In the year after Lorraine's death, I contemplated suicide six times.

Contemplated seriously, I mean.

Six times sat with the fat bottle konazepam within reaching distance.

Six times failed to reach for it.

Betrayed by some instinct for life or disgusted by my own weakness.

I can't say I wish I had succeeded, because in all likelihood I did succeed on each and every

occasion.

Six deaths.

No, not just six, an infinite number times 6. There are greater and lesser

infinities, but I didn't know that then.

It's now time. It's now time for just the terror with Nick Guerra.

You will never die. I was only 60 years old. I lived all my life in the city of Toronto.

I worked 35 years as a senior accountant for a Great Lakes cargo brokerage called Steam Ships Forwarding Limited.

Took an early retirement in 1997, not long before Lorraine was diagnosed with the pancreatic

cancer that killed her the following year.

Back then she worked part-time in a Harvard Street used bookshop called Finders,

a short walk from the university district, and a part of the city we both loved. I still loved it even without

Lorraine, though the gloss had dimmed considerably. I lived there still in a utility apartment

over an antique store. I often walk the neighborhood, down Spadina to the candy bright intricacies of Chinatown, or west to Kensington, foreign as a Bengali marketplace, where the smell of spices and ground

coffee mingled with the stink of sun-ripened fish.

Usually I avoided Harburg Street. My grief was raw enough without the provocation of the bookstore and its awkward memories.

Today, however, the sky was a radiant blue.

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