Day 171

I just got back home from seeing the sequel to Top Gun. It was ok. Once again, Tom Cruise saves the day. Predictable. 

What stands out for me is not the movie but the theater where I saw it. Movie Tavern is probably 10 years old. Prior to being a movie theater, the building was home to a Publix grocery store. I remember when Movie Tavern first opened. Dine-in theaters were all the rage at the time. Waiters would come and take your order at your seat – everything from standard movie fair to full fledged meals. And they served liquor which at the time they opened had some appeal. 

The first time that the three of us went to Movie Tavern Damian was probably seven. I have no idea what we saw. It may have been the first Despicable Me or one of the Cars movies; Damian loved both of them. As we walked into the theater, I noticed that all the chairs were oversized recliners with a tray table attached to each one. On the end of the tray table closest to the pivot point (attached to the armrest of the chair) was an illuminated red button. As we were taking our seats, Damian asked, "What's does the button do?" 

I gave my answer in two parts. With the benefit of hindsight, I know now that I should have lead with part 2. Here is what I said, "I don't know what it's for, but don't touch it." Here is what I should have said, "Don't touch it. I don't know what it's for." In the span that it took me to say the words "I don't know what it's for" Damian had decided the best way to find out what it was for was to push the button and see what happened. Or maybe he was already pushing it as he was asking the question. Bottom line, he saw a button and he was going to push it. Full stop. Fortunately, nothing catastrophic or overly concerning happened. It simply summoned a waiter who, johnny on the spot a minute or two later, was ready to take our order. Dawn and I laughed about the red button incident for the couple of years and would often regale friends with our conclusion: Pushing the button was a moral imperative for Damian much like chasing a squirrel is to a dog. 

The story of the red button was funnier then than it is now. I wonder if that's because it spoke to Damian's innocence, the last vestiges of which disappeared the night he chose to end his life. Maybe it's because I didn't know that he had it him to do what he did. Or maybe, like that red button, he wanted to see what would happen which, if true, would have been the ultimate irony... 'cuz you can't see shit when you're dead.

I don't dwell on his passing much anymore. He did what he did. I can't unwind it or get him to tell me why. I was, however, thinking about it on Saturday, while, once again, I was mowing the lawn. One thing that I haven't shared with anyone other than Dawn and Andrea is that the night / morning that Damian died I woke up at 3:30AM to pee. While I was going to the bathroom I thought I smelled food. Like cooked sausage or something. In and of itself, smelling cooked food in the wee hours of the morning was not usual as Damian was known to make meals late at night. What struck me that night was how strong the smell was. It made me wonder if he was still in the kitchen cooking something so I went to check. As the kitchen was empty, I opened the door to the basement to see if he was still on his computer or watching TV. While I didn't hear any noises, I did see a light on. Turned out it was the light in my shop; all the other lights in the basement were off. I walked over to the shop, gave it a quick scan and seeing nothing out of the ordinary I turned the light off. I wrote it off as Damian forgotting to turn the light off after going into my shop to borrow some tool. Finding nothing that confirmed my suspicions of a midnight snack and finding nothing else out of the ordinary I went upstairs and got back into bed where I stayed until around 5AM. 

Between 3:30 and 5 I didn't sleep. I may have lightly dozed but I recall being mostly awake. At 5AM I got up because there was a project for work that I needed to wrap up over the weekend. I worked in my home office in the basement from a little after five to around 7:45AM. It was 8:03 when I found Damian, dead in my shop. He had been there most of the night. 

For the first couple of weeks after Damian died all I could think about was how different things could have been if I had found Damian at 3:30 when I had gone downstairs and turned the light off in the shop. He was there already, I had just missed him. I beat myself up repeatedly for thinking that if I had found him then, at 3:30, I could have saved him. The first 24 hours I was inconsolable over this. I begged Dawn to forgive me for not finding him in the middle of the night. To her everlasting credit, she told me repeatedly that there was nothing to forgive. Andrea also told me several times that by the time I turned the light off he was already gone. I was very relieved to hear that the coroner had estimated the time of death between 12:30 and 1. Had he concluded that Damian had died some time between 3AM and 4AM, I'm not sure that I would still be here, the guilt over not saving him likely too much to live with. 

As I was thinking about all of this on Saturday, I came back to the odor of cooked sausage. I know it was there; I remember it distinctly as it was the reason I walked out of the bedroom in the first place. Damian hadn't made himself a snack so nothing had been cooked in the kitchen since the previous evening. Whatever aromas had been created in preparing that night's dinner would have dissipated long before I woke up to pee. So what was it then? A big part of me wants to read something into it. To make a (spiritual?) connection with his death. Damian loved sausage, especially kielbasa. Did his soul conjure up this smell as it left his body? Did he wake me up to tell me goodbye? To let me know with this aroma that he was going to be alright? 

As much as I may want some or all or this to be true, the rational part of my brain is not having any of it. I woke up because I had to pee. Who knows what I smelled and why; it's not that important. Damian and I were supposed to be going sailing that morning so checking to make sure he was not still on his computer or watching TV was the prudent thing to do. I saw a light on, went to investigate to make sure that it wasn't Damian still up doing who-knows-what, and finding nothing out of the ordinary, I went to back to bed. And why would there be anything out of the ordinary? Our life had always been ordinary so there was no reason to suspect anything was amiss just because a light had been left on. This is logic and reasoning at work. Nothing supernatural about any of it. 

But there is this little inkling of doubt, another "what if..", that I just can't totally let go of.