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This time you have really jumped off on the deep end.

You were funny with your seven year old bravado that night you jumped into the deep end of the hotel pool, defying all the rules to prove you could swim. When you went under and didn't come back up again, all the laughter stopped.

Simultaneously each of us panicked, non-swimmers ourselves, clinging to the side of the pool, screaming for someone to come and save you from drowning. When it was all over and Dad was finished screaming, we detested you for angering him and ruining the night for all of us.

I told you once how I saw the pool episode as symbolic of your addiction, when we used to sit on my porch and watch the cars go by at night, with the boys asleep inside. And thus began a lifetime of watching life give you a beating while you slowly drowned in your own circumstances.

I'm here in town now driving in what feels like circles, trying to figure out what happened. Is there no one who can keep it together long enough to give me the real facts, free of emotional assumptions? No one has enough answers to help me make sense of this.

They tell me that yesterday they found you sitting at the dining room table at 8:30 in the morning trying to get to the bottom of a fifth of Vodka. Is that where you found the courage to do this?

The day before that they said you were stumbling around in the yard and screaming that you couldn't see. I've heard that alcohol poisoning causes temporary blindness. Why didn't you know when to stop? You literally couldn't see where this was going?

At home the day before in the early morning I read your cryptic text message about how bad things happen to people. What is that supposed to mean, I wonder to myself? And when did you send this while I was sleeping? I'm asking myself how or if I should respond to you or just ignore your ludicrous drunken ranting like I have learned to do in the past. It never occurred to me

Less than twenty-four hours later I am here in our hometown wandering through America's superstore to purchase a turtleneck shirt that they will use to dress you in and will camouflage ligature marks on your neck. My God this has to be a dream. You will have turned 42 in a week.

I am in utter disbelief. They said this has been getting worse for weeks. But I was just here a month ago. My God, you have agedthis doesn't even look like you. I can't get this ugly truth to soak in. My legs are trembling with the knowledge that your hopelessness reached the point that you sincerely

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