Monday, April 11, 2011


His eyes seem to have glazed over and I stood there, in the stuffy silence, waiting for an answer.  A mechanical buzz drifted down from the ceiling and the usually unnoticed ticking clock became as loud as a drum.  He blinked and moved his head in an unrecognizable gesture.  Was that a nod, I thought, or just an uncontrolled twitch.  
"Sir, does this belong to you?" I asked again as I held out a delapadated photograph of a beautiful couple and their three small children. "I think it fell out of the book you are carrying."
The man raised his now trembling hand and took the photo from me. He opened his mouth to say something but tears came instead.  I sat there and watched as the memories of happiness, sadness and the torment of life cast over his withered face.
Finally, in an almost inaudible voice he said, "Yes, yeah it is mine. Though this photograph was taken two years after my wife died. How is she in the picture?"


It was one year ago today that we bought you that deep, smooth sounding acoustic guitar for your 34th birthday. Three months later I found that guitar in my garbage can with a suicide note in the trashcan sitting amidst the fall induced dying vegetation of my back yard. The computer generated, hand signed suicide note, which was once read to the police, still sits in my plastic filing case. Those months between your birthday and that suicide note have become a blur of confusion, sadness and anger. I cannot pinpoint the exact moment you flipped, and perhaps it was a series of moments; little, undetected moments. Though you are now out of my life, your verbal threats echo in my head and invade my daily thoughts.