by Jennifer Harvey
Two-hundred words comprised Dennis’ entire career. The career of most obituary writers. Actually, he just happened to be one of them. Never really seemed to end at work though. Officiating at his brother’s wedding? Two-hundred-word speech. Farewell tribute when Babs Holman retired as editor of the paper? Two hundred. Weekly emails out to his old college roommate in Frankfurt? You get it.
But for Damien Washington? No. No way was two hundred going to be enough. I mean, Dennis knew that guy, knew him personally. Not that anyone knew that Dennis knew Damien; it’s not called Alcoholics Anonymous for nothing. Damien Washington, fifty-two years old. Cirrhosis of the liver. He was about to be the next cautionary tale for newbies at the Memorial Baptist Wednesday night meetings.
Dennis didn’t need the statement provided by Damien’s brother to write this one. He already knew that this brother was Damien’s twin, that they had three older sisters, and that Damien was also leaving behind two high school aged kids and their mother, who he had just remarried only two years earlier after cleaning up. Nothing in the biography about the time Damien woke up in a seedy Atlantic City motel next to a “lady of the night” named Charisma on the day he was supposed to be picking up the cake and decorations for his daughter’s sixth birthday party. No matter that Damien talked about Rock Bottom with more reverence than his graduation from University of Delaware or career as an account’s manager. It may have been the most pivotal moment of Damien’s life, but Dennis knew it didn’t belong.
There was nothing in the statement about go-karts either. Dennis knew Damien took his wife and kids to those tracks nearly every weekend. It wasn’t a part of his secret past. They probably didn’t know that Damien cried the first time he told his fellow addicts that having a sober afternoon with his family had been one of the greatest moment of his new life—that the rush of terror and pure joy as the wind hit his face while making a sharp turn around the track was better than whatever he had found at the bottom of a bottle. This part of Damien’s life wasn’t a secret, but it wasn’t exactly the stuff of obits, either. Dennis knew this too.
Dennis sighed and longed for the drink he couldn’t have, for some other way to pay tribute to his fellow comrade in that never-ending battle, some other means of making that memory last, something more than two hundred words.
Lauren Cortese is an emerging writer based out of Annapolis, MD. She focuses on fiction short stories and is completing her first novel.