These Small Hours

Prologue

    I cannot promise to tell you a story that will make you see true love blossom between soul mates eternally destined for one another. I cannot even promise to avoid making you cry a little when you realize that my tale is one of complications that would eventually lead into me learning life’s greatest lessons. For me, love and death have equal shares atop all others with their ability to break us down.

    I can, however, guarantee that if given the chance, my story will be seen for having real circumstances; it tells how an average man can overcome adversities set before him if he simply tries—proving willpower wins inner wars. After all, what is any tale told without hints of reality seeping through its pages? Like honorable poets revealing sorrows, joys, adoration and admiration through words written from their own hearts. It is finding what makes us tick then seeking ways we can put it onto paper so we might see if others can relate because we feel awfully alone.

    When I found a few extra minutes after work, spending time with my wife, and taking care of our children, I would sit in my favorite chair—scarlet colored recliner bearing barely visible small stains made by spilled coffee and my equally favored jelly donuts—reading novels. They appealed more to my nature than documentaries. I have seen enough real events to last me, but it brought pleasure seeing those magical dream worlds kept inside an author’s head. During one of my readings, I came upon a quote credited to Clive Staples Lewis: We read to know we are not alone.

    This inspired me to take up my typewriter—arthritis prevents me from using pens—that I could write about my own life. I wrote it because even if I never know, it would be nice thinking I am not alone here. That somewhere there is a person who feels the way I do.

    You will witness how one painful event is merely an opening for another more complicated tragedy capable of breaking weaker people—their devastated future awaiting in the barrel where a bullet will spit forth, the asphalt below twenty floors calling silently them, their noose beckons menacingly—but are easily forgotten in the minds of others. Whether they were heroes or villains, only the strong live on forever.

    It is Romeo climbing his rope ladder to Juliet’s balcony, gaining her unending love then going through every obstacle together. When he loses her, he is on his own and in this case his strength would make him continue on to a lifetime of emotional suffering. Their families would have declared their friendship rather than being enemies; renounced violence making them caring individuals whose own personal pains affected Romeo more deeply. The famous Shakespeare play gets changed until the dramatic end becomes Romeo living, regretting his choices—not how he felt about Juliet.

    You will see how friendship, love, laughter, and death are major factors of human existence. Without them we are hollow shells drifting through meaningless lives. They build us high and push us low, yet, in their own ways, make us better. Make us stronger. We need to experience these things; it is what makes us human. They give reasons we should appreciate all we have.

    What I can promise you is unadulterated honesty, and that is good. Still the good things I have done are now gone. They rest upon the pile of forsaken history collected over these sixty-three years since my birth. Few are even worth mentioning, some are safer to keep hidden. I have found keeping secrets close causes emotional strains, yet some things are harmful when put out into the open.

    There had been a time in my life when I knew all the answers to the most complex mysteries. I said all the right things at those perfect moments and I hated anything I could not explain, except for God. I have always respected my religion, if only for the chance to see heaven’s golden gates. Any God fearing man can tell you that we are incapable of understanding His almighty plans.