I had a dream that I had to fly home for an emergency. My mother called to let me know that Ed was acting suicidal, and that he needed me to be there as soon as possible. I flew home, and on an Uber ride back to my parents’ house, I called my mom. She’s out buying food near the house, so she isn’t home with him. I went ballistic on her. “How can you leave him alone? If he’s suicidal, you cannot leave him alone by himself!” My mom gets defensive and said she had errands to run and can’t just sit with him all day. “If he gets very suicidal, then he can always call 911!” That’s probably the stupidest thing to say given the circumstances, but then again, it’s not like much of what she says in these situations tends to make sense. I got off the phone with her as the driver parks in front of the house.

My mom was walking up the hill at the same time, so we entered the house together. I immediately called out Ed’s name, but no response. I ran around to each room to look for him, and I finally reached his bedroom, where I noticed his arm sticking out from under his bed, and I screamed. I pushed the bed aside to reveal him lying with his arms and legs sprawled out, not breathing, his eyes closed. On the night table next to him is a glass of orange juice with a bottle of rat poisoning next to it. Based on the  looks of things, he had mixed the rat poisoning into his orange juice and downed it. I touched his chest to feel for a heart beat and touched his arms, and all I felt was cold as I tried to resuscitate him and yelled for our mom to call 911. But I knew it was too late.