The year about 1981 and the immediate family all lived on one city block. We had just moved back after our house burnt down, and we got the house directly across from our nana. 2164 was the number on the address plate. The basement had steps that reminded me of London Bridges. I was almost 4 years old.
One day, while my mother was doing laundry in the basement, I was riding my 'big wheels' around the basement. As I rode under the stairs, I stopped and screamed at the dead man hanging under the top step. Using hind sight to estimate, he was an overweight Caucasian male in about his early to mid 20s. He told me life failed him and that was the point that my mother took me back upstairs, worried about the look on my face. She ended up chalking it up to a 3 year old's imagination. Many years later, she asked the owner, who had told her that the man who lived there before us had committed suicide under the top step. It was the fourteenth step.
That night that I saw that, I knew I would never forget it. It remains etched in my mind forever. He was standing next to me telling me his story, at the same time I was looking at his body hang. Even in a child's mind, I knew there was something wrong with that because nothing was there a minute ago, when I rode through.
Although I respect that memory, I have never gone into research about it. Not everything was meant for everybody.
Kahala Lei
copyright 2012
One day, while my mother was doing laundry in the basement, I was riding my 'big wheels' around the basement. As I rode under the stairs, I stopped and screamed at the dead man hanging under the top step. Using hind sight to estimate, he was an overweight Caucasian male in about his early to mid 20s. He told me life failed him and that was the point that my mother took me back upstairs, worried about the look on my face. She ended up chalking it up to a 3 year old's imagination. Many years later, she asked the owner, who had told her that the man who lived there before us had committed suicide under the top step. It was the fourteenth step.
That night that I saw that, I knew I would never forget it. It remains etched in my mind forever. He was standing next to me telling me his story, at the same time I was looking at his body hang. Even in a child's mind, I knew there was something wrong with that because nothing was there a minute ago, when I rode through.
Although I respect that memory, I have never gone into research about it. Not everything was meant for everybody.
Kahala Lei
copyright 2012
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