It’s Complicated: Maybe.
This may seem sacrilegious to say but I did not like my husband the day he died. Or the day before. Or maybe even for most of the few weeks ahead of his death. I loved him, yes, but I did not like the version of him that I was living with at all. Not even a little bit.
I was hopeful that after he worked through the grief, and the mania, and the relapses that I could figure out a way back to the comfortable camaraderie we had for much of our marriage but that I also needed to be a realist and understand that I was losing a lot of my own mental health gains in this relationship and needed to protect myself.
This may seem insulting to the dead but when I bemoaned to my therapist that “I did not understand how spouses who actually liked their partners went back to work quickly after their death because I still feel somewhat disembodied by the whole thing” she said “It’s actually often easier for people that are in healthy relationships.”
I sat with that for a minute and said “maybe that’s because the complex part of grief cannot live out loud.”
She smiled her calm smile (that somehow is warm even across Zoom) and said, “well, maybe that’s something you should write about.”
Here are my complexities out loud:
I was going to leave him but he killed himself before I got the chance. His daughters know this. My children know this. The morning before he disappeared he showed up to pick me up and was obviously, stumblingly so, drunk. He had driven my car. On I-25. It was 9:30 in the morning.
I had a rule that I didn’t need to be 100% happy 100% of the time in a marriage but that I was pretty good with Pareto’s Principle of 80/20. If I was 80% happy 80% of the time I was pretty okay. That boundary got adjusted a bit and I found myself in the 60/40 range for much of the month prior to his death. I navigated that descent from 80/20 to 60/40 discussing it with just a close friend or two and my therapist. But, my loved ones could see that I wasn’t happy even if they didn’t say anything.
After he showed up drunk I decided that I would take a moment to center myself. I chose to drive by the burned out houses in Louisville to think and attempt to clear my head (as clearly as one can when the passenger in the car reeks of booze and is rambling/argumentative/morose). I told him I needed a minute to just think so I pulled over and sat in a parking lot overlooking the shells of people’s homes, thinking about these people surviving the worst night of their lives, and thinking that I needed some sort of clarity to make the “what’s next” decision.
I cannot explain the feeling that came over me as anything except if you imagine that you’ve been playing tug-of-war for days/weeks/months/years, pulling so tightly that you’re sure you’re just about to win, and someone comes along and slices the rope in half and you immediately are untethered, flat on your ass in the dirt.
I went from thinking “I will get him help, we’ll figure this out” to “I will try to get him help, but I will not navigate one more important day with him in my life beyond this or it will end up killing me” in that moment.
It was very, very clear. There was a 0% chance that I would stay. 100% chance that I would be leaving. I shared as much with his daughters at breaks along the drive but also shared that I was worried that I could not get paperwork completed that night, especially with someone who was intoxicated and that, sadly, I could see the writing on the wall that he was unlikely to survive this (I thought he’d drink himself to death) and it might be easier to navigate the paperwork and things as his spouse instead of ex-spouse if he did die. He swore he wasn’t suicidal. Obviously, that was not the truth.
Was this what I wanted? Absolutely not. I wanted him to come home, sober up, and for the two of us to work together to unravel the things that get intertwined when you’re married. I wanted him to get help, finish out the school year, and for us to fill out divorce paperwork like civilized people do when their relationship is irretrievably broken. I did not want him to disappear and kill himself.
Did I want to be a double divorcee? No. Do I think Pete knew I was going to leave him and that’s why he killed himself? He knew I was done. But his reasons for tapping out were his and his alone and not my responsibility. I truly feel no responsibility for his death. That part is not complicated.
Pete was a complicated person so it makes sense that grieving him should be complex as well.
It is complicated to know that some of the last pieces of conversation with your spouse were the practicalities of “let me know when you get where you’re going so I can send you divorce paperwork.”
It is complicated to notice just how much happier I am without him in my life. I sing in the car, I visited friends and family on an epic roadtrip that I wish was still happening, I sleep better than I have in years.
It is complicated to feel sadness/loss/anger/relief/joy seemingly all at the same time.
It is complicated to both want to play Backgammon with him just one last time but also throw the board at his head.
It is complicated to think that wordlessly dumping his ashes on Loveland Pass is the way he would have wanted to be memorialized and that though I’m so angry with him I do want to respect those weird wishes but I also want to piss off his ghost and make it into an event.
It is complicated to discover more and more things that he did that were irresponsible, financially and otherwise, that are affecting my present and will affect my future.
It is complicated to know the difference between divorce and death and that, though painful, I will never have to run into him at a kid event and relive the reasons for divorce or distance myself from his daughters who I’ve grown to love.
It is complicated to be angry with a dead person for screwing up my sabbatical, for hijacking my grief for my beloved grandfather, for distracting from my writing.
It is complicated to realize that writing his obituary broke through the writer’s block that I’ve had for years and that I’ve fallen back in love with writing and finished my first novel and that likely wouldn’t have happened without him gone.
Speaking only for myself, I will focus on finding myself as I crawl out from under the rubble of the chaos that living with an alcoholic with PTSD and other mental health challenges creates. I will work to be okay with the complex nature of life, love, and loss. I will work to share the complexities out loud so that they are not internalized and become a full on diagnosis of Complicated Grief as I don’t think I’m there yet, but can see just how easily I could be.
How do I know that I’m going to find myself, figure out a new job, find an agent/publisher for my book? A friend of mine took this picture of me during my road trip around the country for the last couple of weeks. I shared it with my kids and they noted that, for the first time in awhile, I look genuinely relaxed and almost happy. I can see a part of me in that photo that I haven’t seen in a long, long time. It feels like I’m finally coming back to me.
All I know is that the answer to the question of how am I right now is, “It’s complicated.”
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