May The Force Be With You

Okay, you likely don’t know what happened, how you got where you are now – and I believe you’re somewhere – even if you don’t believe such things yourself – so I’m going to tell you what the coroner told us.

You fell down the stairs and broke your neck, a catastrophic break, instant death.

Like that bus with no brakes I kept hoping would come along, splat, back when the kids were young and I didn’t want to be married to you anymore.

This was before S was even a twinkle in my eye.

After S I wished you a long and happy life.

You’d never admit it, or maybe you would now, but I know you were happy with L. She was good for you, too. I hated that it didn’t work out.

That’s the truth of it, you know. I cared about your happiness. But your happiness wasn’t up to me, it was up to you. For all I know, and I knew you better than anyone, you were happy living alone.

I’m sad you’re no longer here. It hits me at random times, making dinner, reading, going to bed. You’re gone. No longer in this world. I’ll never get to talk to you now about how it was, our times together, the ones only we know about, the kids when they were little, the old guy in the pub who yelled out, “Cabbagetown ’81 – whoo hoo!”

We had a lot of life together.
It’s short though, isn’t it, life. It scares me, how short it is.
We were never going to talk about our lives together, though, were we.

Anyway, and I decided this is how you would have wanted it, I was the one who found you, prompted by M (your person, as I put it to her recently) when you didn’t text her your Wordle score.

You had nothing on me when it comes to competition, by the way. Not long after you died I started texting M my Pips score, difficult level only. It can be embarrassing when it takes me a long time to solve it, but M gets a laugh out my scores.

She needs to laugh, your person.

She misses you a lot. I tell her the money will help. Because it will. Imagine getting an inheritance at her age. You would’ve loved it. I know we felt pretty flush there for a while when I got mine.

I tell her it’s coming from me, too, because it is.

She’s so much smarter than either of us, or you, anyway, which I recall telling you the last time we spoke. M is a lot smarter than you, I said, your politics are driving her nuts, so stop inflicting them on her. And you said you were trying not to but she kept arguing her point, and you had to argue yours back.

I’d actually forgotten until she complained about your politics, how aggravating they were to me. Those reminders are helpful now, how incompatible we were. No common interests. Different values.

Yet there we were, living together, getting married, having kids.

We were so smug about our potluck wedding, what a success it was.

Everybody loved it.

And the Blue Jays won. September 29, 1989.

September 30?

Can it really be true that I only ever felt mad at, bad for, or sad about you?

Our dentist said you were still in love with me after I told her what a lot of work the house is, you know, because you kept everything.

I told her I tell people now when they say that to me: That was not my experience. And it wasn’t. I don’t think we even liked each other. You kept everything because you, not me.

Love is such a crock anyway. Give me like. Better yet respect.

By the way, I took the bus out to the house, not a taxi, and of course I don’t have Uber. You’ll be pleased to know, though, that I felt antsy all that weekend, like something was terribly wrong, a disturbance in the force.

Good lord that reminds me of how many grocery lists I made in my head sitting through Star Wars movies with you, then you and the kids.

You wouldn’t know this, having never made it yourself, but it’s quite a trek from the bus stop to the house. I don’t have to do it anymore, though, because I have your car now, the only one that wasn’t once ours, the car, like the house, left to you when I realized it was up to me to get an apartment and start over.

It was a mistake to give over like that, move out, kids on weekends. Not for me, for you. It was backwards. I missed my home in the suburbs and didn’t really care for downtown, but you would’ve loved it, maybe even avoided that disastrous relationship with J across the street.

I’m so grateful to the universe you met L. She’s my proof it wasn’t about me. People can believe whatever they want about us but I’ll always know it should’ve been you and L, happily ever after, til death do you part.

I took the liberty of telling L she was the love of your life.

You’ll be happy to know she cried.

Anyway, when I got to the house I assumed the door was locked, so I looked in the living room window. I wondered why there was a sleeping bag at the bottom of the stairs, but it wasn’t a sleeping bag, it was you.

So I called 911, which isn’t as easy as you think because they ask a lot of questions and it’s hard to come up with the answers you think they want when you’ve just seen your former husband lying dead on the floor of your family home.

Then, while I was waiting for the ambulance, I started fretting about how they’d have to break down the door, and the inconvenience of that, a broken door. But then I tried it and lo and behold it was unlocked.

This next part is hard, but I want you to know, you had your back to me. And except for the blood around your head it looked just like you’d curled up and gone to sleep at the bottom of the stairs. And while I want to remember touching your shoulder, I know I didn’t. I was afraid. Instead I crouched down near you and said, “Oh A”, in a tone that anybody hearing it would say sounded disappointed, like you’d done something wrong.

You didn’t. None of it was your fault. It was just one of those things.

The coroner even said it was common for people to trip on oxygen tank tubing. So maddening. I mean, they even know this, ffs. People on medication, not getting enough oxygen, older, navigating stairs, living alone, of course they trip on oxygen tank tubes.

And in keeping with my rule about you, started back twenty-three years ago when I knew I was leaving, I didn’t cry. Although I should say I’ve relaxed my rule lately because it’s been a lot, and I don’t want to bottle it in anymore, I want to let it out.

Let. It. All. Out.

Cry myself a river.

M was on her way, though, so I left the house, closing the door behind me. The only other people to see you were the professionals – paramedics, police, coroner – and I knew you wouldn’t care about them.

It was quite a production. Very dramatic. Not a dry eye in the house.

You know, the hardest thing I’ve ever done was twenty-two years ago when I walked away from our house and the second hardest was walking away from it again except leaving you behind with all those strangers, K from down the street left to lock up the house after the coroner had done her job and the paramedics could take you away.

I told M not to look back and she didn’t. She’s smart that way. Protecting herself.

Of course I did, though, even saying a silent goodbye so it would be an extra sad memory, as if finding your body curled up in a ball at the bottom of the stairs wasn’t enough.

So there it is, A, what happened. And now we live on without you. Us in our world, and you, well, wherever you are, somewhere in the great beyond, peaceful, happy.

May the force be with you, A, may the force be with you.