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What he failed to comprehend is that you can fall when you are up and you can rise when you are
down. Memento mori. Philosophically, metaphorically and literally. Robin Hood would agree.

Some people think that it's money that can make the world a better place, that it's money that can
change the world, but even if a person who was determined to make a difference had an endless
supply of every type of currency in the world, the person wouldn't be able to change much. There's
a chance that they could make the world worse.

The person starts giving out all the money to all of the poor people in the world and then no one is
working. The system that was so similar to the system of our bodies shuts down because red blood
cells no longer need to work. They can stay at home in their large mansion and let the brain cells
experience cell death.

Some people think a better way to change the world is to take from the rich and give to the poor
and balance everything out. That everyone should be financially equal in every way. The word
"communism" may come to mind, and there are those who dread this idea. Those who will do
anything to stop the idea from spreading.

Change is difficult; maybe because the world wants to stay this way because it is already this way,
or maybe because people don't want to change because they are the way they are and want to stay
that way. If that makes any sense.

The phone rings and it's Kathleen, Joe's mom. She tells me that Joe had waken up, but soon after
had a seizure and is now in critical condition and will probably slip right back into that brilliant
coma.

As she's talking, I can hear that sound of a person who wants to start crying but never does. The
little pauses, the sighs, the regret. She thinks that it's her fault that Joe was about to die because she
didn't stand up for him. Because she didn't even stand up for something that was part of her, that
came out of her, that was her flesh and blood and DNA. Her capacity to conceive had cast a
shadow on her capacity to nurture.

Her depression reminds me of my mother, and in turn her suicide. I think of Joe and I think of
Kathleen, I think about how their relationship now has the same amount of dialogue as it did for
the past who knows amount of years. Now I can't help but think about my little brother and the
event that happened with my mother.

How she fed him poison and then fed herself poison. How she was the one who decided that this
world was too cruel for her young son to grow up in. I still have that image of them both in my
head, coming home from school to find them both just there, lifeless. It took a long time to let them
both go, but what I learned from that is that people's flesh wither away because you have to let
them go. You have no choice. The human heart beats 2.5 billion times in an average lifetime, but
eventually the beating and the pumping must stop. That muscle must die.

I open the door to find Derek going through my composition notebooks as usual, and then I hear a
car door slam and I shift my head to look out my window. I see Lynne, her two kids and an older