When Petals Fall

The petals fell from my tulips this week which triggered the memory of that awful April so many years ago when Paul borrowed a car and rigged it up so he could breathe carbon monoxide and die. Then Diane, quoting T.S. Eliot, speaks in my head:
APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
But before the slugs finish feasting on the fallen petals, May pushes aside April and it seems too late to linger on the still surreal events of that long ago April night when Paul left us all without saying good-bye. Oh sure, he left some clues--an article he wrote called "Ten Acceptable Things to Do After Junior-Senior Banquet" (for instance, bowling: acceptable) and the video tape of "The Big Chill" playing on the hall television--but no one connected the dots until after the police found the car and poor Gerard had to identify the body because he owned the car. And then we shook our heads and sobs shook our bodies and we trembled in collective grief. A silent chill fell over that college campus as we tried to come to grips with his suicide.

Paul never imagined a life beyond that April night and so each April, I imagine for him, wonder at what might have been, ponder the seismic shock that continues to ripple the waves even twenty years after his desperate night. Twenty years came and went. And the petals still fall every spring, bringing a quiet end to their vibrant moments in the sun.

The tulips will be back, though, next year. They always return after the dark winter passes. Paul is gone forever.