I stood in your living room, waiting, as you ran upstairs, then watched as you came back down, not understanding the great sadness in your face, the tears you were struggling to hold back in your eyes…

Yes, I did notice the box you held in your hands, and the giant stuffed animal you also carried…

I didn’t want to see those things, though.

Your mother’s expression said a lot that I chose to ignore – she had won, she felt, and it was likely a righteous feeling for her, although it was devastating for the rest of us gathered in that room at that moment.

Your sister was outraged, and swore at that moment that she would join a convent, which she did, and I admired her for that, for years to come. I still do.

I was torn between wanting to do what was right, or correct, and wanting to do your bidding, and not really understanding your needs or wants or what you felt at the moment… Hell, I didn’t know what I was feeling, myself, at that moment, other than the world had fallen from beneath my feet in a few seconds of time…

It was awkward, as you gave me back the ring in that tiny box… a box that I had hoped would carry the happiness it represented all the way into the future – our future…

But that was not in the cards.

Confused, crushed, hurt beyond my understanding, and without speaking, I turned and opened your front door and walked out onto the steps and down to the sidewalk, then turned right, to the sidewalk on Main Street, and just continued walking, toward downtown.

It had started to snow a bit, and it was cold, I do remember that I was amazed that the cold and the breeze was not bothering me at all, but perhaps the heat of the moment sufficiently warmed me as I spent the next hour walking up the street toward downtown, and the bridge over the river.

My hand, still in my pocket, wrapped around that little box, holding it tight, and then tighter still, until my fingers and palm and the cords and tendons ached, but still I held onto that tiny box of dreams and hopes that had died just an hour ago, and it seemed to take forever for me to cross the street and start walking across the bridge.

I paused at the center of that bridge, and with no buildings to shelter from the wind there, I shivered now, as I looked down into the water as it ran from there, to here, to wherever…

Finally, as if in answer to my cramped fingers and hand, I withdrew my hand with the velvet box in it, and stepped to the railing, and still dazed, I opened the lid, saw the beauty there, but it was no longer something of beauty… now it seemed only a mockery of my life…

What was I, I wondered, to think that I had any right to happiness?

I had no real understanding of what the previous hour or so had given me, and I had no knowledge of why I was standing there in the center of that bridge, in the cold and the wind as the white flakes started growing and falling a bit faster…

I took the ring from the box, and dropped the box into the water below and did not even watch to see it fall. It was a bit like dropping a handful of dirt onto a coffin in a grave, the finality of it was so very evident to me that I actually felt as if I had been purged of all emotion, all feeling, and I was lost, adrift in my thoughts that would not form for me, would not share themselves with my mind, as I struggled to try to form some kind of understanding of this night.

I held the ring one last moment, as I stretched my arm out, into the night, into the cold, over the water, and opened my fringes and let it fall away, down to the river, and into that water, not watching it, but knowing how it must be in appearance as it sank beneath the surface of that slowly rolling water… no longer thinking as I unashamedly finally let the tears fall, not caring now if anyone saw me or not…

And after a while I turned, and slowly walked back down Main Street, back across the bridge, back finally to the Arch, then turned left up Beverly Place, to go and sit and try not to think or cry any more.

I had died, and survived that death. It was hell.