Splayed across the linoleum floor I saw a frenzy of blood.
Lien-hua must have seen the look of anger on my face. “Pat, I know you vowed to stop him, but this wasn’t your fault.”
“I know.”
“You couldn’t have prevented this.”
Not unless I’d killed him in Chicago last month.
The road to the unthinkable is not paved by slight departures from your heart but by tentative forays into it.
I was reminded of my somber thoughts at Calvin’s funeraclass="underline" we’re born, we struggle, we endure, we die, and there’s hardly anything left to show we were ever here.
Dust to dust.
Ashes to ashes.
The grim poetry of existence.
But life is more than that.
We foray into our hearts and look for ways to rise above them.
We ache and we love, we hurt and we heal.
Human beings, being human.
The sunlight was playing strangely across the linoleum.
Death matters because life matters, and the day I stop believing that is the day I’ll no longer be any good at my job.
But for now, I still am.
I approached the refrigerator.
And peered inside.