I learned of the letter when the medical examiner called me on the afternoon after his coworkers found him in the garden shed. I hadn’t known I was holding onto hope until that moment that maybe it had been an accident. Maybe he hadn’t meant to. Maybe the treatment center had put him on some new crazy medication and he had been drinking too much and idk maybe smoking weed (even though he never smoked weed) and somehow overdosed and it had just been a massive accident. A mistake. Maybe he just fucked up. Maybe he hadn’t meant to die.
But the moment the nice lady’s voice on the phone said “there was a letter addressed to ‘Chicken of my heart’” that teeny tiny fairy of a hope was smashed to smithereens and was replaced by the crushing certainty that he had absolutely meant to die that morning of Friday the 13th. That it was not in any way an accident. He did it intentionally. He wanted to. He wrote a fucking letter.
I chucked the phone across the room and melted into the floor. It felt like I’d been torn in half. It felt like the pieces of me were floating in the middle a pitch-black ocean, the grief swallowing me whole. How dare he leave me a fucking letter. I crawl to retrieve the phone, and listen while they explain that there will be an autopsy. They have to rule out foul play in “circumstances like this.”
A week later, the mortician hands it to me in a clear plastic bag that also includes his wallet, keys and wedding ring.
It was sealed in an envelope, but opened by the medical examiner’s office. The toxicology screen came back blank. Somewhat surprisingly, he met his maker stone cold sober.
It is written on a very average looking piece of lined notebook paper in his characteristic Pilot G2 bold blue ink. His penmanship is neat, reminding me of the love letters and mixtapes and NYT Crossword puzzles over the years. Birthday cards and record store receipts and notes left for me on the counter saying he went to the grocery store. All caps, always legible. Measured. Tidy. It covers the whole front and half the back of the page. Goodbye forever in 9 short paragraphs.
-
On Monday, I noticed it on the calendar. I mentioned it to my kid.
“It’s Friday the 13th this week.” The kids know how I can get. I try to see the F13’s coming so I’m not blindsided. The last one was October last year, and I was a bit of a mess. Try as I might, I can’t escape the constant and oppressive fear all day that something horrible is about to happen. That my phone is about to ring. It hangs over me like a heavy curtain, waiting to drop. I plan to spend the day on the couch or the floor or in bed, under a very heavy blanket.
“It’s so annoying.” My kid is looking at me over a pair of my sunglasses that she’s definitely planning to steal.
“I know.” All I can do is nod.
“Did he think about it? Do you think he thought about it?” In this house, he is always unnamed. They don’t call him “poppa” anymore, he is nameless. He is just “he”.
“I don’t know. He must have? It’s not like he ever didn’t know the date.” I ponder whether it’s a horrible thing to end your life on Friday the 13th or actually really the perfect day? Is there a perfect day? What would Wednesday Addams think?
“It was rude of him to ruin Friday the 13th like that.”
“I know.” For a kid that loves Beetlejuice and black eyeliner and is deep into the goth phase of teenagerhood, it feels like she’s been robbed of something. Like he stole a holiday. It’s not fair it belongs to him now.
-
I got a message last week from someone who reads my posts reminding me that, while it’s sad that he’s gone, one reason my life is so joyful now is *because* he’s gone. That the truth, while it hurts to acknowledge, is that I’m better off without him, which rang a bell in my mind. Wasn’t that what he wrote in the letter?
I dug through the doom pile of papers next to my desk and find it, still in the manila folder I received it in, with his name printed on the side and a mysterious 7-digit number. Reading it is like sitting in a room with him, and as I pull it free from the envelope I am immediately filled with regret. It feels like letting the genie out of the bottle. His presence is oppressive, it fills the room. I don’t want to read it again, and I’m angry that the sight of his handwriting still hurts my feelings so much.
I lay my head down on my desk and cry, trying to lean into the feeling instead of smothering it or running from it. One reason grief feels like it’s prolonged is because I’m still so scared to feel how it feels. I don’t want to rub the lamp. I don’t want to think about him, I don’t want to feel his presence, see his words. I don’t want to cry about it anymore. It’s hard to mourn this man while also acknowledging that he hurt me so much. That he hurt all of us so much. That this still hurts so much. My feelings are confusing and overwhelming. I cry until I cry myself out.
When my vision clears, I open the letter and read his words again, for what feels like the first time. It feels different than the last time I read it, but maybe it’s me who is different.
He writes how wonderful I am. How blessed he was to get to be married to me. How magical I made our lives. He quotes Khalil Gibran twice.
Despite my memory, he doesn’t say I will be better off without him. Instead, he ends it with this: “There are tough months ahead, but if anyone can survive and come out stronger, it’s you. In time your anger towards me will soften, and then it will wash away. God willing, you’ll hardly remember me at all.”
I am angry, though this time the anger does not consume me. The ocean is calmer now. I am learning to tread water in this inky black darkness. I wonder for the n-th time what was going through his head when he wrote it. How he could choose this. Why this is how the story ends. I put it back in its manila folder, and return it to the top of the pile of papers that I don’t know where to file.
Burn it.
Cyber hugs = no touch, just warm, caring feelings!