He spent a thousand dollars on a new guitar last friday. When confronted with the fact that he had never played, and that perhaps a grand was a bit excessive for a starter guitar, he quickly countered that he'd had two years of piano as a boy. By all accounts, he was happy on friday, upbeat, better than he'd sounded since he lost his mother a yeag ago.
We'd often gone camping together, and even more often we'd gone out and gotten exceedingly drunk together. He'd kicked me out of his home, on occasion, and I him, from mine. I'd slept with his wife, a number of times, and he introduced me to golf.
The detective says he left a seventeen page note.
He splashed the contents of his head against the dated wallpaper of some hotel room in Virginia. He used a gun he bought from his wife's brother-in-law. Noone heard from him after friday.
Yesterday, I went for a hike along what back in Colorado would've been called a river, but what in Oregon was dubbed simply Abiqua Creek. Some of the largest trees I've ever seen sprawled with their mossy sleaves over the creek. I found a salamander sunning on a rock, bright red and orange. I felt the sun on my face and inhaled the fertile scent of imminent springtime.
I talked to his wife this morning. She had that simultaneous shock, thoughtfulness and hysteria that I've come to learn is unique to the recent loss of a loved one. It reminded me of telling her that her own mother had died. It reminds me of telling my own mother when grandma died. I told his wife she'd be in my thoughts, and that we'd speak again soon. She asked me to say a prayer for him.
So here goes.
Pat, man, may you find the peace that ever eluded you in life; may your demons finally quit the chase now that you've made this most permanent of escapes. Oh, and you don't mind if I bang your wife some more do you? I'm going to take your silence as a 'go for it'.
PS. I need a more appropriate outlet for this kind of stuff. Hell, I need a moderately appropriate outlet.