It was six years ago today. I would never have known had I not opened my Facebook and there sat the anniversary date.
He was a complicated man. He was like an ogre: he had layers. And the fact he was grumpy for the entire time I knew him. An ogre with a heart of gold, though. Despite his grumpiness, he would help you no matter what you needed. If he was able, he was willing.
But in the end, all he had were complications. People vying over the custody of his young daughters. People wanting to see him, but us having to refuse them based upon his wishes, and then us getting blamed for keeping them away. It's okay though, let them blame someone. Anyone other than themselves, right? Because that's the life they all lived back then and probably still do today: nothing is their fault, it's always someone else's.
But the truth is: he made his bed. And then he died in it. And we were left to pick up the pieces.
Six years ago today was a horrible day. His house was full of people we knew and didn't know, all come to see his lifeless body lay there, after a long battle with cancer. He was married by then. Only for a short time, a year or so. Love was a factor, yes, but in the end, complication won the day. Everything was complicated: from what they were going to do that day, to when his daughters were coming and going. They had gotten full custody of them a short while back, due to their mother being on drugs. He had met her through NA fifteen years prior. She was on and off drugs many times throughout their life together. This was just most recent relapse. It was a feat of great strength on his part for him to have stayed sober all of those years, even through his crippling depression that almost took his life right after she left him.
He was happy with his eventual wife (not the mother of his children), in the beginning. But it didn't take her that long for her true nature to rear its ugly head. The more his ex was having issues with her addiction, the more they had his daughters. The new wife didn't like that very much. She wanted him all to herself. So the more they stayed, the meaner she got. And the meaner she got, the more his depression came back. And the more depressed he was, the more grumpier he became. Until their lives were full of nothing but arguing, yelling, punishing, and blaming. His daughters got the brunt of it, with him in the middle, wanting to defend them, but too weak to say much. Somewhere, along the lines of his childhood, he was taught: the mean lady gets her way. And that's how he lived his life, letting whatever mean woman he married or was dating to control him or his family.
One day, many years after his death, his ex came to me all proud-like and told me that while he married, he still had feelings for her.
"You know he still loved me, right?" she said, beaming as if it was the best thing in the world. She was trying to tell me she had won. That she was the one whose name was on his lips as he passed from this world to the next. I guess it was something to hold onto for her. I guess it made her sleep better at night, knowing that she was forgiven for what she had done to him.
When she left him, he was in surgery. He had had a tumor on his shoulder and was having it removed. And instead of her picking him up from the hospital, she had sent a mutual friend of theirs to get him, as she and the kids were living somewhere else.
"Where is she?" he asked.
"She's gone," he replied.
And then he went home, to his empty house where she and his daughters were just at earlier in the day retrieving more of their belongings and swallowed a bottle of pills.
Luckily the friend had come back, worried about his mental health, knowing this breakup would break him. He found him laying on the floor, unconscious, empty pill bottle by his side, and called 911. They pumped his stomach and saved his life. He started seeing a new psychiatrist and got on pills that actually helped. He went back to live in his empty house, and saw his next door neighbor, who was more his age, was single and also alone. He made his move and the rest was history.
I can imagine the guilt his ex felt about being the cause of his near death experience, his, attempted suicide. And she drove him into the arms of his neighbor, who he later married. She was jealous and angry. But the idea that he still loved her during his marriage to another woman brought her solace. It brought her comfort on those cold nights when she thought of "what might've been". But in reality, she dodged a huge bullet for her. She didn't have to take care of him during his dying days. She could just block out her own life with the drugs she was taking instead. No wiping of his fevered brow. No holding his barf bag after chemo. No endless doctor appointments for a man she never really loved. No, she could have her cake and eat it, too.
Now, she can be the "forlorn widow", who has endless sadness for the love she lost, the love she once had, who cancer tore away from her. Forget the fact she chose to leave him and his subsequent actions, she was a "cancer widow". And his wife could end up being "the monster" who treated her step-children like dirt and made her husband's life a living hell so much so that he wished he has stayed with his ex. Yes, what a perfect little bow to wrap up that entire chapter of her life in. What a great story to tell the grandchildren one day.
Because in the end, all we have are the stories we tell ourselves. Truth goes out the window in favor of wishful thinking. And if you tell yourself a story for long enough, you will start to believe it, and it will eventually become your truth. Your truth is different from the truth. Because the latter is the one that everyone knows. And the first one is the one only you remember. But one day, someone will remember the truth and your truth be the one flying out the window.
When she said this to me, I wanted to reply back with, "Did he love you when he was with her? Unfortunately, yes. But that's not something to be proud of. Because the ONLY time I ever saw him truly happy? Was when you left him. I had never seen him happier. He had a pep in his step, he laughed, he made real jokes, not at anyone's expense. He was smiling constantly. He was nice to everyone. His sarcastic jokes were gone. He was a new man. But he couldn't help but fall back into the same old crap eventually when that's all he's known his whole life: being with women who treat him like shit. So him still loving you? Is something that should make you sad. It makes me sad. Not because he was with someone else, but because he thought he didn't deserve better than you. Or the one he was with. So don't run around being proud of that fact. It's nothing to be proud of. All it shows was how damaged he was. He deserved so much better than the lot he got in life. So, so much better."
His memory today shouldn't be about winners and losers. It should be a for life well lived. And for me? Remembering those few short weeks when he was actually happy, after she left him, before he got with his wife, is what I want his memory to be. When he smiled and meant it. When he hugged people for no reason. When he had a pep in his step. A twinkle in his eye. When his love was greater than his sorrow. When we all got a glimpse of his true self. His true nature. Of what he was meant to really be. Because for those few short weeks? He was free. No woman to control him or bring him down. Freedom can make a person show their true self to the world, to take off their masks of anger and hurt and just be. That's what today's memory is for me and always will be.
Those few short weeks, when my old friend was free.
