The lights go out

The lights went out in the middle of the night. I had company in my bed. The electric company doesn't send a courtesy warning before it kills a 6,500 square foot mansion, and it doesn't wait for a convenient hour.

That's how my whole town found out. Not a phone call. Not an announcement. The house everybody knew went dark at once, and everybody did the math at the same time. I was done, and now it wasn't a secret I got to keep.

The eviction came after. I packed what I could carry out of a house I'd filled with money that arrived faster than I could think about it. And while I packed, three separate groups of friends came through and took the rest. Not one robbery. Three. They didn't come together, either. Three separate times, three separate groups, every one of them somebody I had called a friend.

They took everything worth taking. I couldn't tell you today what most of it was, and that's exactly how much it meant. But one thing left that house that I've never stopped noticing. My grandfather left me a gold tie. It was worth nothing. Nobody who carried it out got a dollar for it.

Everything else in there I had bought. The tie was given to me. It was the last thing in that house that was still mine, and it went out the door with everything I could have replaced.

I lost the house, the business, the money and the people in the same season. I still think about the tie.