I can’t believe I am composing this post … especially after the last one.
I learned yesterday that my ex-husband, Scott, killed himself on Tuesday. He would have been 60 on the 27th of this month.
I have been in contact with his wife, Lauren, lending as much support as possible as she tries to absorb this shocking turn of events and wonders: WHY? WHY? WHY?
They have an 11-year-old son … now the same age as Scott was when his father died, also at 58, a tragedy he never learned to live with.
Scott and I were together for 13 years through the ’80s and early ’90s .. the formative years for my older kids … and our relationship was tumultuous, some would say toxic, for most of that time.
It was “Life in the Fast Lane” in every way, not unusual for the time … not one bit healthy, but also never dull.
He was an ad man, so we lived in a social whirl, drove fast cars, traveled the world, drank and smoked too much, and fought like caged ferrets … others referred to us as “The Scott and Sandra Show”, being so drama-charged in our interactions that it was hard to miss the “entertainment value” of our dysfunctional team.
He was an unfaithful spouse, a good-looking man-about-town charmer with a smile that lured women like rats to peanut butter. He was self-involved and often cruel … but I loved him for a long time.
In 1993, I bought myself an around-the-world ticket and left for a year. I needed to get my head together, and couldn’t do that while in the same house, or hemisphere, with him. My kids had grown and moved out and I felt I had completely lost the plot.
He threw a huge party for me, and gave me a compass. He pasted a photo of him inside it and wrote, “So you find your way back” across it.
I didn’t. I found Mark instead, so my return had me staying for only 3 months … time enough to pack what I wanted to take of my old life for my move to England, and to get divorced.
For the past 15 years, he would often phone when drunk and want to talk about our life together. I was the repository of memories … him retaining very few details … and he mined that in me when he could, asking for names and dates and places and recollections.
He contacted me two weeks ago, wanting to give some comfort over the breakup of this marriage of mine, and told me that it had taken him four years to get over my leaving. Whether or not that was some sort of “clearing the decks” act, I will never know, but there was no indication that anything was seriously amiss.
He left no note, and the questions fly around the thought of him at a million miles an hour from hundreds of people.
I cannot believe I end another blog with this, but RIP, Scott. You live in my heart, and always will.
I hate the turn of the year …
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I’ve been spending a lot of time in contemplation of much these days, gazing at every inch of the elephant of sorrow and each cell that makes up the blue whale of regrets, trying to make this puny human learn where the process leads.
A collection of my short stories:
I'm in this one, too ...
And I'm in here, as well ...
Paradise Preoccupied 