”THE KNOCK"
After 48 hours of unspeakable terror, there was “The Knock”! She stumbled to the door, jolted by the surprise of an early morning interruption!
It had been a tormenting and very scary 48 hours! Nothing was as it was supposed to be. Nothing was normal, nothing was going right. In fact in the hours prior to “The Knock”, everything felt very very wrong and scary. As each hour went by, a sense of impending doom was thick in the air!
In that heart-racing state she answered the door to a very tall, police officer. She confirmed her identity to his question of who she was . She didn’t want or need to hear the words that were about to follow! It could only be the worst news!
How could this gentle giant of a cop possible know that this woman and the man he was about to give her news about, were “joined at the hip and heart for over six years? How could he know that they were seldom apart and they almost never flew without each other? He didn’t know they said goodbye in Calgary four days earlier, he on a flight to Argentina, due back … two days ago!
He didn’t know that the news he was about to deliver would shatter a 6 ½ year fairy-tale! He had no way of knowing that when these two souls met, they tumbled into an amazing all-consuming heart and soul entanglement! He could guess but could not know the extent to which his news was about to explosively decimate her soul! He could not know these two people were each other’s obsession, addiction, breath, soulmate, oxygen, reason-for-being, each other’s very life!!
What he DID know was that Joseph Black was dead. He died in Peru, in transit to Argentina.
The police man watched her back away and feel for a chair to help absorb her body as she reeled and sunk from the impact of his words! Jo was dead!
Even now, nine years later, the memories of what followed “The Knock” have remained a blur! What she will never forget, as if seared into the memory bank of her soul, was the deep, dark, sucking vortex of lonely pain that tore through her being when she was told that her larger-than-life Jo was dead!
Time has been generous in healing the exploded hole in her soul. Precious memories have sustained her. Till the end of time, she will always know and remember that she was once very deeply and profoundly loved, before “The Knock”.
