Apocalypse Please
Declare this an emergency
Come on and spread a sense of urgency
And pull us through
Every year, as December approaches, I anxiously check my calendar.
If the holidays fall on a weekend, I breathe a sigh of relief. If they don’t, I expect doom. This year, they’re in the middle of the week, and I prepare for the worst.
It’s that time of year when I miss the United States, that cradle of capitalism, where shops are never closed, contrary to the tiny country in the middle of Europe in which yours truly resides. Here, nothing goes on Sundays and on holidays. On the holiest of holidays even McDonald’s goes dark. McDonald’s!
Preparing for the birthday celebrations of a weirdo who lived some two thousand years ago becomes a battle. Everyone tries to do everything at the same time. Buying presents, getting things done before the world stands still for two weeks, and, of course, grocery shopping. Supermarkets turn into war zones. It’s knives out for stressed people hunting down luscious ingredients for the much-desired harmony of their festivities. And if those festivities take place on a weekday in my tiny country, the real Christmas miracle means nobody getting killed in the murderously crowded aisles leading to the checkout counters.
It’s that time of year I miss my mother, for she wasn’t such a wimp when it came to crowds. It’s that time of year I check my prepper stash down in the basement, in case I don’t make it through those aisles and have to abort the shopping mission. And every time I check it, I can’t help but chuckle.
It was spring 2018. Just a month earlier, my mother had been robbed of a few of her organs, half her large intestine, and a malignant tumor that could have passed as a creature straight out of Ridley Scott’s Alien franchise. She was left for dead, and despite everyone begging us to reconsider, we successfully plotted her escape from the hospital. Unfortunately, at first the peaceful familiarity of her home turned out to be a frightening one. No nurses, no adjustable hospital beds, no elevators, but stairs that were impossible to climb.
I remember a photograph from that time in which my mother wore striped pajamas and struck a defiant pose. Only skin and bones, she resembled death, yet for some reason I think of a mischievously grinning Beagle Boy every time I look at that photo. Her body weak, yet her mind still ready to put up a fight — so that’s what we did. I became the drill sergeant, pushing her to achieve the goal of climbing those stairs of hell, making it into her bedroom again.
Early on, we said our goodbyes, although it would take about three surreal years for that goodbye to come. In those early days, she also passed her wisdom onto me; much-needed wisdom, because at thirty-six, I was practically just a kid who knew nothing about life.
One day, we tried to make it from the living room, where she set up camp, to the nearby front door, passing the daunting dark-brown wooden stairs to our left that were still way out of reach. Exhausted and frustrated, she paused for a minute, holding onto the doorknob, panting. Then her gaze fell to the other set of stairs leading down to the basement. And suddenly her eyes sparkled once again when she remembered another important lesson to teach her helpless kid.
“It’s important to always have a prepper stash,” she told me, her index finger raised for emphasis. “Water and food for at least two weeks; you never know what might happen.”
She told me where she kept hers, down in the stockroom below, and I went to have a look at it while she was still catching her breath at the doorknob.
“Just on the shelf to the right”, she said, as if I was a stranger to this house.
But I thanked her for the valuable information as I walked down the stairs.
Slowly I approach the dim-lit basement. Back when I was a kid, I hated it because it used to be full of spiders, and I was terrified of spiders. Out of habit, I cautiously open the door to my right, squint, and turn on the light switch. I enter the room and see the metal shelf in front of me. It’s mostly empty, except for a pack of crackers and three jars of asparagus.
Immediately I burst into laughter. Uncontrollable laughter.
Upstairs, my mother starts laughing too.
“What’s so funny?” she asks. “Stop it, I can’t laugh, it hurts!”
To keep her from falling, I race up the stairs again and steady her.
For the rest of the day, I kept mocking my mother about it and we couldn’t stop laughing for hours.