An assemblage of words which I find aesthetically pleasing and sad.

Finally it was Rog and me alone, late at night in the quiet, the way it had been all summer. Still I would not cry, because I wouldn't let him hear sorrow. I spent all my own endearments-my little friend-and sat till four o'clock. When I'd kissed his forehead I could still smell the freshness of the shampoo. I called Sam at four and said I was ready to leave, and we talked awhile about whether I needed to be there for the actual moment. I didn't, I don't know why. I clipped a lock of his hair, which got lost in the chaos of the following day. I slipped off his father's sapphire ring, which the nurse had taped to his finger. I said what half good-bye I could. You're the best, I whispered as I walked out the door, what I always said when I left his room at night.

I drove home trying to beat the dawn and knew it would not even start until morning. Waking teaches you pain. The parents were in the front bedroom, so I took a Dalmane and curled up in Roger's bed, where I still sleep every night because he is nearer there than anywhere else in the house. When the phone rang at six I drifted out of bed and went into the darkened study. Bernice was standing in the hallway door, and we held each other as the machine answered the phone. After the beep, a voice said: "This is UCLA Medical Center calling. Mr. Roger Horwitz died at 5:42 A.M. this morning, October twenty-second." Bernice and I hugged each other briefly, without a word, and I swam back to bed for the end of the night, trying to stay under the Dalmane. Putting off for as long as I could the desolate waking to life alone-this calamity that is all mine, that will not end till I do.

Paul Monette,
Borrowed Time