last night andrew and i went to see thor in imax and 3d. it the first imax-3d movie we had ever seen and we pronounced it freaking awesome. we ate delicious burgers at this joint downtown called "uburger" and our only mistake was not also ordering a chocolate "frappe." altogether, a most excellent date night.
on the walk home from the porter t stop i asked andrew to help convince me of an afterlife. ever since i went through a period of fainting spells, i've had trouble believing in the afterlife. i want it to be true, and i hope it is with all of my heart. but for some reason, the absolute black nothingness i felt when i fainted has continued to haunt me. i cannot forget the disorientation of waking up from fainting, the gasp of breath and frantic pounding of my pulse as my body suddenly remembers it is still alive. in those moments it felt like i had ceased to exist, and according to my cardiologist, my heart was pretty convinced of that fact as well. so subconsciously i am convinced i know what death feels like (and perhaps birth?). since i'd much rather have unfailing belief in an afterlife, i routinely demand andrew comfort me and spread the warmth of his belief blanket around my subconscious. maybe if i believe in andrew's belief, i can somehow trick my subconscious back into believing that our souls will go on while our physical forms lie rotting in the earth. morbid much?
so andrew, being a good husband, always complies and tells me about why he thinks there is an afterlife and all the fun things we'll get to do there, like hang out with unicorns and hobbits. so last night i brought up that if he died before i did (god forbid) he must send me a sign that there is an afterlife (a similar bargain to what houdini and his wife struck). andrew said that still wouldn't convince me because i wouldn't realize that the sign was him. i said, well, what if you send me a butterfly in november, then i'll know it's you. in the end of thor, he cannot return to earth like he promised his love, natalie portman, because the road back was destroyed. and in response to my demand for a sign, andrew said, "but what if my way back to you is destroyed, and i cannot send you a butterfly?" and it struck me to my core because that is totally believable, i just saw that happen on thor! and i realized that just like in thor, we would both have to work hard to find the road back to each other but that eventually we would find one (hey, it happens in the sequel, right?).
so thanks again, andrew, for providing comfort to my conscious and even harder, for reaching my subconscious with pop culture references. i only hope that someday when we die it will be as in the notebook, clasping each other in our old age, one of us slightly demented, but our love allowing us to die at the exact same time.
