The chills that run up through your spine as you flip through the pages of a dead person’s diary is far more surreal than anything else that you can think of. The words scribbled in between the lines on the page pierce my heart as they bring my father back to life, but even as they do so, the haunting words of my father reveal a mysterious darker side that I never really wanted to know about.
I write this final entry today as I smoke my final cigarette. The pains of my life have finally gotten to me.
My wife left me for my former best friend and my kids don’t even know me. I’ve spent years doing my best at all things that I had to do. I worked at a job that I hated until they decided to fire me after twenty years, I’m drowning in debt, and now I can’t find another job in this recession.
It has all just fallen on me at the last minute and I really don’t think I can take it anymore.
I wonder if this cigarette could be the thing that lets me leave this place…
It was never an accident. No one killed him. There was no vengeance sought for his gambling debts. There wasn’t even a mystery, because everyone secretly knew but never wanted to do anything about it. Hours after the last diary entry was written, my father’s body was found lifeless next to a dropped cigarette—and he had done it. He had killed himself.
Jazzed About Stuff 