This is the last of my confessions. Mostly silent for 13 years; hesitant for dark humor.
At the time, not even an iota amusing. But, you know the bottom line as well as I do:
he would have laughed.
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Despite what should have been a series of solid physical confirmations, I still wasn’t sure.
I mean I suspected I was sure, but surely there had to be some way to be surely sure.
I needed to be absolutely sure. I didn’t want to tell the EMTs that he was dead if he wasn’t really dead.
After all, it had been getting harder and harder to wake him up, so maybe….
I couldn’t let them just assume he was dead and take him away.
I faintly heard the siren.
Desperation encouraged denial. I launched one final effort for conclusion.
I reached out and squeezed.
His stuff.
Hard.
Very hard.
Nothing happened.
Nothing at all.
Nothing. at. all.
That was the catalyst. My epiphanic moment, framed with the possibility of tarnished guilt, dully matted with automatic apologetic thoughts.
I believe I was rather rational. Calm, while mentally running through the untimed Sunday morning sequence of events from opening the bedroom door to believing in my own final absolute surety.
I relived it all – this short period of my life flashed before me like I was the one who’s life was ending.
That’s when my internal irrational being woke up and spoke up and slapped me.
A solid smack to the back of my head, snapping it forward, then back, as the blinking-red ticker-tape of panic resumed its scroll.
“Oh, my God. What if there’s bruising? They’re going to think I abused him!”
I hadn’t yet conjured a remedy for that, when the knock came.
“They’re here,” I announced and promptly hung up the phone.
Quote for the Week:
knabble 