I witnessed absolute love tonight. My parents have been together for over 40 years, not all of them have been great years, but I realized tonight how much they are still in love and care for one another. The lesson I learned: love doesn't always reveal itself the way you think it should; it comes in small, usually unnoticed gestures, not flowers and diamonds.

Ordinary things become so beautiful when light holds them in that tender way only it can do.

Does anything exist in the absence of light?

Your once soulful eyes have grown hollow, cunning and unkind. What happened to that once welcoming smile and warm heart? Did they wither away like the rotting petals of a dying orchid?

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 34^th 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.

“Come in, come in”   I urged the withered  old man standing outside my front door.  Rain pelted against his fragile hunched frame as the icy wind cut through my skin.  The mysterious man gingerly stepped through the threshold, into a warm, welcoming calm foyer.  Removing his scuffed, soaked fedora, he looked down at me with those once sharp blue eyes.  His smile, reaching some deep corner in my heart, creased every corner of his face and lit those knowing eyes.  “I am your Grandfather” he whispered.  Shocked, I stared at this crippled figure in amazement and hope.  My grandfather I thought, but how could that be…?  My poor grandfather has been dead for twenty years…

“Brace yourself” a song so innocently declares on the radio, yet my mind entangles into that idea. How do you brace yourself for something so imaginatively life altering it leaves you unsure of reality?  Just one word, one gesture, cracking destiny and leaving the atmosphere so thick it suffocates.  You stand broken open, vulnerable yet excited at the adventure the utterance brings.  Suddenly nothing before this has ever seemed to matter. Now every nerve in your body can feel the cool air wrapping around you, holding you tight in this frozen moment, as you realize that nothing will ever be the same.  

The cool wind cut through my clothing, piercing my delicate skin and the papers in my hand fought to stay within my grasp.  The words that escaped my mouth were immediately swept up, leaving me wondering if I spoke them or if the they were merely thoughts.  My long dark hair kept smacking my face with a vengeance and my footing became weak and unsteady.  I fought this invisible force of wind until finally I reached the decrepit, white door of my cheap apartment.  There, with the door finally opened, the still interior air swallowed me into its impersonal safety.

Pale blue light stirs as the golden sun peaks over the mountain, turning the shimmering snow covered valley into a soft orange hue.  Somewhere in the distance, the first morning bird chirps, it’s echo dancing around the canyon walls behind me. The crisp dawn air smells of soothing pine trees.  Steam from my coffee dances upwards, disappearing into the blue mist.  I settle into my chair a little deeper, completely appreciating the glory of my surrounding.  

My pounding heart mutes any sound in the room and an unfamiliar sickness lurches in the pit of my stomach.  Shaking violently, I close the laptop.  My head swims in the beliefs of who I thought the man I lived with was.  I try, but reality seems too far for me to grasp.  How could he lie to me like this I wonder?  My legs give out and I collapse onto the floor and the tears start pouring. 

A barking dog startles me out of that painful memory of two years ago. I gaze out the window and wonder if he knows how much his lie has affected me.

I stand in a trance in the upstairs bathroom as I try to figure out who it is staring back at me through the mirror.  My bones ache from being ripped out of sleep at 3:30 by my nagging alarm clock.  I stare into half sleepy, half hollow eyes that I will eventually claim as my own.   As I splash warm sudsy water on my face I reflect on the day ahead….work is sending me to Vernal today, then I have school.  Patting dry my now clean face, I sigh.  It is going be a long day; thank God for coffee.

My mind flashes like the cursor in a blank document on a computer screen.  A thought pulses with the tempo and a shadow of memory pulls at my thoughts but it remains beyond that cloudy veil. I have seen that face before; it is a knowing much like I know my own name. The man stares out through a pixelated black and white picture smeared across every front page of this city’s newspaper.  I know this person, but looking at the dark shadows that shape the sharp face with his ominous looming eyes and snarled mouth, the connection escapes me.  Suddenly the hair on the back of my neck stands on end while my skin covers with gooseflesh…   “I know those eyes, they are mine.”

The city lights twinkled like shattered glass reflecting light.  Mystery lay in the darkness between the illuminations.  Gazing out my hospital window, I got lost in the potential of the city and all of its transformed promises that only night can produce. Oh, how I would rather be there than confined within these cold walls; walls that spur the memories I wish to never remember.  Sadly they are the haunting result of that late night two weeks ago; a night my whole life changed.

Pulling back from my daze, I noticed my unrecognizable reflection.  Skin stretched taught over my swollen left eye.  A railroad of stitches ran from the corner my mouth down to the middle of my throat.  “At least your alive” I whispered into the silence, but even as I said that I wondered if my face would ever look the same.