My Ex-Boyfriend’s Obituary
Life teaches you some hard lessons. One of the things I’ve learned is how to be numb -but not immune- to the news of loss. Occasionally, a passing shakes me just enough that I can’t just scroll on past as if I hadn’t really seen it. This was one of those times.
I can honestly say I have learned of more deaths via Facebook than from any other source since my high school graduation. One by one, people have dropped like flies to things like cancer, car accidents, overdoses, and- of course- suicide. Over time I’ve learned to take the news of each with the stride of experience; silently tilting my head to the side as if to say, “what a shame”, before returning my attention back to mindless scrolling.
On this particular morning, I sat on the floor of my daughter’s play room, sipping coffee and browsing my social accounts while my she drank her juice. Though I was still groggy, the red alert icon on the bottom of the screen caught my attention almost immediately. To this day, I wish I had just ignored it.
A mutual friend had commented on a post written by the sister of my ex boyfriend. She wrote of his passing in the way you’d expect a sister to- expressing remorse for moments lost and the impact of his absence. I scrolled through it cautiously, as if the words might leap from the screen and attack me at any given moment. There, at the bottom of the Facebook posting, she had included the link to the local paper.
I didn’t need an obituary or the small town grapevine to clue me in to his particular tragedy. I already knew in my gut what had happened to him. I knew it wasn’t some heart condition or accident that had led to his passing.
No. If he was really dead, it was his own doing.
You may be wondering why it is I was initially so skeptical of the news. For years my life was plagued with old “friends” (re: my ex creating fake accounts and impersonating mutual contacts) reaching out to me to tell me that Will had tried to commit suicide, or that his family had him committed to a psychiatric ward. They (my ex) implored me to reach out to him, or at the very least, give them my new number so that he could at least get a hold of me. After the first couple of times I started wising up to what was happening, which of course led him to some rather questionable tactics. It was nothing short of stalking, and I was exhausted by the time his actual death notice was posted.
Despite that exhaustion, I read the obituary. In fact, I read his obituary so many times I swear the words are permanently burned into my memory. What became abundantly clear with each recitation was that I had no idea who this man was being described on the page before me.
That was him in the picture.
That was his name.
That was our hometown.
But the words his family had written about his life painted a picture of someone who was a stranger to me. They described a genius, philanthropic empath who valued community and cherished his relationships.
All of it, every word, left me filled with a kind of rage I wasn’t prepared for. The obituary, like they so often are, was one big love letter to this lost soul that had come and gone too soon. This saint of saints, as it seemed, was going to be so missed by those who were lucky enough to cross his path.
Where the hell was the rest of it? There was no way this could be the entire thing. Had I missed something? To be clear, I didn’t expect an honest obituary. Very rarely do these kinds of tributes strive to paint a realistic picture. Every eulogy given seems to want to help their lost loved one win some kind of dead person Olympics, and this specific one was going for gold.
I read again.
No mention was made of his abusive and obsessive personality. Nothing to be said for his own brand of curated chaos that wreaked havoc on those that dared to be near him. My thoughts kept flashing back to our time together. Our relationship was the love hard/bite hard kind that left me literally scrambling like a wounded animal to get the hell out of my hometown.
How?
How could someone who was such a force of devastation for me be so beloved by others. Person after person who remembered him in ways that bathed his legacy in the warmest of lights. Will was a mixed bag of moods. He could sour even the happiest moments and leave you in absolute pieces all within a matter of seconds. There were moments when his charisma reminded me why I felt so drawn to him. His charm could make me quickly forget the hurtful things he had said or done previously. His sadness and pleas for love were disarming, and his brokenness was bitter candy. I wanted to consume all of it because he said I was the only one who could stomach it.
It occurred to me a day or two after learning the news that it was possible others never met my Will. And I never met theirs.
I eventually rationalized that even if those closest to the situation had met the version of him ensnared in my memory, death does strange things to people. It makes us bend and mold our memories of the departed to fit a more personal and socially approachable narrative. We remain weary of speaking ill of them and tread, sometimes too lightly, across our own mental plains.
Reality is blurred, and oftentimes completely sacrificed, when tasked with whittling down years of life and experiences to a few sentences in the Sunday paper. More often than not, we decide to let it go so that we can move on in a positive way. I’ve seen it happen time after time, and I expect that I’ll continue to see it until the day I also depart and those closest to me are assigned the same homework as my ex’s family.
In hindsight, I realize chaos was just his personal brand of love: when you were high, you had never been higher; when you were low, you had never been lower. Every instance of trying to get out of the hole that was this union only put me deeper into the earth.
I managed to get out.
He never did.
