My first call was to our divorce mediator in Portland. “He’s in a meeting,” his secretary said.
“It’s urgent,” I told her. She must have heard the panic in my voice—high-pitched, sharp and forceful. She put me through.
“Marcus won’t be coming in for his one-o’clock appointment. He died,” I blurted out. “He’s dead. He had a ruptured aorta.” And then my composure crumbled. “I don’t know what to do! I don’t know what to do! I don’t know what to do! I don’t know what to do!” I kept repeating myself, practically screaming in hysterics, as I entered into full-blown panic. To say it out loud to someone else, to acknowledge that which I desperately did not want to be true, made it just a little more real. Was it really true?
I could detect Michael’s shock in spite of his attempt to calm me. He was a Catholic-turned-Zen Buddhist, which he had told us when we interviewed and subsequently hired him to help negotiate our separation. Marcus was in Portland and thus met with him in person several times. I was only connected by conference calls and had never seen him, but based on his gentle voice, relaxed manner of speech and his respect for Marcus’s and my determination to remain amicable, he seemed nice—for a former litigation lawyer. He had changed his career to mediation because it seemed, well, less litigious. “Take a breath,” he said. “Settle down. You’re going to be okay. Here’s what you do.”
He outlined the next steps for me. Someone had to instruct me, because I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t think past the image of Marcus and his lifeless body lying in a morgue thousands of miles away. No! I could not, would not, picture that. My mind was still insisting he was alive. He had to be alive. This was all a mistake. This wasn’t really happening.
“Book your flight to Portland,” Michael said, snapping me back to the present. “Call his parents in Germany. And above all, take care of yourself. You need to make sure you are okay. Do you have someone there who can be with you?” I didn’t. Betty, my landlord, was in El Paso for a few days. I had only my dogs and I was already scaring them. Daisy was hiding under the bed and Jack kept trying to lick my face, something he was prone to do when he was insecure.
I wanted to fly to Portland that evening. There was a flight available, and even with the five-hour drive to the El Paso airport, I could have made it. But when I discussed it with Mr. Chapelle, he said there was no reason to rush. It wasn’t like I needed to get there in case Marcus might take his final breath. He was already gone.
I spent the entire night awake; first tossing and turning in my bed until finally, so disturbed, so much wanting to crawl out of my skin to escape the searing pain, I moved into the living room and lay on the concrete floor in front of the fan. My forehead, pressed into the painted cement, rolled back and forth, practically wearing a groove into the hard floor as I wailed and wailed and wailed. I never heard such loud, guttural cries emitted from so deep within my core, never knew noises such as these were possible. I sounded like a dying animal, moaning like a cow hit by a car and left for dead on the road, wishing for someone to shoot it and put it out of its misery.
And I did feel like I was dying. I wanted to die. My moaning, my wailing, my cries could have been heard as far away as El Paso. But no matter how much, how long and how hard I cried, I couldn’t get the pain out. This new form of agony—sizzling, burning, tearing at my heart with razor blades—was an alien being that took over my body, infiltrating every cell. I couldn’t hold still. I couldn’t cry hard enough. I couldn’t scream loud enough. I couldn’t get the emotional torture to stop.
Psychologists call it complicated grief. It was almost a relief, as much as I could fathom any inkling of relief, to learn a few months later that what I was experiencing had a name, a clinical term. I had a condition. I could be placed in a category, given a label. I could wear a sign around my neck that read “Caution: This woman is suffering from complicated grief.”
Complicated grief is when someone you are close to dies and leaves you with unresolved issues, unanswered questions, unfinished business. And guilt. Lots and lots of guilt. And pain. Bottomless depths of searing pain. Complicated grief is when you ask your husband for a divorce you don’t really want, and he dies seven hours before signing the papers.
I killed my husband. I was sure of it. It was my fault. I’m the one who pushed for a divorce. He didn’t want it, must not have wanted it, otherwise he wouldn’t have died. He was dead, we were still married, and that told me everything. Before leaving my miner’s cabin for Portland, where my husband was reportedly dead, before putting my dogs in the care of my British neighbor, Ralph, I rummaged through my toiletry bag and found my wedding ring. The ring, an exact match to Marcus’s, was a band of fine gold on the outside, with an inner ring of steel on the inside. The bands were connected, yet separate, and made a jingling sound when they moved against each other. We had our rings designed by a goldsmith friend of Marcus’s in Germany to represent us—our strong bond balanced by our independence—and our lifestyle, the contrast of our love for both backpacking and five-star hotels.
I slid the ring back onto my finger where my white tan line had turned brown in the Texas sun, and shook my hand until I heard the familiar jingling. The gentle rattle had become a nonverbal communication between Marcus and me. We would shake our rings in each other’s ears as a way to say, “I’m sorry, I still love you” after an argument, when it was too difficult or too soon to utter the words out loud. I had taken the ring off even before I asked Marcus for the divorce. I took it off because I was mad at him. Mad that I couldn’t fly to Germany for my birthday in June to spend it with him. Because the auto industry was forced to make job cuts, Marcus was working two jobs and therefore he was too busy for me to visit. He started his days at 6:30 a.m. and returned home—home, which translated as a guest apartment attached to his parents’ house—no earlier than 9:30 at night, night after night. He was exhausted. I could hear it in the irritable tone of his voice. I could see his fatigue when we talked via Skype. I felt bad for him, but I was also hurt.
“What about me? I’m your wife. Am I not a priority?” I continued to plead. I hadn’t seen him since May. June came and went. And then there was July, a month during which he developed a chronic cough. “Don’t be like Jim Henson,” I chided. “You know, the guy who created The Muppets. He was sick but refused to take any time off work. It turned into pneumonia, and look what happened to him.”
Marcus insisted he was fine. His doctor told him his lungs were clear, it wasn’t bronchitis, gave him an asthma inhaler and sent him home. If only the doctor had checked his heart, had used ultrasound equipment to inspect his aorta, checked the thickness of its wall, had seen that there was a weakening and performed emergency surgery to put in a stent. If only.
Marcus spent his 43rd birthday on July 2—having no clue it would be his last—buying his new road bike. He still had no time for me to visit. His August vacation was coming up, so we assumed we would just wait and see each other then. I was looking forward to seeing him. I missed him. I missed his body, his shapely soccer-player thighs, his perfect, round ass. I missed his scent, or lack of scent, maybe it was just his presence I longed for. I missed spooning against his smooth skin, his chest hair tickling my back. This was the longest stretch of time we’d spent apart since we met—and, no, Skype sex doesn’t count.
“Let’s make a plan,” I suggested.
“No,” he said. “Every minute of my life is planned out for work. I don’t want to make any plans right now. I’m too tired.” And that was it. That was my breaking point. He didn’t want to make plans for his August vacation—our vacation. I felt cast aside, not important enough