Is it a dream or are those sirens I hear?

What a day. It began at 6:30 this morning as I was woken by the siren sounds of ambulances coming down my street. I thought for a brief moment, that moment in between dream and reality, that I was in an episode of Grey's Anatomy. Lifetime Television airs the reruns three times a night, from Monday to Friday, and I am hooked!

But no, the dream quickly lifted into a surge of panic, as I jumped out of bed to see where the sounds were headed. In not too long a time, I soon noticed that they had come to my neighbor's door, and left just as quickly. There was no one on the gurney when they returned to the ambulance, and there was no one they would be taking with them to the hospital. So soon after their departure, the sobbing, the moaning, and the desperation in her voice began. My new neighbor of only one month, had woken that morning to find her 33-year-old husband dead in their kitchen. He was young, he was a probation officer, he had a wife who loved him, three small beautiful children, and one big addiction to prescription pain medication.

The police combed the house for drugs. The wife, the children, were not permitted inside the house. No, the wife could not sit by her dead husband, while the agony of her loss ripped through her chest. The children were quickly sent away to be with other family members, should they dare see how their father looked at the end of his life.

About three or four hours later, there was quiet on the street, the body was taken away, and the wife has not yet returned home, where the life she knew, no longer exists.