I always thought that my ex-husband would die on the 3rd September. The lyrics of the song ‘Papa was a Rolling Stone’ were written for him: a stone that rolled his own way who baulked at responsibility and commitment leaving a trail of devastation in his wake. But he didn’t, he died at 2am on Tuesday July 11th, 2023 in Galway hospital.
He moved to Ireland after we divorced twenty years ago and I haven’t seen him since. Our elder son has only the sketchiest memories, our younger son has none and my ex was never in touch with them – not a card, not a phone call. I heard from him only once when a letter arrived. He had obviously seen me on the TV and it had it inspired him to write a very short note to say as much and sending love to myself and the boys. No address. At least that proved he was alive, news that my beloved father-in-law was desperate for because no one knew for sure: we had no clue where he was. My father-in-law sadly died not knowing because his son hadn't been in touch with him for sixteen years and searches yielded no results. Yes it is possible to fly that low under the radar, even in this day and age. I was always convinced he would turn up when he was in need and as such I have always been on low alert waiting for it.
A month ago I was contacted by someone asking if I had been married to him and a red light was activated. This person told me that my ex didn’t know he’d tried to track me down, but he felt obliged, on his behalf, to tell me that he was very poorly. I turned into a detective that would put Sherlock Holmes to shame to find out what all this was about because I was convinced of an ulterior motive. It stirred up a lot of things because our marriage was a car crash of the highest order, but back then I’d always hoped I could rescue it, and trust me I tried. No one marries expecting to divorce. I wanted us to be forever, but our forever ended short. Even when we divorced, I wanted to keep it civil because the guilt of having been the one to call an end to our marriage weighed heavy on me. I didn’t want our sons to come from a broken home yet I had been the one who filed for divorce. When my Decree Absolute came through – on Halloween – I popped the cork off a bottle of champagne, took the first sip and broke down. That piece of paper represented my failure and I think I’ve been flogging my guts out ever since to make it up to my lads. But I would never have cut their father off from them, he severed those ties and kept them severed. For too many years I’ve been angry at him for taking off without a thought for his lovely father, his brother, his sons without a backward glance at what that level of abandonment might do to them.
I had barely begun to comprehend that his name was back on my horizon again when he died awaiting a major operation, frail and thin and so ravaged that his friends who had seen him only a short time before couldn’t recognise him. I couldn’t register it, I couldn’t define what I felt. I don’t know why I was so upset, I’m still processing it, still struggling with a situation that sits outside the norm. I can't explain it and I can't understand it, I can only feel it. It isn't anything to do with love, but it is everything to do with loss.
My ex found his way to a gentle, accepting community in very Irish Ireland. He lived a simple life, labouring on people’s houses, on their land, on a dairy farm, his home a ramshackle lowly dwelling place with a wild feral cat running around for company, enjoying the craic in the local village pub. The few photos I was forwarded by people who knew him show him aged, smiling, as if he’d found his contentment. Trading home comforts for a harder life but one as free as it is possible to get is undoubtedly the highest state he could find: satisfying the ‘here for a good time, not a long time’ adage. People in that community gave him lifts when he needed them, work, companionship, donated clothes and bedding, washed his laundry when he was ill, took him at face value. The couple on the farm fed him when he was poorly at the end, forced him into hospital, cared for him. Then the community arranged his funeral for him, wrote their eulogies, liaised with the priest and turned out en masse to mourn for one of their own in church. We watched the service online and it was humble and touching and yes, they included our names out of their innate goodness. They asked us if it was okay if he stayed in the midst of them, in their churchyard. It was only right and proper than he rested among these wonderful people who had enfolded him. It was a funeral service with the purest sort of kindness at its heart, their consideration has deeply touched me. On his coffin was a photo I’d sent over of him in his younger days looking handsome with that full head of thick hair that he has passed on to his sons. But I don’t recognise this man they will miss. We all refine of course. I hope I’m not the same person I was years ago, I hope I have evolved somewhat from a much rougher copy (and will from this rough copy). He obviously moved away from the man I knew too. Maybe in shedding everything but that which served his basic needs – and that little feral cat running wild about the place – he found all he needed in life. Maybe it was just easier to keep focused on forward than to unknot everything that lay behind him, cut the ropes and let it sink to the depths of the sea that lay between us. Maybe addressing everything was too big, too much and so he reset his whole life and began afresh.
It is the finality of it that is hard to comprehend for the family he left behind him. I know there was always the lingering hope of a reconciliatory pint, of them being able to talk, which has now been removed and can never be. It is a confusing time. Why else would I be so incensed that he has gone denying his sons a single scrap from his emotional table, worrying about the effect on them, and also poring over pictures of gravestones because I can’t bear to think of him in an unmarked pauper's grave.
I know the priest is surprised that the quiet man who stood at the back during Mass had chosen such a different life from his ex-wife, who is doing okay at writing books. And she made that happen so she could support her children as a single mum, and had enough material from that marriage to write novels until the pen drops out of her hand at her own end. Books featuring women rising like phoenixes from the ashes of bad relationships. That marriage was rocket fuel for my literary ambitions. The end of us was the beginning of me, and probably the beginning of him too, even if the path he took led to a wilder, harsher terrain.
There are a lot of feelings here that refuse to sit in pigeon holes. I don’t know what the correct protocol is for a long-divorced ‘not-widow’. There is a template when someone close dies, but this chapter was left out of the textbook. I have few good memories of our time together, they were all snuffed out by the weight of too many bad ones. I have no idea why all this has affected me so much because I can hold (and have held) grudges for decades, trust me, I’m no saint… except to say that I gave birth to his sons, who have the best of him in them, and who I love more than my own life and that link will always be - maybe that is it. My overwhelming feeling is one of sadness, of something ended, even though for me it had ended long ago. And yet it feels now as if it has ended again, but properly this time. Maybe I am worried about the effect of that ending on those I love with all their questions left unanswered. It is impossible to get into someone’s head who thinks so differently from you, who has such opposing values. It was also impossible back then to see someone continually swimming against the tide, taking the path of most resistance when it would have been so easy to go with the flow and I could never work out why he did it. He was an apprentice-trained joiner. He had a trade, a way of living well but he threw that away too. He was a puzzle that defied solving beyond his last breath, the ultimate enigma.
These are uncharted waters: losing the father of your children. Someone who, apparently, spoke of us fondly to his Irish friends who knew this different version of him. Every time I think I have a grasp of it, it slips away as if greased and it will not be pinned down. He told people about us, but he wouldn't answer any questions. Information given was on his terms only.
Then I found that letting him go with my forgiveness freed me. There is no longer a need to try and untangle the knotted emotions, I have buried any enmity in its own grave. It is all finally done. There was a weight inside me that I didn’t know I was carrying but now it has gone. I have told my sons to let him go with forgiveness also and move on. Any ends that remained untied, we have to tie off ourselves now, make our own closure.
It will take the soil on his grave time to settle, in line with our feelings, but settle it will. And I will see to it that there is a stone erected so that one day his sons can go and see his resting place if they choose. It is a marker for what was once but is no more. It is time for us all – living and dead – to be at peace.