The point about Harold Sr. being a serial diarist is that somewhere in a cardboard file box in my compact two-room apartment is a beautiful wooden box hand-made for me several years ago by my maternal cousin Karl Cring Ayers. And in that beautiful wooden box are Harold Sr.'s set of five-year diaries, covering most of his life from teenage (or possibly pre-teenage) to late 1960 or early 1961. Sadly his entries were few and far between in the months leading to his suicide on December 12, 1961, thus denying access to insights into his state of mind as his final decision approached.
For the purposes of describing my pre-life, Harold Sr.'s diary entries on and immediately following the death of his son Harold Jr. on January 15, 1957, are foundational. I only recall reading the January 15th entries once, when I originally found the diaries while sorting through my mother's papers in the first year and a half after her death on December 25, 1996. I remember my impressions of the entries rather than the entries themselves. Harold Sr. was not given to verbosity, but I remember the January 15th entries as being especially spare.
I need to find Karl's beautiful handcrafted box and re-read those entries to write this chapter ...
