The Weight

An older man in the Central District, telling me how he looked after his dear friend until she passed on. We'd just been talking about the Federal Way shootings, and the conversation had drifted on to taking care of ourselves. 

Everyone else had gone, and he'd come up to me at the end of the line, conspiratorially showing me a picture of his late friend in his wallet. 

"Her name whuh Shirley Cooper. I took care a her 'til the day she died." A crack in his voice, tentative and unbidden, carrying the weight of the years. 

Sometimes we're moved by the size, intensity, or drama of things; honesty floors me more than anything else.