Arnold III

Tonight was really emotional for Arnold. I think what’s happening is finally sinking in.

We’ve cleaned out most of the house. We’re going to go through his bedroom tomorrow, and then prepare him to leave the next day. He’s been working hard the past few nights, but today, everything finally caught up to him.

Most of the night he had been laughing along with me, for once. We were making jokes and swapping stories about our life. I even told him a few stories from my career as an Agent. We ordered a pizza, and I even brought a movie the two of us could watch; we both share a love for the film The Departed.

But everything changed. We were throwing away old papers of his inside of his nightstand. It was a random assortment of documents from his past; bills, notes, cards, and other meaningless things. We threw away most of them without problem… until we reached the bottom of the drawer.

It was then where we found a crumpled up paper. It was torn up at the edges. It had the tattered pieces on the side of it, indicating it had been ripped from some type of notebook.

As soon as Arnold saw that paper, his entire demeanor changed. He had been smiling and laughing, but now his face was pale and blank. He bit at the side of his lip, and blinked a few times.

I picked the paper up, and asked him about it. He didn’t answer. He just kept staring at the paper.

There was tiny, but neat, writing scrawled on it. Though much of it had faded, I was able to more or less read all of it. I will not tell you what it said, for that is personal to Arnold. I can tell you who wrote the note, and what it did to Arnold.

It was from his wife, and it had been the note she left behind before leaving Arnold. He had held onto that note ever since that day. This was the last thing he had connecting him to his past.

I could sense the unrest inside of him. This sadness transcended tragedy. This was a man broken down to his very core. He had everything taken away from him and now he was expected to forget and let go. What could I have done? There was no one on the earth who could fix this.

The mother and the children did not survive the separation. A couple of months after they departed they were killed in a manner unrelated to anything but pure tragic happenstance.

So he was only left with this world after they were killed; a world where his mind and body constantly fails him. A world he slowly drifts away from every night. He was losing his grip on reality, one could be sure of that. Perhaps, after he moves away from here, he’ll lose it completely and never regain his composure. If he has no bonds to the past, there’s nothing that lets the poor man keep it with him.

I think the saddest thing about this, is not in the fact that it actually happened, but the fact that this always happens. Right this very second there’s a man jumping off a building, a woman being clobbered by an abusive and ungrateful husband, a kid crying alone in a corner… untouched and unloved.

This is a world where everything means nothing. This poor man’s tragedy was nothing compared to the tragedies that weigh down the world every single day and night.

What could I do to outweigh the pain? I was also nothing. I have my own personal tragedy, and I still haven’t gotten away from it. So where was the sense in me trying to help when I clearly didn’t know how? Well, I guess it’s my job. I have to.

If I don’t try, who will?

So I sat there with him, and waited for the tears to fall. And when they did, I was there. I said all I could say, and I listened to everything he said. I wasn’t going to let him fall with his tears.

He fell asleep on his couch, while telling me about one night he went out with his family on a good ol’ camping trip. It was a good story. He smiled and laughed while he told it. There were no tears this time. Just pure happiness. Of course… there was an empty feeling behind it all. As if his loss was magnified through his voice and his mannerisms. I could see it clearly in his body. His eyes screamed hopelessness, and a few times throughout the story he would stop randomly, and look down… he would lick his lips and would not blink; that look reminded me of countless of other faces.

When he was asleep, I covered him with a blanket from his bed, and continued to clean the house up. I did not sleep, I worked through the night. I’m not tired.


I will be his final bond. I will do all I can to assure that he doesn’t lose himself.