Leaving the Light On • by Anita Dolman 1

Hamilton Arts & Letters   PLAY AUDIO VERSION: voice of Anita Dolman   I don’t know the exact age I was the first time I seriously considered killing myself. According to the tests doctors use to assess a patient’s risk for suicide, one indicator is having a concrete and specific plan. That means I was at least twelve, since it was after I’d moved into the larger bedroom, at the front of the Southwestern Ontario farmhouse my parents had bought when I was two. The two-storey, yellow-brick-and-fieldstone house sat atop a hill overlooking the rest of the farmstead, its many barns and outbuildings surrounded by pasture, forest, and croplands stretching in every direction. The nearest town was Wingham, a twenty-minute drive away, weather permitting.  [  >>>>>  FORWARD ]   + [Distillate © HA&L + Anita Dolman {from the Greek bios} -- the course of a life.]