A death scene was the hardest

For months I had avoided writing a death scene. If I kept it in left field, perhaps I could finish my novel Temperance Hill without it.

Yesterday was decision day. Temperance Hill needed the death scene. Early in the book because it set up several plot twists that had developed toward the end. The death scene was needed or Temperance Hilll would be left with a hole in the plot fabric.

There was already a death scene near the end of the book. But it had been written some time ago. I wrote it to get over my fear of thunderstorms. For years I had lived with that fear after witnessing, as a young reporter, a state execution by electric chair.

That scene quickly went into the book.

So yesterday I reluctantly struggled with another death scene. This one was hard to pull out. It's based on the details of the death of my father. Details that been hidden for years until revealed by my mother as she neared the end of her life.

The disclaimer at the front of Temperance Hill will label the book as fiction. But the death scene I finally had to put into words, was hard as hell to write.

It's An Imperfect World

By Robert Berryhill
Copyright 2013

The cyber world is the modern version of pen pals. We can open our hearts to folks we haven't met in person, folks too far distant to ever meet.

One friend did get pumped up for a real meeting. She was looking for true love.

She came back disappointed. He wasn't interested in a relationship. Just sex, thank you very much.

Well, okay. We're here. Perhaps the bed could be the first step toward a relationship.

But she felt taken. The guy really wasn't interested in future, more meaningful things. Just sex, thank you very much.

The sex wasn't that great either.

The guy looked 20 years older than his cyber photo. He had a pot belly, which was bigger than his tiny equipment. And his tiny equipment popped too soon.

This is a very wonderful woman coming off a bad divorce. She's very eager to find true love, which means that she is very vulnerable. She quickly met up with a man who also had a bad divorce, but right now is looking for short term pleasures.

I'm sad over the episode. Sad for her. She deserved better. But also sad because it reminds me that the passage of time is relentless. We should have learned our lessons by now.

It's an imperfect world.

Women find themselves adrift after struggling with work and children from diaper days to makeout days, and husbands too absorbed in their careers to be worth a damn in the conversation or compassion departments.

Now women are coming off bad divorces with well deserved anger and confusion.

They have to play the dating game again at the age when they should be looking toward a long-awaited empty nest with comfortable snuggling in familiar surroundings.

We older men keep charging through life as if we still had our youthful bodies and sexual staying powers.

We find it harder to keep our ladies happy in bed even with longer seductions, more foreplay, more toys (batteries required).

As older men and women, we have dodged fatal diseases, midlife crisis, the bill collector, only to reach the age where we have to finally admit:

We don't have all the answers. Hell, we still don't even know all the questions.

So I'm very sad.

Sad for her.

Sad for him.

Sad for me.

We should have learned all the lessons by now.