Epiplexis (e-pi-plex’-is): Asking questions in order to chide, to express grief, or to inveigh. A kind of rhetorical question [–the speaker does not expect an answer].
I am in hell. I am tortured. I have snapped. I am grief stricken. I’m crying my ass off, like Roy Orbison on steroids. Five boxes of tissues, and one pint of gin —the tears will dry, the pain will ease, but the memories will never, never, never go away.
I found him, dormant on my shoulder at Airport Drayage at SeaTac Airport where I worked loading and unloading airplanes’ perishable freight coming from Hawaii and going to the Alaskan oil fields. “He” had fallen off a box of papayas I was carrying on my shoulder to the cooler. He was dormant from his flight. I put him in a small cardboard box and poked holes in it so he could breathe when he woke up. I was a graduate student at the University of Washington. I took the spider to a faculty member who studies arachnids. He instantly identified the spider as a Cane Spider. The professor told me he was a hunting spider, and, if I was going to keep him I should feed him live crickets that I could get at “Practical Pets” in the U. District. He also warned me that Cane Spiders have a pretty “hefty” bite.
I named the spider Ed. I had an aquarium left over from my tropical fish days. They had all died when some kind of fatal fish plague had infected the fish tank. I bought one dozen crickets and a screen for the top of the fish tank so Ed couldn’t escape. I put a piece of tree branch in the tank for Ed to climb on and hide under.
I had a teaching assistantship and decided to keep Ed in my office. The day had come to transfer Ed from his box to his tank. I was freaking out, trying to figure out how to open the box and dump him without having him escape or being bitten. I could hear him scratching around in the box. I opened the box and turned it upside down over the tank. Ed dashed out of the box and up my arm. I didn’t know what to do. Surely, he would escape, maybe biting me first. Instead, he ran back down my arm and jumped in the tank. He wagged his spider butt and I swear he smiled at me! When I put the screen on he ran around in circles in what I took to be protest. So, I left it off. I bombed him with a few crickets. He broke off their heads, liquified them, and slowly ingested them.
This was the beginning of a wonderful friendship. For example, when I was out of my office, he’d climb up over the doorway and land on my head when I came through the door. I guess he had a sense of humor. He would permit me to put the screen on when I had an appointment with a student. The students loved him.
Christmas break was coming. I considered bringing Ed home for the break, but my wife wouldn’t hear of it. She characterized Ed as creepy, disgusting, frightening, and sneaky. So, I left Ed in my office with a horde of crickets to feed on. He jumped up and down for joy. After three days, I went to my office to check on Ed. He didn’t greet my like he usually did by dropping off the top of the door onto the top of my head. I looked for him on top of the doorway, and there he was, shriveled up dead.
The university had turned off the heat over the break. For some reason, after surviving the flight from Hawaii, the turned off heat in my office had killed him. I wrapped Ed in a piece of paper and lit him on fire out behind the building. I carefully poured Ed’s ashes in the sandwich bag I had packed my lunch in that day.
It was the darkest day of my life. I took Ed’s tank to the dump and smashed it to bits. I took his photo down from my home-office wall. I couldn’t bring myself to scatter or bury his ashes. I would carry them in my pocket for the rest of my life. I discovered “Don Bugito Planet-Friendly Edible Insect Protein Snacks” (Chili-Lime Crickets), and ate a bag every day in memory of Ed.
I will never recover from the loss of Ed. He froze to death over 30 years ago, but I can still feel the tickle of his legs on my head. I reach for him. He’s not there.
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
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