Sally

Sally sat on sidewalk and took about a 45-minute smoke break from her job at Laurenzo's Farmers' Market, where she's been a cashier for eight years. Eighteen months ago, her husband committed suicide while her daughter and she were also in the house. Sally said he had a gun underneath his pillow; she said he had always been crazy. They were married for 25 years. She told me to never get married.

She started to cry and I sat down next to her. She told me I needed a tan. I asked why she wore so much dolphin jewelry. She had on gold, dolphin earrings, a dolphin charm on her necklace, a silver bracelet of two dolphins wrapped around her wrist and another, smaller dolphin wrapped around her right index finger.

She didn't say anything about the dolphin jewelry. But she did say she just had to sell a gold watch that her husband gave her a few years ago. It was "to makes ends meet," she said, and apologized for still crying and wiped the bottom lids of her eyes with the knuckle of her right thumb.

Sally is 52 years old and has attempted suicide twice. She said she is only "half-glad" she didn't die-- she still has two younger kids to take care of.

"There's no closure for anything," she told me. She got up, so I got up, and she gave me a hug and told me she had to go back to work. And then I walked to my car, teary-eyed, wondering how these kinds of things happen.