Your death haunted me for over a decade. Indeed, I am not certain that it doesn’t still. I spent some eight years writing (and re-writing) a novel to exorcise you from my mind. As I wrote it, I vacillated between who would die in the end. Would it reflect real life or would art have its way? I sat in a tub with a razor to see if I too could cut short a little-loved life. I couldn’t. I found I loved those who love me too much to stop trying.

And so, it was always you who put the gun in your mouth and blew a hole through the back of your head such that the casket was closed to the full cathedral of family, former students and former colleagues – both teachers from the high school where we taught and priests from the order you had left behind – all of whom had loved you and still deny to those who will listen any hint that you did not die of natural causes. At 32.

It wasn’t very good. The novel, that is. And I guess it didn’t really help since I continue to ask myself if there was something I could have said to change your mind.

That last day we ever spoke, we stood chatting about poorly functioning copy machines and summer plans and professional aspirations. You complained about bureaucracy and red tape and unnecessary hoops you had to jump through in order to teach summer school. I asked you the name of your cologne so I could buy it for my husband. Kouros. The next day you were dead. I never bought the cologne.

I have wondered over and over till I am sick with grief, what I missed. What clue did you offer that your mind was a kaleidoscope of pain, your soul slowly cracked, about to shatter? What could I have said or done to give you hope? To help you hold on until not holding on was never an option?

Was there something, anything, I could have said?

I’ll never know.

she was all sorts of blue—

her eyes, bright;

mind, cool

her skin, pale;

heart, bruised.