THE END

“The End.” The words kept flashing in strident neon in my face. It wasn’t the ending. My life was just beginning after living so many years with such a miserable man. He was out of my periphery and had been for several months. I tried not to think about him at all as I felt sunshine and hope cascading in a protective aura around me.

I decided to call in sick to work this day because it was such a lovely Friday and I wanted to lie in the sun at the beach, eat whatever I wanted, and to feel beholden to no one. I felt so free and energized.

As I was closing my apartment windows in case it rained, a solitary robin flew in through the opening, flitted around the room and then flew out. I remembered my mother telling me that if a robin flew into a room, death would follow. What a silly superstition! I packed my beach bag with bathing essentials and at the last moment, threw in a mirror which fell out of the bag onto the tile floor, shattering into many shards. I disregarded the ill portent of the broken mirror and went on my way to the ocean which always drew me to its peace and beauty.

As I got out of my car at the beach, a stray black cat ran in front of me. “Here, kitty, kitty,” I coaxed as I took crackers out of my purse and scattered them on the ground. I noticed that I stepped on a crack on the sidewalk but disregarded it because I didn’t have to worry about breaking my mother’s back because she had passed long ago. All of a sudden, it dawned on me that today was not only Friday, but Friday the 13th. “Nothing will go wrong today,” I reassured myself, “in fact, everything will go according to plan!”

When I heard my cell phone ringing insistently, I dug it out of my beach bag and answered. It was the police department telling me that my ex-husband had lost his car brakes, crashed into a bridge abutment and was dead. Well, it positively was “The End” for him, I laughed as I pretended that it was karma for all his evil deeds. But in the back of my mind, I knew that it had nothing at all to do with the superstitions that had befallen me today. Oh no! I smiled as I remember my father teaching me how to take care of an automobile, a lesson that had come in handy. On the way to the beach, I had stopped at my ex’s place of work and cut his brake lines. Oh yes, it certainly was unlucky for him! I rolled over and applied more suntan lotion, pondering the certainty of his fate.