"Who knew a year could take so long to pass?" He twisted the bulb enough to kill the light glaring into his bloodshot eyes. Twelve years he spent with Susan. Twelve years of going to sleep with the only woman he ever wanted to wake up next to. Twelve years of sharing the Sunday comics. He always finished his page first and had to wait for her to finish so they can exchange sheets. She did everything a little more slowly than he did. She savored every moment of life. He never rushed her. When he finished his dinner he would sit across the table from her and watch her eat. He ate because he was hungry. She ate for the flavor of the food. It would take him half an hour to do the grocery shopping. It would take her forty-five minutes just to get through the produce section. He once watched her spend twenty minutes trying to find the perfect red pepper. One pepper. Twenty minutes of squeezing and smelling and plucking and looking at them one by one. She didn't find it. She made him drive thirty miles outside of town because they "always have a better selection at the Farmer's Market". She didn't let him do the shopping often. Twelve years of watching her savor every moment, every bite, every breath of life. Twelve years with her that seemed like a heartbeat compared to the past twelve months without her.
He took a sip from his glass and it tasted like whiskey-flavored cold water. For a minute he wondered how long the glass had been empty. As the waitress walked by he shook his glass so she could hear the ice tumbling around at the bottom.
"The same?"
"No. No, just bring me the bottle and some fresh ice." He put a fifty-dollar bill down on the table.
"I don't know if I am allowed to do that."
"Well", he offered, "it would save you the twenty trips between here and the bar."
"Okay. Let me check with the bartender."
He didn't bother watching her as she walked away. He just lit another cigarette, filled his lungs with smoke and released a long quiet sigh as he exhaled. He started smoking eight months earlier.
The waitress returned to inform him that the bartender agreed to let him have the bottle, but it would be sixty-five bucks.
"Sixty five dollars? I could buy the same bottle at the liquor store down the street for twenty five!"
"And you have to drink it here. Our license don't let us sell package goods."
After a few seconds with no reply she added, "If you drank that whole bottle one drink at a time it would cost you a hundred.
"Hell", he thought "that money will do me no good tomorrow." Another fifty landed on the table. "If you keep my glass cold, you can keep the change."


In the first few months following Susan's death he sought comfort in friends. The problem, he quickly discovered, was that he didn't have any friends, they had friends. It was always Bill and Sheila...and Jack. Or Kim and Roger...and Jack. Or sometimes John and Cindy, Fred and Lisa, Pam and Jimmy...and Jack. It wasn't that he felt like a third wheel- that wouldn't have been so bad. He felt like a flat tire. All the attention was on him.
"How are you Jack?" The wives would ask. "Are you eating okay? Is there anything you need? You holding together all right?" All eyes would focus on him. Waiting for him to say something. Anything. People's faces in an open display of pity like they were looking at a three-legged dog or a six-year-old child confined to a wheelchair.
The husbands wouldn't say much of anything. They would do their best to take their queues from the wives.
Of course Jack always replied the way one is expected to in such a situation. "I'm doing the best I can." "As well as can be expected." "Mudding through." "You know, one day at a time."
After all the un-pleasantries of the standard greetings were through, a husband would try and relieve his own uncomfortable feelings of tension by talking about the latest anecdote regarding Bob at work, "…remember me telling you about him? Wait'll you hear what he did now..." or the Jets/Steelers game last night. The next three hours would drag along like a slow death.
Some comfort.
Jack knew what was coming. It was inevitable, and it was going to happen soon. What he didn't know was which wife would be the one to do it. "The talk." That dreadful Al-Anon type intervention. He could picture the whole thing. Two of the couples and the poor three-legged dog sitting in the living room after dinner. Jack, on the couch with a glass of wine. And here comes a wife... Probably Sheila- she was always the mouth you would hear when you walked into a crowded party. Sheila sits on the coffee table right in front of him. Her eyebrows raise. The corners of her mouth turn slightly down. Her chin wrinkles.
"Jack..." She reassuringly takes his hand between her hands and resets them on his knee. "You know we all love you and want you to be happy."
"I know."
"Susan would want you to be happy too."
Jack says nothing at all.
"I know it's been hard the past few months. It's been hard for all of us. We all loved Susan. I can only imagine how it's been for you."
Insert dramatic pause here.
"But, you know... You are going to have to move on soon. You can't be alone for the rest of your life you know. You are still so young. You can start over again. Susan's life ended, not yours."
The other wife chimes in. "She's right you know. Susan would have wanted you to go on with your life."
The husbands decidedly stay out of it.
Sheila takes the baton. "She always wanted you to be happy. That is all she ever wanted."
He is not permitted to stay silent for long. "I know. It isn't easy though."
"Nobody said it would be, but you have to do it. I am not saying you should run out and get yourself a girlfriend tomorrow. Just one date. Start slowly. It will help."
"I know. It's not as if I have to get married again right away. You are right. Maybe I'll try."
What could he do but placate them?
Now their faces change. They smile a contorted half-smile, half-frown. Their eyes begin to moisten. It's hard to tell whether the pre-tears come from joy for him, or from pride in their own self-image for helping this poor sad man. They look as if that pathetic three-legged dog began wagging its tail and licking their faces like an excited puppy. The pitiful kid in the wheelchair just showed them strength in the face of adversity. He just told them with a smile that he knows he will never be any good at soccer, but he's great swimmer.
A real Oprah moment.
There is nothing that will shatter a breaking spirit with such brutal accuracy and efficiency as properly applied pity. Why does no one realize that? Or is it the sadist subconsciously buried in human nature? Our problems never seem quite as bad if someone else is worse off than us. That is why women read the 'Agony' column in Cosmo, and Dear Abby. People do not read advice columns to get advice. How often does the advice apply to their own lives anyway?
Sheila loves the 'Agony' column. She reads it religiously.
Then wife number two decides to take a chance. "Do you remember Julie? That cute little red head from my Christmas party..." Her words trail off as she feels her husband's hand on her shoulder.
"Honey." He pleads with her. She turns to see him shake his head and close his eyes.
Thank God someone stopped her.
Jack could not let that happen. He was feeling sorry enough for himself already. He didn't need the Candy-Stripers to so vividly point out all the reasons that he should continue wallowing in his bottomless pit of self pity. For a little while he almost began to let himself believe that they were only trying to help. Regardless of their intentions, this was simply not helping. He had to find a new way to pass the time.


The waitress returned with the bottle and a fresh glass of ice. She poured his first drink for him, and paused for a moment. He didn't look at her face because he didn't want to feel obligated to speak or acknowledge her with a nod. Instead, he focused on the chipped edge of the dirty-amber colored glass ashtray as he took a final drag from his cigarette, and crushed it beneath his trembling fingers. Anything that is built, including a person's life, is built from the ground up, and can only be as strong as its foundation. The base of Jack's life was built slowly and carefully over the twelve years he spent with Susan. He dedicated every bit of his life to her smile. When she died, that foundation had crumbled. The burden had finally become too much to bear. His hands, which were once steady and sure, have grown weak and are shaking from supporting the weight of his fractured life.
Now he finds himself here. In a dark corner holding a glass of whiskey the way someone would hold the hand of a dear friend. Today, that bottle is his dear friend. It is supporting him. It gives him the love and caring he needs. The kind of support that offers you the will to continue on when the drive can not be found within you. That love that stands behind you, kisses your neck and pushes you forward to stare down your fears when you can not face them alone. That caring, that when given so freely and openly, climbs inside you and becomes your own strength to carry on, through whatever obstacles stand in your path. Susan gave him all the strength he needed when she was alive. Now, his will to move forward, his will to move at all, he must find at the bottom of a bottle.
He sits now, in his corner, drinking the strength he needs from a glass. He is groping in the dark for his friend's hand. The hand he has become so dependent on to give him what he lost with his beloved wife. He can no longer see the point of traveling from this dark empty room to the next dark empty room. Why bother? What is the point of remaining alive simply to allow your heart to continue beating? Without love, life ceases to exist. Without purpose, the beating heart is nothing more than a device. A human, without humanity, is a machine. Why bother? The will he is searching for at the bottom of his bottle today is not the will to move forward. It is the will to die.
"Anyone who says that suicide is a cowardly act has obviously never killed themselves." He thinks as takes another sip of courage. "What a fucking hypocrite I have been all these years telling my patients not tot take the easy way out. Claiming that it is harder to face life every day rather than to just escape out the back door."
"God damned liar!" he shouts at himself as he pounds his fist on the table. The sound of the dirty glass ashtray bouncing on the table reminds him of where he is. The waitress walks over to clean the ashes and spent cigarette butts off the table. From her expression it is clear to him that she is lost somewhere between thinking he is a pitiful drunken fool and thinking he is a raving lunatic. Right now, even he is not sure which is a more accurate description. As she wipes the table down with her damp rag she makes sure not to completely turn away from him or look directly in his eyes. The way you just sort of keep a homeless man in the corner of your eye thinking that he doesn't notice. Jack now knows that the homeless man does notice. As a matter of fact, it couldn't be more obvious if you were to blatantly stare him in the eye. She walks away from him again, leaving the faint smell of mildew behind her from her damp rag.
It doesn't take long for him to find his way back inside his head. "When you arrive at the conclusion that you want to die, it is not pain the puts you over the edge, it is apathy. Pain may have delivered you there, but it will not pull the trigger, it will not force you to kick that chair away. Pain becomes an adversary to fight. It gives your life a purpose, as pathetic as that purpose may be. With no purpose in life, you could care less if you live or die. You are numb, emotionless, lifeless already. You walk in front of a speeding taxicab, not in hopes of death, but in hopes that a rush of fear will fill your heart so it will not be empty anymore. Once the pain is gone, the space that it once filled with purpose is now an empty void. You crave for something to fill it. Anything at all. Loneliness comes along and fills that void. Loneliness is an opportunistic parasite that feeds on your self-esteem. It sees your need to replace that nothingness and comes to offer you a sordid comfort. Like a cheap whore lying in your bed at night keeping you company -she doesn't care how you treat her, as long as you don't ignore her. You become a masochistic leech dependent on her torture. The only way to escape the seductive grip of Loneliness is to embrace Indifference. Once you have done that, Loneliness is your jilted lover. She will no longer have you back. Continuing on with life while in the arms of Loneliness is so much easier than finding the strength within the numbness of an indifferent heart to continue the farce of a life you pretend to lead. Loneliness knows this all too well, and she plays on it. She will push you to the very edge of your limits. When you have had just about enough torture and start courting Indifference, she dangles hope just beyond your reach to reel you back in. She continues this game until you have no self-esteem left and have nothing left to offer her. She is a sick and twisted bitch, though. Rather than finishing you off and putting you out of your misery, she prefers to leave you a wretched pathetic mess pining over her."
Loneliness left Jack a long time ago. He didn't offer her much sport.