spoon river

Hello, my name is Doctor Meyers and I’m here to tell you a little about myself before I was killed pneumonia. I would like to tell you the story that my tombstone doesn’t and how the people of this town ridiculed me for something I couldn’t prevent. I was a doctor in the small town of Spoon River and I was a caring one at that. Many people came to me when they couldn’t afford to go to some of the other doctors in the town because they knew that I would help them in any way that I could. I didn’t mind however, because I loved helping people and seeing them become healed from their ailments. The towns people knew that too but they didn’t take advantage of my generosity. They paid when they could and it was sufficient for me because I was fairly wealthy and had no trouble providing for me and my wife and also my children before they grew up and became mothers and fathers themselves. All the trouble began one night when Minerva came. Minerva was the town poetess and she didn’t have many friends but she seemed happy enough. Anyways, she came to me one night just absolutely crying her eyes out and very upset and begging me to help her. As soon as she asked, I took her into our living room and set her down on our couch and went and got my doctors tools. I woke my wife so she could come down and assist me. We got down stairs and Minerva was fading fast. I did everything I could to save her but something just wasn’t right with her. I just couldn’t find out what was wrong with her and I saw the light fading from her eyes and I worked even harder. No matter how hard I tried I knew I couldn’t save her. I didn’t know what else to do and the next time I looked at her, she was dead. I just didn’t know what to do. This had never happened before and all I could do was go to her family and tell them the news. The next day as I went into town, people glared at me and yell at me and one gentleman almost hit me in the jaw. I had no clue what was the problem until I bought a newspaper. The front headline was “Doctor kills woman” and then I knew that this was why everyone was ridiculing me. The pain didn’t stop there, oh no, it got worse than just putting it in the news paper. People came to my house at night and threatened to burn it down and some threw rocks through my windows. Finally my wife couldn’t take anymore of it and just collapsed one night, dead on the floor. I took her out that night to bury her so that the townspeople wouldn’t know where I buried her and go and dig her up and do God knows what with it. It was very cold that night and I was out there for several hours digging and burying. The next morning I woke up and cried a long time and then went down to try to fix breakfast and realized how bad I felt. Little did I know that I had caught pneumonia that night. I went this way for about two weeks and finally realized that it wasn’t going away so I went to Doctor Hill’s house, which was the only friend I had left in this town. I got him to check me out and I found out that I had an advanced case of pneumonia and that there was nothing he could do to help me. I was stunned. I didn’t know what to say so I went home and just laid in bed for a week until I knew that I was going to live for no longer than twenty-four more hours. I got one of my servants to go to the engravers workshop and tell him what I wanted on my tomb stone. I wasn’t going to go down in history as a “killer” so I made sure I didn’t have anything bad about me on my grave. About an hour after my servant got back I drifted into a sleep, never to awake again on this earth. Her I am now telling you the story of what happened to me and how the people of the world will love you as long as you do the right thing and then they turn on you and want you dead. What would you have thought?