The end of Tom’s life marks an end to a part of mine. A chapter of my life has closed and has died with him. This is the natural rhythm of life: the crises, mini-deaths, and rebirths in preparation for the final chapter.

Tom Tyler was someone I worked with. I first met Tom in 1998 while waiting to be interviewed by the then-manager of the ADD Wainscott CR, where Tom lived. He sat on a big armchair; his place for repose at the time. He was quiet, reserved and sat unnaturally still, curling his fingers around the edge of each arm of the chair like it was moving at a breakneck speed and might crash at any moment. Most intense about Tom was his stare. This was not a flickering, up and down stare of scrutiny. Those whodid not know Tom well mistook the look for a glare and I remain convinced that it was this stare that nearly got him locked up at Pilgrim Psychiatric Hospital in coming years. His eyes were wide, the light color of his irises standing out against bloodshot whites. His gaze never faltered and he barely blinked.

Although he did not invite conversation, I thought it rude to not try and initiate one with someone who was staring at me so intently, and so I told him about how I had been waiting tables in restaurants in the Hamptons for the past four years and had lived on the east end of Long Island for as much time. He did not nod or observe any of the niceties that people generally express while conversing. His acknowledgement of me was his stare that moved not once from my face. And then he spoke.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty nine. How old are you?”

“Forty two,” he answered. And then, “Do you smoke a lot of pot?”

I did not know how to answer. I was not high and would not come to work high and especially not to an interview high. I did have some standards. So much of my downtime, though, was spent sitting in a cloud of smoke in my apartment I shared with my boyfriend, notorious on the east end, in my small town, for being a premier weed dealer.

Tom had long thinning hair back then that stuck out in many different directions, like Albert Einstein. What else would this guy pick up on about me that I, on no uncertain terms, wanted people to know? By staring at me long enough, would he telepathically extract my two psychiatric hospitalizations? My interview with the manager, in the office in the adjoining room, couldn’t possibly be so difficult.

“I plead the fifth,” I finally answered.

And then Tom got me off the hook. “It was when you were younger, right? Like maybe high school.”

It was a good answer. I should have thought of that. I wasn’t a very good liar, though.

Tom was my teacher and that was the first lesson he imparted on me. It was high time I got my shit together.