Something that happened

I woke up at around 6 this morning for work and heard the sounds of multiple police radios squawking in my hallway. Initially I prepared to flush my stash of crystal down the toilet and double fist tommy guns to greet the officers whom I assumed were serving an arrest warrant for my drug palace/emporium. However, when the dogs didn't immediately storm through the door, I went to blend a breakfast smoothie instead.

I didn't run into any police officers on my way to work and didn't think twice about it. However, over lunch, the District Attorney informed me that my neighbor had show himself with a shotgun on his balcony. Upon returning home, sure enough, there was evidence of seeping blood and guts on his balcony and the one below it. He was dead, and apparently I slept through the blast of a 10 gauge twelve feet feet from my own head.

I didn't know the guy, although I bitched about him parking in my spot now and then. It never fails to amaze me that a person would choose to end his own life rather than work through whatever problems he was having. I guess this statement comes with the quasi-pretentious assumption that I could overcome any problem life dealt me. However, regardless of your own woes, the amazing thing about personal tragedies is that opportunity to begin life completely fresh, to start over in every capacity despite the magnitude of a given loss. I wish someone had been there to assure my neighbor of this certainty, that there was an alternative. Instead he took his gift of life and threw it away. I didn't know the guy but I'm sad for him nevertheless.