3 a.m.

When the phone rings, you know. You don’t know how you know. You just do. It’s not that the phone’s ring is more ominous; it’s just the feeling you get when a phone rings at three o’clock in the morning. Phones aren’t supposed to ring at three o’clock in the morning. It can’t possibly be good news. It’s not Ed McMahon calling to tell you that you’ve won a million dollars. It’s not a long lost love who has hunted you down and wants to declare his undying love for you. It’s not the IRS calling to tell you they made a mistake and they owe you money. If it’s three a.m., it’s bad.
You grab for the phone, knocking the glass of Diet Coke off of your bedside table, somehow managing to spill the fluid all over the floor and not all over you. You try to sound like you’ve been awake for hours although it’s three a.m. and everyone with half a brain knows you were asleep. The person on the other end of the line sounds like they’re choking, and then they try to tell you why they are calling.

“Rick committed suicide,” the voice chokes out. “They found him an hour ago.”

Your brain starts trying to process the information. It doesn’t compute. Rick, Mr. Smiley, Mr. Stud Boy, King Salami as he so affectionately refers to himself. Not Rick, not your baby sister’s boyfriend. Not the kid who hung around irritating you while you were in high school, but then years later became your most trusted confidant. He didn’t commit suicide. He didn’t do it. The voice is wrong. Maybe he tried to commit suicide. But there’s no way he’s dead. He can’t be, you just had lunch with him a little over twelve hours ago. He was fine. He was happy. He was joking about his Halloween costume. He couldn’t be dead if he was talking about wearing just his underwear to the Halloween party.

“There is a note, eleven pages, “ the voice tells you. “They aren’t going to release it until all of the family has arrived.”

You nod and mumble incoherently into the receiver that seems suddenly so sinister.

“I’ll call you as soon as the arrangements have been made,” the voice says quietly. “He wanted to be cremated.”

You start to shake, you feel sick, you want to tell the voice to shut up, quit talking, and stop trying to play this stupid joke. It’s not funny. You can’t joke about arrangements or cremation. But you don’t say any of those things. Because it’s three o’clock in the morning and phone calls at three in the morning are never good news. Instead you tell the voice thanks for calling, you get out of bed, you walk into the living room and you cry. You scream at the top of your lungs. You shake your head and you clutch your hands into fists. You wish you hadn’t quit smoking and wonder if there are any old stale cigarettes in the glove compartment of your car.

“NO! NO! NO!” you roar at the empty room.

You cry some more. Not quiet, reserved crying. No, not now. These are the hitching sobs that make your body quiver and leave you exhausted. When it finally passes, your throat feels like you have swallowed glass and your head feels like it weighs a hundred pounds. You’re tired, but you have a job to do.

You go to the phone, pick it up and dial your sister’s number. Now it’s four o’clock and the morning and you know when she looks at the clock, she will feel it. Because it’s four o’clock in the morning and phone calls at four a.m. are definitely never good news.