In the shadowland of my roomthis warm winter late afternoon, I watch a stinkbugcross my wall. Also: two flies that woke this morningand now, dazed, bump up against the windows.I’d like to say I’m getting by and getting on with life,but the latter is a stretch. A tapeworm of griefhas been eating my insides, eating the spiritof who my son was, his lively mind, his courageto accept the darkest contradictions.I’ve sat here for hours, my companions these twothoughts—my son is dead and done with me;how can I know what my son’s life was to him,and him alone? If I set up a mirror on my desk, I’d seea cartoon of hurt and lethargy. Just beforethe stinkbug arrived, I was staring at Dürer’s Melancholiaon my computer screen. All those tools—saw, plane,hammer, calipers, ruler—like my son’s, piled up nowin my garage waiting for me to do something with them.And yet here I sit, as if I were tied up like my neighbor’s dogs. If I were a dog, I’d howlall day like them. I embarrass myself.Why can’t I remember what ridiculous luckit is to be alive? One of those flies just buzzedin front of my face, as if to say,“Where have you been hiding yourself?”I could ask the same question, but nowit’s on my nose, daring me to come alive. . . .I belong today to my own anatomy of melancholy—its long wait for what never happens.Its shut down of the future. Its after-knowledge of death that knows no morethan it did before. Its inability to completea life that simply ended. Dürer’s figure,winged but paralyzed, moping, tools spreadbefore him, but unable to create. These wordsthat lurk like insects this winter late afternoon.