It was written in ink with penmanship equivalent to a kindergartner’s. The page was wrinkled. The passage was short, and hardly sweet. The saddest, most pitiful goodbye:

I’ve loved you these past eighteen months.
Tell my kids I love them.
I hope these 20 pills are enough to take me to my end.


The note. Obviously directed toward my aunt, yet he addressed it to no one. Didn’t sign at the bottom. No explanation was included. My aunt was left with an empty pill bottle, an unfulfilling note, and an unsettling question: why?
It had been ten minutes since my mom received the chilling call. It should have taken at least fifteen to arrive, but numerous road laws were disregarded on the way to her sister’s rescue.

I stood there with a raw, blank stare.

It’s burned into my mind. Her flushed face was the hue of the crusted blood that stained her fiancé’s frigid corpse. The tears flooded her eyes and rushed down her cheeks in a ferocious, continuous stream. There was no trace of mascara left on her drenched eyelashes. No part of her body that wasn’t shivering and shaking. No happy thoughts that could ease her mind. Her heart. A mound of soggy, crumpled tissues rested between her elbows on the tiny kitchen table. Various pill bottles filled the spaces where her elbows and tissues weren’t.

It sounded like my aunt was on a stand in front of a jury. The officer asked questions that managed to keep the earth-shattering situation fresh in her mind.

“Was he taking any prescribed medication?”

She shook her head in a severe manner as if she was trying to shake the thoughts out of her mind.

“No. No. No.” It was hard to tell whether she was answering the question, or trying to convince herself she was imagining it all.

“Did you notice anything unusual happening during the night?”

“He got up. From bed. Said he didn’t feel well. Told me. He loved me. Let me fall back to sleep.”

My aunt’s sentences were broken up with sobs.

“What did you do when you woke up this morning?”

“The phone woke me up. He wasn’t moving. I felt his body. It was cold. Stiff. Called 911. They told me to try CPR. I tried. I tried. I tried.”

I stepped outside the cramped trailer to catch a break from the dirty air- it reeked of cigarette smoke. I also needed to escape the reality of the scene which the officer’s questionnaire so bluntly reminded me of.

I stood there shivering- not from the cool winter temperature, but from the thought of waking up in bed alongside the corpse of a loved one. It was a nightmare come true for my aunt. A few more somber thoughts ran through my mind about death and dying. Then nothing. Everything but my eyes froze at the sight. My gaze stayed locked upon the dead, emotionless face on the stretcher which rolled by me ever so slowly.