Tonight turned out to be rather awful. Just as I was walking up the block I heard two women screaming and wailing on the steps across the street. Both of them were on their cellphones, one of them practically falling down and they were just screaming and crying. It was quite upsetting. Then a cop car's sirens started echoing off the buildings and seconds later it pulled up, going the wrong way on Oak street. Within minutes 3 more police cars and officers had entered the front door of the apartment, but both women were still screaming, demanding to know where the ambulance was. A few minutes later that arrived, too. But things didn't get any better.

Lu and I watched from our front window as more officers arrived, people came out of the house, and neighbors came out to offer blankets and tea to the crying women. A boy and girl around ten or twelve, and an older man, who had all exited the apartment were put into police cars, but none of them in handcuffs. We surmised that they were witnesses to whatever had gone down. A while later a white van pulled up with the words 'San Francisco Medical Examiner' stenciled on the side and rear doors in black, capital letters. The fog rolled in and the wind picked up thrashing the blankets of the women consumed by grief and the yellow plastic of the police tape stretched from tree to post in front of the building's entrance.

More time passed, the many police stayed, but the ambulance left, as did the firetruck. Oak Street had been shut down to one lane, but now traffic could flow more freely. Still the family waited outside. It got dark as dusk settled over the street. I read on the couch, glancing out the window as a police officer spoke to a knot of cameras and I watched as a man in a suit arrived and spoke to some of the people out front. Our doorbell rang as friends arrived for dinner and TV. We told them what we had seen and we tried to figure out what had happened, what awfulness had transpired across the street. No one in handcuffs meant maybe someone had hurt someone else but then ran away just before I arrived. Or maybe it was a suicide. Turns out it was even more tragic and stupid and terrible than any of that. Just a weapon, a young woman, some horsing around and then a bullet ending a life, accidentally.

As they finally came down the stairs with the body shrouded in white, laid on a stretcher, there came a keening and crying from a woman outside. "My baby! My baby!" she cried as they loaded the lifeless form into the Medical Examiner's van, and her family had to hold her up and hold her back from the future that had just turned so awful and dark.

Lu and I are so sad tonight. And Friday will not be good for the poor family across the street. I hope they have the strength to carry on. I know that Sunday will not bring any miraculous relief. This is real life, where miracles don't happen and bad shit does and all you can do is find a way to carry on. Our thoughts are with them. It was terrible to watch. I can only imagine how much worse it was to be a part of it. They will never be the same again. And I don't think I'll ever forget the image of that shrouded form being carried from out the door and down the steps and into the van and they away forever as her mother and father sobbed in anguish.