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A quiet rain fell wet upon the city like tears without passion. Nearby, an austere figure in a high collared, tightly belted trench coat hesitated by a small pool of water beneath a solitary lamp standing lonely vigil over a forest of headstones and cultivated trees.
Mirrored in the pool, he saw the distorted image of a face familiar but for the grief that marred its craggy features. In quiet despair, he let his eyes wander into the darkness as he reflected upon the son he had known not well enough, the son whose young body lay buried now only a few yards away. What would become of the family left behind, he wondered, remembering how jubilant and filled with life the young couple |
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had been on their wedding day.
But one night they fell to arguing. About money or love, sex, politics or her pregnancy, he didn't know; only that neighbors heard and, mindful of dire warnings about domestic violence churned out daily if not hourly by the sensation hungry mill of the media, called the police who, perhaps for the same reason, responded too much on edge. When his son made an abruptly frustrated gesture, a startled officer reflexively drew her weapon and gunned him down. No one was to blame. Not the devastated officer, not the distraught young wife, not the concerned neighbors nor even, in any direct way, the media or the clucking news anchors who solemnly |
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shook their heads and, for one night's broadcast to images of the pregnant young woman weeping as she watched her husband's body lowered into the ground, wondered, "Are we somehow to blame? Did we contribute to this man's death?"
No one was to blame. But now, all their tomorrows were yesterday, and his grandson would face life in an uncertain world made more so by the death of a father he would never know for a reason he might never understand. Slowly, the old young man trudged down the path to the dead young man's grave, where he knelt, leaned against the cold stone and sobbed, "My son, there was never enough time, my son." |