Tuesday

There is no good way to deliver bad news. 

I remember breaking up with somebody in high school. I agonized over how to go about it. Should I break up at the beginning of a date? Drive over to his house, have him stand on the front porch and break up with him there? Was a phone call the best way to go? Was there a lengthy note involved?  

The dilemma seems so terribly adolescent now it makes me giggle. In fairness, though, it was the first time I was tasked with delivering bad news. I got a stomach ache. I couldn’t sleep. Spent an hour or so rehearsing how to do it in front of the bathroom mirror. About a week later I stood in the same spot, laced my fingers into the coil of the phone cord, my eyes closed, my face scrunched up, I spoke the same words into the telephone receiver. 

At this point I'm a little more sophisticated in launching and landing bad news. You get better with the nuances over time. It's a pretty natural part of living this long. Still – there’s no good way to go about it. 

With mobile devices we get news of all varieties constantly. Job numbers and test results and pictures of babies being born are one swipe of a smart screen away. So it seems only logical that bad news comes along for the ride. 

I got some yesterday. Bad news. I was driving along with my phone at my ear and, well, there it was. 

I pulled into a vacant parking lot, shut off the car, and talked the news report through to its end. I must have sat there a while, buckled into the seat of my car, after we hung up the phone. I sort of shook around the haze in my brain before driving off and remember feeling glad to have been alone when the news came. There’s no two ways about it: bad news is bad. But when bad news lands when I’m surrounded by store clerks, or grocery store displays, or small kids squabbling in the backseat of the car ahead of me at the gas pump…I don’t know…it’s just too much. 

I got home and, in the quiet house, started dinner. And I was still glad I was alone with the news but had a pang wishing the phone were connected the wall in my kitchen. I wished that news like that would or could only be exchanged between two people connected, at the very least, by cords and wires. Something to lace around my fingers around. I thought it might help to feel like I'm holding on to something.