The candle, lifted from my dead friend's rancid bedroom almost a week after he OD'd on heroin, was scented "Cucumber Kiwi." Or at least that's what it said on the bottom. I always assume that pre-printed labels are at least 75% correct about what they have printed on them.

The candle, when burned, smelled just like she did when she was close. I never asked if it was perfume or body wash or some other scent-inducing material. I just know that when I smelled that candle burn, when I was really close and staring stoned at the flame, I was reminded of the two things that broke me up this year.

Him and her.

Neither had any real contact with each other, but both ended at about the same time. Maybe both ended when I put that candle in the living room and lit it for the first time. I say maybe because time is never absolute with these things. The thoughts linger. The what ifs and the wherefors and the misjudging and bad calculations and everything else that swirls around the end of things make it hard to say when it is over. Because the reminders will come up at the most inopportune times, breaking up a good mood like a lightening strike, and you're struck blinded like deer that cross the road and wonder what those two bright lights coming quickly toward it actually are.

Can it be true? Is this the end? Or is it now? How about now? Have I gotten over it or am I just fooling myself? Isn't someone keeping score here?

How is it that you don't believe in a god, but Christmas is the best time of year? How is it that you want to sleep so bad you have to stick a needle in your vein--or have some half-wit do it for you? How is it that you can dismiss everything we have between us with one single, selfish act?

Questions that are never answered. Neither would have wanted to answer them if I asked anyway.

We had secrets, even though I was completely open. Things we didn't talk about, things we kept from each other because we felt it was best that way. We talk about communication and then have nothing to say to each other.

And I wonder if this is the lesson of the year. That no matter how much you've explained everything to someone, they're still going to do stupid things when you're not around.

Don't you learn? Can't you at least glean a little insight from those stories of woe and dissolution I told you? We talked and talked and talked and still you weren't listening.

The candle burned itself out on the first day of winter. The flame was high for a while, and then it buried its face in the hot wax. Committing suicide only a bit before I would have called it quits myself.

And so they no longer reside in my living room. Neither the scent of the woman nor the flame of the man. I pulled the candle off of its base and dumped it in the trash. Sure, there are still reminders of both in my house, but that which was most visible to my eyes and nose is gone. And the fade that happens when the things that linger in your mind has continued its ever quieter march into history.

I reflexively try not to cry when I think of those lingerings. I have to concentrate on not feeling bad. I have to hold the tears back because the reason for them to fall are gone. Sometimes it is easier than others.

I apologize--or try to--every time I go on one of my rants about either of them. So I should apologize to all of you now. Because I'm almost to the end of the year, and this is still my story. I'll get another one. Maybe when the headline on Yahoo! isn't "No One Knows Where Osama Actually Is" anymore.

The first time I stepped out into public with her was the last time I saw him alive. And the last time I was with her was the long night after his wake. Why does it seem like that small amount of time was my entire year of 2001?

Matt Worley is looking forward to throwing 2001 in the trash.