New Morning

Dear Neighbour from the 17th floor of the building next door,

I wish you had been able to see the amazingly beautiful sunrise this morning. It was a silent riot of awesome colour. Truly spectacular.

Instead, your body lay at the foot of your building for three hours yesterday afternoon covered in a pink sheet, as firefighters, police, and finally the coroner came and did their examinations. With all your neighbours standing vigil on their balconies and in the driveway, they finally took you away. The sad building supes cleaned up the mess and the local teenagers stood gawking around the point of impact for a while. Then everybody left, except for an older couple in the apartment just above yours. Together they leaned their snowy heads over their balcony for a long time, looking down into the twilight at the spot where you landed. Were you friends?

My wife and I didn't know you, but we burned some sage and shared our prayers for you and everyone involved. After that we felt a little better, but we still wouldn't let our child look out the window, even though there was nothing out there he would have understood anyway. Later we couldn't bear the sight of your building, so we drew our blinds and tried to forget what we had seen. Late in the night I peeked out and saw that you had left your lights on and your balcony door open as if you thought you might be returning home soon.

We wished one of us had had the opportunity to talk with you. With all our strength we would have insisted and promised there would have been a beautiful sunrise in your life again. If not the next morning, then the morning after that. If you had been with us on this new morning, I guarantee you would have loved all the beautiful colours we could have shared. I am sure you could have seen them from your house too. There is beauty all over the world today.