Why do I need to tell this story?

 I can't really say for sure.  All I know is that recounting the events of that night, and the events leading up to that night, seem to be a compelling force inside me, as if by the retelling, I might heal from the heavy weight of sorrow that consumes my days.  I have a driving need to get every detail into print.  And, every detail of this day is burned into my memory, and will remain forever imprinted on my soul.  You might call this a journal of sorts, or maybe a brain dump.  In any event, I need to write it all down.  Then maybe I can somehow lift myself out of this cold Nether World of despair, to a warmer place, a place of healing, a place where I can begin to move on with what's left of my life.

To tell the story completely and honestly, I need to digress a little to the days preceding Larry's Suicide.

Summary

The fall of 1997 was a hellish time for me.  My marriage was falling apart, and my daughter was dying . . . literally.  Larry was involved in an activity that was hurting me deeply.  We came very close to separating the previous February, because of this same activity.  He told me then, that he loved me, and that he didn't want our marriage to end.  He swore he would cease what he was doing.   I have kept silent about this activity, since his death, because I felt it would be a betrayal to Larry's memory to divulge a side of him that he was deeply ashamed of.  Even now, I have agonized over whether to reveal this carefully guarded secret, that still brings a great deal of pain to me as well.

I have come to the conclusion that the details leading up to Larry's death, would appear generalized and incomplete, should I omit what lay at the core of our marital problems.  I have no wish to betray Larry, but he is dead.  He can no longer feel shame, or anything at all now, for that matter.  He did what he felt he had to do.  I, unhappily, am still alive, and must do what I have to do to survive.  It is much easier to tell the truth, than bits and pieces of the truth.

The Truth

Larry had an addiction.  Pornography.  Hard-core Bondage, to be precise.  It wasn't like the occasional sex magazine, or an x-rated video tape, that most of us have indulged in at one time or another.  He was literally obsessed with the whole bondage scene.  I really had no idea how much it consumed his thoughts and  time, even when I accidentally found several bondage magazines under the seat of our truck, a few weeks after we were married!

They were newly purchased magazines, still in the bag with the sales receipt and date, at an amazing $32.00 apiece!  I had driven our truck to the store.  Larry didn't know me well enough at the time to know that I always police my vehicles, before I get out of them.  I like to make sure that there is no undetected trash on the floor or rolled back under the seats.  I was totally unprepared for what I found!  The magazines really scared me, because I didn't know Larry very well either at that time.  Larry was so taciturn, that I kind of worried, there might be more under the surface than he was willing to reveal.

No prude myself, I thought I had seen it all in my 44 years of life.  But somehow,  hard-core bondage had escaped my notice.  At $32.00 a shot, I can probably see why.  As I looked through these brutally explicit magazines, two separate schools of thought began to emerge.  On the one hand, I was afraid that Larry might be some kind of sadistic monster, who actually practices the sadism I saw depicted in these magazines.  "Maybe he leads a double life!"  On the other hand, I was extremely hurt by another implication.  "Larry must be so dissatisfied with me, that he has to supplement with his fantasies of these younger more beautiful women."

I felt that he had made a commitment to me, when we married, to be sexually monogamous with me.  The thought of him focusing his sexual attention regularly on another woman, whether it be in a magazine, on the street, or in a bed with him, hurt me deeply.  I felt cheated on and betrayed.  I wondered why he married me.  Did he just settle for me?!

 Larry was sitting on the couch watching TV when I came into the apartment.  I threw the sack of magazines on the floor by where he was sitting, and said, "What is this?"  The magazines had slid out of the bag by the force of my throw, and were lined up neatly in front of him.  He just sat there and looked at me, his face revealing nothing.  I waited.  And waited.  Larry said nothing.  I had this big tight ball in the pit of my stomach, which was screaming, "I've made a horrible mistake in marrying him!  Will he tie me up some day, and drive objects into my flesh!"  I didn't say another word, just put my groceries away, and went into the bedroom to go to bed.  I locked the door behind me.

The next morning, when I came out of the bedroom, Larry was gone.  He had went to work.  The magazines were still lying where I had thrown them the night before.  We had a big whiteboard hanging in the kitchen.  He had written on it, "I am at work.  I won't come back until you call me."  No apologies, no "lets talk" nothing.  That was all it said.  I decided that I would not call him.  What did he expect me to do, call him and beg him to come home, apologize that I had found his magazines?!  I couldn't believe he expected that of me!

That evening, I had to attend a birthday party, that I just couldn't get out of.  It was 10:00 PM before I got home.  Larry was not there.  He did not come home that night, and I didn't call him.  The next evening, around 4:00, he called me.  He asked me if he could come home.  I told him that it was not my decision for him to leave in the first place.  I also asked him if he was willing to talk to me about the magazines.  He said that he was.

Through this conversation, I learned how deeply ashamed Larry was of being caught with these bondage magazines.  He was far more ashamed than he should have been, like there was something basically wrong with his biological makeup.  Even though I was still hurt, I ended up comforting him, reassuring him that gazing at pornography was not a character flaw, but perfectly normal behavior.  However, I did stress that it was a behavior that if continued on a regular basis, would destroy the intimacy of our relationship.  I explained to him how betrayed I felt, and that in most things I was pretty laid back and tolerant.  But, when it came to sharing him with other women . . . well, that was my breaking point.

The magazines were totally forgotten, at least by me.  Not trusting Larry, was never a thought that entered my mind those first few years.  We bought a house in Meigs County and began building a life together.  I think, for the first time in both our lives, we had found a place where we truly belonged.  We were very proud of our farm, and our horses.  We had found our little corner of the world, where we could live together in peace.  We played.  We laughed.  We made love under the pines.  I thought we were truly happy.  At least I was.

But, Larry couldn't stay away from bondage.  I found a membership card that had fallen out of Larry's wallet in the summer of 1996.  It was a membership card to some adult place.  That's all I could tell from the card.  My heart sank.  The card had an address on it, for some place in Mineral Wells WV.  I had no idea what I would find, but I had to drive there.  I dragged my son-in-law with me.  I thought it would turn out to be a brothel.  It turned out to be an adult bookstore.  Even as hurt as I was, I was very relieved that it wasn't a brothel.  My son-in-law and I had to buy memberships to enter, identical to the card that I had found.  We couldn't help but laugh all the way home.  Now we were stuck with membership cards.

Making a purchase at an adult bookstore, seems innocent enough on the surface.  But, for me, it destroyed the trust I had always taken for granted where Larry was concerned.  I didn't realize how wonderful those days of complete trust were, until I lost them.  Now, overnight, I had turned into a sneaky sly creature, who searched Larry's service van after he fell asleep one night.  Piles of well-read bondage magazines under his floor mats.

If he had hidden this secret from me, what other secrets did he have?  He was on the road a great deal of the time.  Some of these magazines were covered from front to back, with ads for meeting someone with like sexual preferences (bondage).  Even though sick inside, I did not confront Larry right away.  For one reason, I was ashamed of myself for sneaking into his personal belongings.  I was not generally that type of person at all.  For another reason, if he was having sexual relations with someone else, I wanted to know.  This meant that I would continue sneaking into his personal belongings for awhile.  I didn't like what I had become.

What really hurt, was that Larry had to make a special 45 mile trip to Mineral Wells to purchase the magazines.  His daily service route did not take him anywhere near Mineral Wells WV.  This told me that it was not an impulse purchase!  He had made a conscious decision to disregard his commitment to me, and had set out in a deliberate fashion to destroy the intimacy of our marriage.

With a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, I began actively looking.  My attention turned toward the internet!  Everything viewed on the internet, is downloaded to the harddrive.  A cursory check of Larry's harddrive was an eye opener.  Movies, pictures, sound, personal ads, you name it; it was there . . . in volumes!  He had bookmarked scores of bondage sites.  He had subscribed to just about every Newsgroup dealing with bondage, even a "meet others interested in bondage" site.

Every time I was away from the house for any length of time, I could expect volumes more when I returned.  Everything downloaded was "date & time" stamped.  I could see by this, that he had started his bondage party the minute I left the house, and stopped when he heard my car pull up the drive.  This really hurt . . . still hurts.  I felt like I was cramping his style, that he would be happier if I never returned at all!  If I went to bed early, he would stay up for hours on his bondage sites.  He spent a couple of hours each morning before work on them too.  If I had to be gone all day on Saturday or Sunday, I would come back to find he had been cruising bondage sites for 6 to 7 hours at a sitting.  His magazine collection kept growing.  When he would have late nights at work, I wondered.  I started comparing his pay stubs to the hours he was gone.  They always fell short.

The real kicker was Christmas day of 1996.  Larry and I had spent the night at my daughter's house a 10 minute drive from our house, so we could spend Christmas morning there opening gifts with my granddaughter Alexis.  After gifts were opened, and just before dinner, one of us needed to drive home to feed the horses.  I offered to go, but Larry insisted on going.  I told him that I would go with him, but he was adamant that I remain there, that it wouldn't take him that long.

The food was done and cold by the time he returned.  He was gone for almost 3 hours!  When I asked him why he was gone for so long, he told me that he had to let our dog run around outside for awhile.  I knew the real reason.  On checking his computer that night, I found what he had really been doing for those 3 hours.  His obsession with bondage was so all-consuming, that he had no qualms about making his family wait ON CHRISTMAS DAY while he indulged in it.

By this point in time, Larry and I were no longer intimate, though he didn't know why, nor did he ask why.  I just couldn't bring myself to make love to him, while he lay there lusting after another woman's body, getting turned on by the thought of touching her.  His fantasy world would have to sustain him without my participation.  It seemed to be doing just that.  He had succeeded in destroying the intimacy of our relationship.

Finally in February of 1997, I confronted Larry about everything I knew he was doing.  I had no proof that he was actually seeing other women, but as far as I was concerned, he might as well have had physical contact with other women.  I knew that other women dominated his thoughts and fantasies. The volume of pornography he consumed on a daily basis, proved that fact beyond a doubt.  I sincerely believed, that if he had not managed a physical encounter, it was just a lack of opportunity.  I could not believe that he valued me and the life we shared together so little, that he would walk willingly into jeopardizing it all.

I reminded Larry of what I had told him years before, about my breaking point.  I told him that I had reached it, that he was no longer someone I could trust, that I was considering leaving him.  He said nothing.  I started spending nights with my daughter while making plans to liquidate our belongings.  Larry didn't even miss a day of work worrying over the breakup of our marriage.  Then, on a Friday morning, he called me, wanted me to come home, wanted to talk.  He didn't go to work that morning.  I was amazed!  Could I possibly be important enough to him, for him to buck the system, and miss a day of work?  I found out after his death that my son-in-law had talked to him, had literally told him exactly what to do.  I now know that Larry had no clue of what to do.  He thought he was powerless.

That Friday morning, Larry and I had one of the most powerful emotion-charged conversations that we had ever had in all the years we were married.  In previous conversations, Larry had always clammed up whenever emotional issues surfaced.  I saw firsthand how agonizingly hard it was for Larry to express his feelings.  His emotions were broiling just under the surface, and he had to literally clench his fists to keep them from all spilling out.  It was as if, once the dam was broken, he wouldn't be able to stop.  He was terrified for someone to see this side of him.  Big tears were rolling down his face.  Words came out broken, one by one with full minutes in between, while he fought for some sort of control.  He told me that he despised himself for this bondage addiction, that he didn't know why he did it.  He said he didn't want to do it, but the urge was almost uncontrollable.  He told me that he didn't want our marriage to end, and promised that he would stop what he was doing, and he did, for awhile.

From this conversation, and the fact that he became silent whenever emotions came into play, I realized that Larry had some deep emotional issues that he needed to deal with.  He really needed to see a therapist, but, there was no way he would go.  So, I asked him if he would read some self-help books, if I bought them for him.  He said that he would.

I had read lots of self-help books through the years, trying to deal with my own emotional problems, so I knew about the excellent books that had been written entirely for men.  I bought them, and he made an effort to read them.  But, I believe he was critiquing them as an editor would, and not absorbing the message, that his soul needed.  He didn't say it in so many words, but I could tell that he looked with disdain on the authors of those books.  He looked with disdain on his own sister for her various attempts at suicide, saying once that she should just do it, and get it over with.  I felt helpless.  I was not a therapist.  Larry needed someone to open up to, and I really was not the one he should do it with, even if he had been so inclined, which of course, he wasn't.

About six months later, Larry was drawn back into his bondage addition again.  He was extremely cautious this time, for fear that I would find out.  He would wipe his harddrive clean after every session.  But, I was not the trusting person that I used to be and I was also very computer literate, taught by the master, Larry.  As a result,  I found out almost immediately. I knew exactly how to retrieve deleted files from within the DOS operating system, which resides under Windows95. I did not confront him this time, although it tore me apart.  I began again to quietly monitor everything he was doing.  The distance between us began to grow again.  I believed with all my heart that he wanted out of our marriage, but that he was too afraid of conflict to broach the subject with me.

Without letting him know that I knew, I tried many times to talk about our relationship, but Larry would just pat me and tell me in that mechanical way he had, that he did love me.  There was no real feeling or conviction behind his eyes.  I had forgotten how difficult it was for Larry to indulge in an emotional conversation.  He simply didn't know how.  But at that time, my own ego was wounded that he was again shutting me out, while he surrounded himself with fantasy women.  I could not bring myself to confront him yet, because I knew it would be the end of our marriage.  The storm continued to build, while Larry continued on, confident that I knew nothing of his activities.

In the meantime, Larry stopped doing anything around the farm.  He stopped cutting wood for the stove.  He wouldn't cut or bale any hay for the horses.  The pasture fence was rotting and falling down in huge sections, the horses getting out over and over again.  I would find them at neighboring farms, tromping through their crops.  I had to apologize so many times to these farmers, that it came to be a huge embarrassment for me.  Rounding up two halterless horses that didn't want to be caught, was a nightmare for me by myself.  Larry lost interest in the farm we loved so much, his obsession overriding everything else.

Finally, when my pain exceeded my desire to stay in the marriage, I came right out and asked Larry if he wanted a divorce.  He simply said no, with no emotion whatsoever.  As usual, it was a one-sided conversation, with me doing the talking, and Larry contributing nothing.  I searched his face, but it revealed only a stony mask.  I told him then, that I would set him free, that I would not hold him to a marriage that he no longer wanted to be a part of.  Silence.

I began talking about liquidating what we owned and splitting the money. Silence.  I told him that this was not what I wanted, but I could see no other alternative. Silence.  So, I asked him how much I should ask for the horses.  He suddenly came alive, and told me exactly what I should ask for them.  He also estimated what we could get out of the house.  To me, this was proof positive that he most certainly wanted out.

I asked him a very crucial question at this time.  I asked him to "please not disappear on me!"  He looked at me puzzled.  I told him that I needed him to stay until all the legal aspects of liquidating our property could be concluded.  He would need to be here to help me do that, sign papers and such.   He seemed surprised that I thought he would disappear.  I reminded him that he had a history of disappearing sometimes.  I mentioned the time when he had worked in West Virginia at an electronics company.  He had disappeared on them.

This happened long before I met him, but he had told me about it once.  He became disgruntled with the company because he was forced to work long hours.  He not only walked away from the job, but left behind the cabin he was buying on Land Contract, and a jeep he owned.  He never looked back, let the cabin go back to the holder of the land contract.  He disappeared on me briefly when I found the magazines in our truck right after we were married, opting to stay away, rather than risk the pain of explaining his actions.  He disappeared many times at company get-togethers before we were married.  No one ever knew why he suddenly got up and left without telling any of us goodnight.  Larry promised not to disappear on me!

I decided to wait until after the Christmas holidays of 1997, to start disassembling the life I had grown to love so dearly.  It fell on me to do this, because I was the one handling the family finances.  We somehow made it through the holidays like two zombies.  Finally, in the latter part of January, I reluctantly began to put the plan into motion.  It was breaking my heart, and Larry knew it.  One evening, I called a guy we knew, who had previously expressed interest in buying the horses.  The man told me he would come out Monday February 9th to look at them.  Larry was sitting in the same room, and heard everything that was said.  When I put down the phone, he said nothing at all to me.  The next morning I told Larry to begin saying his good-byes to the horses, because the man might just come with a horse trailer, and take them with him on Monday.  Silence. I wanted Larry to say or do anything, to just give me one reason to call the man back, and tell him we had changed our minds.  But, Larry had nothing to say.

Monday February 9, 1998

The horse man showed up as promised, and he did bring a horse trailer with another guy to help him load the horses.  We agreed on the price that Larry had set, and they also bought our saddles and bridles.  When the horse trailer rolled down the driveway, I came in and sat at the kitchen table and bawled like a baby.  Rowdy had been with us for years.  He was as much of a pet, as our dog was.  Larry was at work at the time.  When he came home, I didn't bother telling him they were gone.  I would only be met with silence anyway.  In addition, I was too upset to talk about losing Rowdy, to the one who was the cause of bringing it about.  Larry went out to the barn that evening, like he did every night after work, and threw hay over the fence to nonexistent horses.  He didn't remember that the men were coming that day, nor did he even check to see if the horses were in the pasture.

Tuesday February 10, 1998

This morning, as Larry did every morning, he threw hay to the horses.  He had to notice that the hay from the night before was still there, but he didn't say a word to me, when he came back into the house.  This made me angry, because I assumed that he thought the horses had gotten out of the pasture again.  If he didn't mention it, he would be safely at work when the one-woman roundup from hell took place.  But I didn't say anything to him.  By this time, I had become almost as silent as Larry.  I had been rebuffed by his silence too many times.

 My daughter, Christina, had fallen very ill in the fall of 1997, and I was away from the house a good deal of the time, sometimes overnight.  I noticed that Larry's bondage surfing had increased during my absence, so I knew that the point had passed, where talking about our relationship would do any good.

Christina had been suffering from countless infections, pneumonia, high fevers, and endless pain for months.  She had been hospitalized many times, and countless tests were run, to no avail.  The doctors in the Athens area were clueless.  They had long decided that there was nothing wrong with her, other than an addiction to painkillers, and that she should go to a Pain Management Clinic, to break her addiction, and learn to live with her pain!  Yet, the pain was intensifying, and she was getting to the place where she could no longer go to work.  She was home this Tuesday, so I thought I would go over and check on her.

I found her writhing in agony, with a fever of 103.4.  I called her husband, Jeff, at work.  He came home, and we put her in the back of the car and headed for Columbus.  We no longer trusted the doctors or hospitals in Athens Ohio  We took her to Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus Ohio.  That is 100 miles and a two-hour drive from where we live here in Meigs County.  Jeff and I had no time to pack extra clothes, or even bring a toothbrush with us.

I called my sister, who was staying at my house, and told her to tell Larry where I had gone, and that I didn't know when I would be home.  Jeff and I stayed at the hospital until late Tuesday night.  They had put Christina on pain medication, so that they could run more tests.  We drove to my mother's house in Columbus to sleep.  I called Larry from there and told him that we really didn't know anything yet.

Wednesday February 11, 1998

Jeff and I rose early, cleaned up at Mom's, and put our dirty clothes back on. We spent the entire day at the hospital.  They were still running tests.  They had managed to bring Christina's  fever down some, but the pain medication was hardly touching her pain.  She was fading before our eyes, getting weaker and weaker, and screaming in agony.  The doctors increased her pain medication, and called in a specialist.  They were visibly concerned, but the tests were not showing anything out of the ordinary.

Late Wednesday night, Jeff and I drove home to Meigs County, so that Jeff could work the next day, and I could pick up some clean clothes.  I would return to Columbus the next morning.  I had no idea how long I would have to stay in Columbus, so I decided to make out bills that night.  I sat at the table writing checks, while Larry sat beside me, reading a Newsweek and chuckling. I had no idea, that in two days, he would be dead!  My mind was focused entirely on the fact that my only child was dying.

My sister told me that Larry now knew about the horses being sold.  He had finally asked her one night, when he went out to feed them for the third time, and the hay was still there.  She told him that she thought he knew.  She also told him about how I had cried, when I sold them.  She feels so much guilt now for having told him that.  At the time, she thought it might help.  She hated to see us separate.  She loved us both.  Larry didn't mention the horses to me that night.  Listening to him chuckle over articles in Newsweek, was only reinforcing my belief that he was happy that I had started selling off our possessions.  He was happy that he would soon be free of me.

Thursday February 12, 1998

Larry and I sat at the kitchen table this morning, drinking our coffee in silence.  Larry was reading a book, some Civil War thing.  My sister was still in bed upstairs.  I was not a happy camper sitting there.  I felt like the responsibilities of the world were on my shoulders.  Another tedious trip to Columbus.  My heart was aching inside, worrying about my daughter.  My little corner of the world was disintegrating before my eyes, my beloved Rowdy gone.  I was exhausted, on the edge.  My husband was content with his infidelities, counting the days until he could be free.  I had always been there for him, had fought his battles for him, comforted him, been his friend.  Now, that I was in desperate need of comfort, he offered none, in fact would rather read a book than look at, or talk to me, even the few times we were alone together.  I felt extremely unloved, unwanted.  He still didn't mention the horses at all.  The washing machine that I had asked him to fix weeks ago, was still broken.  No problem for him.  He didn't use it.  He was much too busy with his women to worry about the washer.

I broke the silence by asking him if he had fixed the washer.  I knew that he hadn't.  He shook his head sadly, as if to say that he just hadn't found the time.  Yet, his covert activities had increased three-fold since the wife had been gone.

"You didn't have time to fix the washer?"
"No."
"Yet, you have found plenty of  time to spend with your women!"

The words just came spilling out.  I hadn't planned on ever mentioning the bondage addiction again.  It was a mute point anyway now.  Yet, I was so angry at him that I couldn't help but lash out.  I told him that I knew everything he had been doing, and how long I knew it had been going on. Silence.   I told him that very soon he wouldn't have to worry anymore about having to look at my face, or suffer the inconvenience of me coming home to interrupt his bondage parties. Silence  I told him that he would soon be free of me, that he could finally find the girl of his dreams that he had been fervently searching for all of these years.  Silence.

I was too angry this time to care if he said anything or not.  I knew it was over, and the time for talking had passed.  Larry just sat there with his impenetrable mask and said not a word.  After a short while, he got up from the table and went out to put wood in the stove.  I went to the basement to take a shower.  When I came up from the shower, his service van was gone.  He didn't take a shower, or even say good-bye.  I stood at the kitchen window for an eternity looking at the empty spot where his van usually sat.  I felt so sick inside. Larry truly had no love for me at all.  He seemed to go out of his way to find new ways to hurt me.  He seemed to just want me to stop rehashing a lost cause, and get on with the divorce.  I didn't have time to concentrate on my personal world falling apart.  I had to get to the hospital.  I never saw him alive again.

My sister, Mary, and I left shortly after for Columbus.  We went straight to the hospital, and discovered that the specialist wanted to operate right away!

They still couldn't isolate the problem, but they knew it was either her appendix, gall bladder, or ovary.  The surgeon was prepared to remove all three when he opened her up.  But, as soon as he saw how diseased her appendix was, he only removed the one organ.  Her pain vanished!  The infection and resulting fever cleared almost immediately!  All these months, her appendix had been leaking, poisoning her system, causing a myriad of infections.  She had even lost a tooth, because the dentist couldn't get the infection in check long enough to save it.  He finally had to pull it.  The specialist told us that she most certainly would have died, if he hadn't operated when he did!  If we had listened to the Athens doctors, my only child would be dead right now!

Jeff drove up when he learned that they were to operate, and was there when we received the good news.  He drove back home that night, but Mary and I drove back to Mom's to spend the night, so we could drive Christina home the next day.

 I fought with myself that night, on whether to call Larry or not.  His cold silence regarding our marriage, and his apparent disinterest in anything pertaining to me, made me think, "Why should I even bother calling.  He wouldn't care!"  But inside I wanted desperately to call him.  Even though I knew our marriage was over, the fool in me still loved him deeply and wanted more than anything in life, to know that he might still love me too.  The wimpy lovelorn side of me, picked up the phone.  Maybe . . . just maybe, this time he would say something, anything, to indicate that he might still love me, and really didn't want out of our marriage.

But, it was just not to be.  As usual, I was forced to carry the conversation.  I told  him about how happy I was that Christina was out of pain for the first time in months.  I received very little feedback or enthusiasm from him.  Since I did not initiate it, nothing was mentioned about that morning.  I felt that it was definitely his move.  But, if I didn't talk, he surely wouldn't.  I didn't want to break the connection, but I was running out of things to say.  Finally, in desperation, I asked him how things were going at home.  He said, "just the usual."  I asked him about our dog, Dingo.  (Larry could talk more easily about animals than he could about people).  He always warmed to non intrusive topics. I felt that if I led him into a conversation that was more comfortable for him, he might talk more.  He told me Dingo had been scratching to go out, and then back in, over and over again.  I said, "Well, that's par for the course."  We both laughed, knowing that Dingo is a very spoiled dog.

Then, I asked him about the PM (preventive maintenance) he had been doing all week in Athens.  Once a year, Larry and one other person from his company would spend several days going over the emergency equipment at one of the Athens County facilities.  He talked a good deal about what they had accomplished, telling me that they had finished up that night.  I asked him a few more questions about the job, which he answered in detail.  Finally, there was nothing left to say and Larry had no questions he wanted to ask me. We fell silent for a few seconds.  I told him that the hospital would release Christina about 5:00 PM the next day, so I probably wouldn't be home until late Friday night.  Larry, as usual, had not given one sign that he cared whether I lived or died.  Reluctantly, I told him goodnight, and that I would see him tomorrow night.  That was the last time I was to hear his voice.