many of you know that i have an ex-husband. i spent almost eight years of my life with him, and they were hard years, years that i allowed to partially sap my sense of identity, they were abusive and crazy years, with a rage-aholic who was also a child molester, i found out later.
he’s dead.
when we were married, after he got out of the navy, he worked in the shipyard for a few years, removing PCB’s from the hulls of old submarine’s so the metal could be recycled. i always assumed he’d get cancer or some other heinous disease from that, knowing how careless they were with the toxic stuff there, but a plain old regular heart attack killed him.
i told a friend who commented "far too easy a death for someone that would abuse a child".
maybe.
he’s been in my thoughts lately. i swear, i knew. there’s this tv commercial that plays here often that has a commentator dude saying "have you been diagnosed with mesothelioma as a result of work in a shipyard or other industrial situation?…" and just a bit ago i was thinking "i wonder if terry ever got cancer or anything?" the thing is that i hadn’t thought about him for a long time, and all of a sudden, he was there, in my mind. and now he’s dead.
something told me not to pick up the phone when the family called and not to return the calls until saturday. i am glad i didn’t because it meant that i couldn’t make the funeral. it was saturday too. i think it would have been exceedingly awkward given how stoic we would have been, compared to the rest of the family, who loved him by blood and they are really struggling with his death.
telling my kids was strange. my daughter doesn’t really remember him, she just knows how ucky she feels when she thinks about him. she said she felt like maybe she should feel sad because it’s her dad and all, but it’s not like they were close, she knew him or he knew her. i think she will ultimately be relieved that he’s gone and he can’t possibly ever hurt her again. when she went through her crazy time, that was one of her irrational fears and now she doesn’t have it anymore.
my son asked for the phone number in oregon, which i gave him. i expect that at some point he will go there to visit and see if it’s what he remembers.
this has been conflicting for me. on one hand, at some point, i thought i would spend the rest of my life with this person and the last dozen years or so thanking the goddess that i saw the light and wasn’t with him anymore. anyone who has a not-very-friendly ex i am sure knows how you get where there comes a time when you look at the person and think "ew. i can’t believe i ever slept with that person". the years had not been kind to him with no steady jobs, no health care. he had lost many teeth, was overweight, not very healthy, diabetic, i sort of felt sorry for him the last time i saw him because his energy was just off. and there was still that undeniable, barely under the surface rage that used to scare me so much.
although i truly believe that his ability to have a real impact on my life ended when i left a state that was anywhere near where he was, there was always a nagging fear in the back of my mind that he would find us some day and do something to hurt me or one of the kids. he can’t hurt my mom anymore because she preceeded him in death.
should i feel worse than i do? should i not feel as much relief as i did? i cried after i got off the phone, and in my heart of hearts, i am still not sure why i cried. for the past? the person i was when i was with him? the end of an era? relief? i don’t know….
peace.
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