There was a time when I wanted to die.

Looking back, and I didn’t have a real good reason. Work was getting difficult and my wife was becoming needy. Impudently, I thought only of myself. It didn’t occur to me that my parents would grieve, and my wife’s heart would shatter into pieces; I only knew how heavy my mind and body felt, and I hated it. Deciding there was nothing left, I climbed up to the roof of my office building, loosened my tie and walked to the ledge.

Don’t think about it, I told myself as I took long strides. Just do it.

Spinning on my heel the wind whipped my necktie to the west and blew my jacket with it. My heart was pounding and palms sweating. I could hear the sound of cement scraping against the soles of my shoes as I inched backward. It would only take a little more--- I’d tip, and everything would be over. Closing my eyes and easing my weight back, suddenly I heard a voice.

“Stay,” someone said in a tiny tone. My eyes flew open and I saw a boy leaning on the rails I had crawled over. A skinny little thing, he was but a child, not even a teenager. He looked up at me with big eyes and spoke with his plump lips. “I’ll be your friend, mister.” He smiled at me and I noticed a missing tooth. I don’t know who I had been expecting, but the presence of this child shocked me.

I didn’t speak, or breathe, or even blink. I stared at the strange boy who had appeared from nowhere as the wind assaulted my clothing and hair. He didn’t breathe either it seemed, and his eyes stared endlessly into my own. Slowly, and carefully, like a man reaching out to a rabid dog, he extending his hand toward mine. In that moment my heart twisted up terribly. “Please,” the boy repeated, “Stay.”

I didn’t realize when the tears had come, but as he grabbed ahold of my fingers, his entire body leaning over the safety rail to the ledge I stood on, I knew there would be  no stopping them. As I climbed back to roof my vision was too blurry for me to even see. There was something so dear about this child who had valued my life without any knowledge of who I was or what I had done. For all he knew, I was a , or a serial killer, but still he gazed at me with those innocent eyes. Curling up in a ball beside the boy I cried until I was sure my lungs would burst.

He remained by my side, not really saying anything, and gazing up at the sky so grey that it threatened to poor its burdens on us, an innocent child and a burdened man. It felt like I had been crying for hours straight when my breathing began to fail, putting me at discomfort. In that moment the boy finally made a move toward me, softly pressing his lips to my cheek.

“Ah, I don’t want to see my friend cry anymore.”

That day, an angel walked into my life and touched my heart.