I felt so happy the day he died. Everything was working out according to plan. The kids and I had moved out and it was the last day we were in the airbnb where we’d been staying since we left at the beginning of April. I had successfully found a rental house with a one-year lease, and the week prior, movers had come and moved all of our furniture and possessions from the house into the new rental. That morning, I was dropping the kids off at school and then going to the clean the Airbnb. After school I would pick them up to go to the new house, where we’d stay for the first time.
Dave had gone to treatment and left, despite promising he would stay for the entire 4 weeks and despite the staff advising him he was leaving against medical advice. He got home the day before the movers arrived, surprising me as I packed.
I sent him the divorce papers a few days later and we had texted on Wednesday and Thursday. He was hurt and sad, but said he would sign them. I was relieved and feeling hopeful, but worried. I had reached out to his closest friends telling them what was happening, that the kids and I had left and asking them to check in on him, to call 911 if he seemed like he needed help. Despite my fear, I felt certain it was the beginning of a new chapter and everything was going to be ok.
Then I got the text from his childhood best friend, Craig. “I’m so sorry.”
Ice water flowed through my veins and I immediately knew.
I pulled over to the side of the road. I screenshotted the text and sent it to my sister and she texted back, “Maybe it’s about the divorce?”
But no, Craig already said his apologies about the divorce when I told him. I called her and scream/sob, “What did he do?” into her ear while she tries to calm me.
“You don’t know anything. It isn’t anything yet, it could be nothing.”
I pleaded with her, I’m yelling into the phone and I’m so scared. I insist she has to do it. She has to be the one to find out.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what I can do, I’m not there. What can I do? You have to ask Craig what he means.
I can’t. Instead, I text the friends who have been guiding me through the last month, my spirit guides, Heather and Isaac. They have been keeping me safe, both body and soul from the marriage I was trying to escape.
I send the same screenshot and ask, “Did something happen?”
I’m hopeful, they live just a few blocks away from the house, maybe Isaac can go and make sure everything is ok. The week before, Isaac had solemnly told me that, if I ever needed him to, he would stand between me and Dave.
They’re not home, but Heather responds, “Can you ask Craig what he means?”
I try to breathe.
I text him back.
“What do you mean?”
His reply is instantaneous. “Can I call you? Where are you?”
And so he calls, he is the one to deliver the news: his coworkers found him this morning.
“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” Craig was who I dated first, tI broke up with and then asked for Dave’s number months later, and then married him the following year. He was the best man at our wedding. I’m his one that got away.
I’ll wonder later why it happened that way, why no one called me first. Why his boss and his coworkers didn’t try me before they went to the house. How did Craig even find out? How many people knew before me and why do I need to know this detail?
I call his boss. She explains. I ask her to call my sister. I made it to the garage of the new house while she’s talking and I watch the door close me in as I park and I sob and I sob and I sob.
“What did he do?” I scream into the boss’s ear.
“I don’t think you want to know right now,” she says. “I love you. I’m so sorry.”
-
I pulled myself out of the car and went to lay on the mattress on the floor. I left our bedframe at the house but thankfully the mattresses had been delivered so we could all sleep somewhere other than the floor on our first night.
I called my sister back. I called Heather and Isaac. I called Mandi. I called my therapist. We talked about if I should pull the kids out of school and tell them immediately or if I should tell them after school. We talked about what I will say. We decided to stay in the moment and only cross one bridge at a time.
I called my divorce lawyer; he had been intimately involved in what Dave had been doing since we’d sent the papers on Tuesday and he knew I was afraid he was in danger.
“I’m so sorry.” I have a weird floaty memory of him telling me this was not the first time this has happened to one of his clients, as if that was meant to be reassuring.
I laid on the mattress on the floor. I heard Mandi come in, she took care of the dog and checked on me. I was adding names to my list of people I needed to call. His parents. My best friend.
When my phone rang, I didn’t know the number but I picked it up. It was two women, calling from the medical examiner’s office. They verify my identity and then tell me.
I stare at the ceiling while I listen to the words.
It is two women. They tell me they had been at the scene. I interrupt and tell them I don’t want to know the how. No one has told me and I want to know on my own time. They understand.
They go slowly. Sometimes there are long pauses between sentences. I don’t know if time has slowed down or if they are actually just leaving very long pauses. They tell me there was a call to the house this morning. The shed was locked from the inside. The police/emt unit had to break through the door. I add “neighbor jim” to the list of people to call.
They ask when I last saw him. The Friday before, on the back steps. Had we communicated? Yes, we had texted Thursday. I explain that we were divorcing, the messages are of me asking him to please sign the admission of service.
He wanted to talk. I had said no.
When they tell me he, “left a letter” I throw my phone across the room and move from the mattress to the floor to scream into the carpet. A wail erupts out of me and I feel like I’ve been ripped in half. The hope that this was just a dumb fucking accident, that maybe he just drank too much? And smoked weed maybe he just did everything, too many substances all at once and maybe he was probably on meds of some kind suddenly went poof! Gone into thin air.
He meant to do this. He wrote a fucking letter.
I crawled back to pick up the phone and keep going, keep listening, grateful for their patience while they explain. The letter is addressed to “Chicken of my Heart.”
They tell me slowly how and when to retrieve his “items.” They patiently tell me to write the information down. They tell me they will be doing an autopsy, and I stop and ask why. “Do you have to?”
“It’s customary in…” long pause long pause long pause, “situations like this.”
More pausing, am I supposed to speak? I don’t know if it’s my turn again.
I wait and don’t speak. I don’t know what’s happening.
Finally, a voice. “What,” omg this pause is so long, it’s a million miles long, “is your exact objection?”
I’m sobbing and trying to find something to blow my snot into. “I don’t know, it’s just the only thing I know about autopsies is from the x-files and it was scary. I’m just scared.”
I locate a t-shirt and clear my nasal passages.
“I understand.” Victoria says to me. Or was it Vicky? “It’s ok to be scared. It isn’t like tv. We need to rule out any kind of………foul play due to the………….. nature of the death.” Ooooog, my stomach didn’t like those words.
I say, “ok I understand,” and write down “autopsy” on my list.
I call his parents. It is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I’m exhausted by noon
I tell the kids. A friend picks them up from school and we go to their house. I can’t stand the thought of telling them at the new house.
They go to different schools and arrive at different times. In my arms, she becomes perfectly still when I say the words. He jolts like he’s been electrocuted. After, they ask if they can walk to the Dairy Queen and get ice cream. It feels like we are all floating. The sky is an unreal shade of blue.
More people arrive, now with food and flowers and gifts. The house is full. Someone has gone and moved the rest of our things from the airbnb. Someone is mowing the grass. Someone else is assembling a new bed frame while someone unpacks my kitchen boxes.
I feel like I can’t hear. People talk to me but I just watch their mouths move. I sit on the couch as people come and go. I say thank you. I say I’m sorry. I wonder where the dog is. I’m so tired. It feels as if a bomb has gone off, and I can see debris raining down at the edges of my vision. Someone insists I go to bed. I return to the mattress on the floor, and sleep comes for me, swiftly. I close my eyes and sink into the inky black, welcoming it as it envelops me.
God this so moving. I can feel the pain and betrayal. I wish I could give you and the kids a hug of comfort it can be easier even yrs later
I can picture this day, crystal clear, exactly as you describe. So far away now but also not at all.