Tragedy

 

Now that a week has gone by and I’ve gathered a few more facts, I can report on an event that was both tragic and horrifying.

          It’s quiet here at our complex, remarkably so when you consider it’s composed of eleven three-story buildings, each housing 12 units. All that I can hear as I type this is birdsong and the occasional small airplane heading to Venice airport.

          Last Sunday My Guy and I had just finished dinner and I was tidying up the kitchen while he was sitting in the living room. Suddenly I heard a BANG! In spite of a steady diet of cop shows on TV, I’ve never heard a gunshot in person, but somehow I was sure that was what I’d heard.

          We both waited, but nothing followed. Then came the sound of a siren. There is a busy road neighboring us, so we decided we must have heard the sound of impact from an accident. I mean, really? A gunshot? How farfetched!

          Except at the building across our little lagoon police cars were pulling in, blue lights flashing, headlights shining across the water at us. Going out to the porch to gain a better view, I realized there was a figure lying on the grass, policemen around it.

          Okay, I admit it, at that point I found our binoculars but then decided I didn’t need the detail when I saw the blood across the figure’s chest.

          No we didn’t have a crazed gunman roaming through our palm trees (although I wouldn’t have been terribly surprised in gun-happy Florida). A brother and sister lived in that unit, and the brother had taken his own life while his sister was away for the day. She has two little dogs, and I suspect he went outside to commit suicide so that he wouldn’t upset the dogs.

          We rarely saw the brother; just figured he was a quiet guy. But it turns out he was in the last stages of cancer, and had once told his sister that he wasn’t going to let it take him. The fact that both his wife and the sister’s husband had both died of cancer likely played a part.