On Thursday, August 12, my neighbour was gunned down in his backyard. The incident was widely reported in the media. This is my perspective of what happened that day.

Dwindling.

It’s that moment of half consciousness right before you fall asleep or directly after you wake up where you don’t really remember your thoughts or feelings, or perhaps you’ve easily forgotten them because, really, you aren’t all there.

That’s the state I was in between 5:45 and 6:15 a.m., the morning of August 12, 2010. Dwindling between forgetting and remembering why I was awake and when I was to wake up, which wasn’t for another hour or so.

So I lay there, practicing my deep yoga breaths. I closed my eyes and envisioned the shoes of a bride and groom smashing a wine glass wrapped in a silk napkin, a symbolic tradition at Jewish weddings that is thought to drive away evil spirits with its shattering, loud noise.

But instead of glass breaking, I heard gunshots. A steady succession of them, quick and loud and punctuated. I wasn’t dwindling anymore. I grabbed my phone and dialed 911.

“Ambulance, fire or police?”

I heard a woman screaming.

Police, I told them.

The dispatcher waited on line with me and told me to stay inside. I could hear another dispatcher join in and say there were several other calls coming through.

My dog Dutchie, who was also startled by the dramatic shattering of early morning silence, got up from her bed and came to me. I crouched on the living room floor and hugged her. The dispatcher told me to stay inside and assured me that police were on the way.

I got up from the living room and peeked out the window. People were on the balcony and in the street, watching in frozen poses as commotion went down a few feet away. I threw a hoody over my long, cotton nightshirt and joined them.

As I made my way down my house’s staircase, my neighbour Jon’s mother, who was housesitting his apartment, ran out in a panic.

“I can’t believe I didn’t lock the door,” she cried and asked me to call her son since she didn’t have a cell phone. I texted him and joined the crowd of people who were standing around watching the scene unfold.

About half a dozen neighbours were outside in the alley that rimmed the crime scene, most still in their pajamas.We all stood there stifly, as if frozen in time. We all were in shock.

An army of police and several paramedics crowded on the victim’s property, rallying up screaming and panicked witnesses. I could see the backs of two paramedics pumping their hands down hard on something, though I couldn’t see much else.

I went back inside and got my dog.  On my way back out, Jon’s mother asked if I’d heard from her son – I hadn’t – and she told me she’d just thrown up.

The street in front of my house was blocked off and several camera people, who I had known from my journalism days, were setting up their equipment. I walked around to the streets that weren’t taped off, and saw a bigger crowd of reporters, most of whom I knew. My old news director was just finishing a standup. I went over and said hi. Some of the reporters crowded around as if I was getting ready to be interviewed. I told them I was in shock and that I didn’t want to be quoted.  Surprisingly, they all respected my wishes.

At that moment, I just wanted to be around other people. At that moment, I didn’t want to be alone.

I had been in their position so many times before, thinking of the event as a story that was unfolding not only in front of me but in my head. A story that had a deadline, whether it was that hour, that afternoon, or that evening. A story that had a beginning, a middle, and an end. I didn’t want to fit into that story because I was still trying to understand the story for myself. My neighbour was shot to death in his backyard. My street was cordoned off. Something very big had happened. Things were about to change.

I went back to my apartment. Jon’s mother was in the lawn on her computer. She told me her son was on the way home. The colour had returned to her face.

My best friend who was staying with me called to tell me he couldn’t get through the police tape. He was standing next to a group of people in the neighbourhood who weren’t allowed back into their houses. I went down to talk to a police officer. He told me that if I were to leave, I wasn’t going to be allowed back and he didn’t know how long that would be.

Instead of getting frustrated, I choose to go back to my house and make the most of my day. I had two big meetings that evening where I would have to put on my best face and pretend that my life hadn’t been changed that morning. Until then, I was going to take the afternoon off.

I sat on my patio deck for several hours and enjoyed the silence that the cordoned off streets had brought. It was a rare silence for the neighbourhood. One that I knew would eventually dwindle away.