For Billy

I realize that this may not make sense to many people who know my story, but the day my ex-husband died I was heartbroken. In fact I was thoroughly inconsolable. At the time, many people were surprised - they thought I should be happy. But instead I mourned loudly in my consuming grief over the death of a man who had once tried to take my life.

I don’t want to dwell on the why’s of this most ancient of betrayals; I know who he was and how he suffered. I also know that he loved me dearly, even when his hands wrapped tightly around my throat. Today I recall his tenderness, his sense of humor and his love for our son. I remember the tears he shed as he held me after learning of my mother’s death. There were times when he was light and fun and caring. But he was a tortured soul who wrestled with demons I could only begin to imagine and so his darkness overwhelmed him and, at times, locked me out.

How can I not love him still? He was my friend, my lover, my mirror. In his eyes I saw truths that only he and I understood; we had the same wounds and the same dreams. Yet perhaps, tough as he was, he did not have the courage to look within. I wonder if he ever saw in himself what I saw in him, if he ever dared to believe that love was real, that his heart could trust and that he would always be safe. How can any human being live without hope? He tried for so long.

Three years after our divorce he called me on the telephone. He wanted to talk, to cry and to be consoled; he asked if I could ever love him again. I regret now that I answered “no.” It was a lie - I always loved him and always will. Then he asked for feedback, my advice on what he could do to get his life back together, how he could be happy again. I told him what I saw, not in anger or blame, but from the heart of a women who longed to once again see him be the man I had fallen so deeply in love with many years before.

He responded like a little boy and his gratitude was obvious. He told me that I was one of the best friends he had ever had. My heart was full and I carried those words with me for the next ten days - right up until the moment when I heard the caller on the other end of the telephone line tell me that Billy was dead. Massive heart attack, age 46.

How could I not be heartbroken?


Dedicated to William Charles McCormick, November 12, 1953 – April 7, 2000.