the first semester.

Aw, fuck man.

Ya, that's fucked up. And remember my pal what's his name? Took a package. Full pay and  benefits for two years. He was gonna sell his place and move up to Parry Sound and go fishing every day. Kidney failure. He's got a dialysis machine in his house now...

Aw fuck man... if he can't go fishing his retirement dreams just went for a shit.


And on and on in that vein... it could get seriously depressing if you let it.

But here's why it doesn't.

We've both, quite independently, come to the conclusion that there's no logical explanation for life's vagaries. One guy falls off a motorcycle at 20 mph and dies. Another guy falls off a motorcycle at 100  mph and walks away.

One guy goes to the gym five days a week and drops dead jogging at 50. Another guy goes to the bar five days a week, smokes two packs a day, and dies in his sleep at 90.

You can call it the luck of the draw. You can call it fate. You can call it random happenstance.


I call it the grace of God.