Peace At Last

Chalk it up to morbid curiosity but every few years I make a small effort to see what’s going on with the people I have left behind. It’s how I learned my second husband and brother were dead, that my other brother’s first born had OD’d on drugs and died, that a precious friend had a grown son who had become a reasonably successful musician, and most recently, that an old lover was in the hospital. Except for the last, I felt no need to do anything, no urge to reach out and re-connect, no desire to make peace or amends. Except for the last, the past is the past and as the popular saying goes, I’m not going that way and will not look back. Except for the last. When you feel you have failed someone you love, there’s no amount of time or distance that can ease the guilt. It retreats and regroups, seduces you into thinking you’ve gotten past it, and then slams back at you when you least expect it. It’’s a nighttime intruder with a lethal weapon and darkness on his side. Too late you realize you left a window open.

After a nearly lethal stroke, which left him paralyzed on one side, he has spent the last several years in and out of rehab hospitals and psychiatric wards and nursing homes. At one point, he was calling me 4 and 5 times a day, in tears, incoherent and desperate, pleading with me to help him. The calls were agonizing and futile – I had no standing to do anything – and in time to preserve my own sanity, I changed my number. It felt like the worst kind of betrayal but I saw no alternative. I talked often and at length with his daughter, more to assuage my own guilt than anything else, and she assured me she understood and that I shouldn’t feel it was my responsibility. Technically he still had a wife, she reminded me, although they were separated and she would soon be arrested for multiple counts of domestic abuse and assault against him and in the meantime she promised me she was working hard to move him to her state where she could care for him. I allowed myself to be convinced but it never happened and over time I persuaded myself that I’d done the only possible thing and I stopped letting myself think about it.

I tried to remember him in better times – he never lost his British accent and his sense of humor was quick, sharp and desert dry. He loved animals fiercely, thrived on clutter and chaos, drank far more than was good for him, was passionate about a good Indian curry and loved his child beyond words. Despite her severe mental illness and relentless abuse and alcoholism, he never completely abandoned the woman he married and allowed her to dominate him. Loyalty was only one of his his fatal flaws. He never thought he was meant to be happy and was terrified of leaving the frying pan for the fire. I coaxed, pleaded, reasoned, promised and threatened but all to no avail. I finally realized you cannot help someone who is unwilling to give up the things that make him suffer.

He had spent the last few weeks in hospice and his death was not unexpected but even so, it’s a body blow. His presence in my life was a gift. I dearly hope he has found some peace.