He Was

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

He was my backup husband, because my real husband is so fucking danger prone and headstrong and has such a terrible diet we all joke that I'll be a widow someday. I feel like a widow today. He was tall with dark hair and watery blue eyes and I was in love with him before I ever saw his face. We stayed up all night writing and editing, sharing memes and confessions in the dark. He was alone and cold in the dark when he died.

Our brains came from the same "irregular" bin, we'd say, the same flavors of crazy and creative. He was better at pounding out wordcount, I was better at quips and poetry. We were propagandists, provocateurs. We tilted at windmills and brought down empires and swore to make sailors blush. He loved the Atlantic maritime aesthetic, tall ships and salt water. Loved his city and his country and his island home. We'd give each other shit for using different units of measure, for the slightest differences in accent. We both lived with one foot in politics and the other in activism. Our victories were beautiful and our defeats crushed us.

We'd stay on the phone til all hours and he'd take his breaks here and there for a cigarette after promising me a thousand times he'd quit. He was an addict, and like all addicts he lied about things but none more than his addiction and the state of his recovery. He wasn't when I met him, unless you count the cigarettes. Grief and a sudden influx of cash gave him the ability to fall much further down a hole than most people can before hitting a bottom. We stopped talking for two years because I couldn't watch him self destruct from 400 miles away. I sat on the fire escape and cried my eyes out as the sun set. He preferred chaste little kisses to passionate ones, and wanted his turn as the little spoon. I threw the creative output of our breakup on the table in a real and literal sense when he came back to town. He told me I hadn't changed. He had.

I stayed up with him too late and he soaked up my tears while the world seemed fake and dangerous, like cracking ice I would fall through. He had a roll to his gait and he'd snort when he laughed and had way too many strong opinions about science fiction. He was getting better.

He loved my husband and us as a couple and my husband loved him in the same brotherly way. Co-conspirators, comrades in arms. His mother didn't know what to make of it but she knew he was better when he was with us, knew Boston did him good, knew the relief on his face when I said I would meet with him again and see if I could handle having him back in my life. She said it was too bad I was married, but never when I was in earshot. We rescheduled our wedding in the hopes that he'd make the trip. I was always giving him shit that he never showed up as soon or as often as he promised. He was always over-promising.

He was a fighter and he couldn't give up a losing fight or even admit when he'd found one. He got paranoid and he'd forget that he was loved and who loved him. He saw magic in everything.

He was, and that's the hardest thing to say: "he was." Because thirty eight is not old enough and never married is not old enough and still talked about wanting kids someday, the work he was still doing to salvage his relationship with his mom the work we were doing to patch ourselves back together turn into whatever we were going to be it's not enough and now it never will be because he was.

[LMNO]

I'm so sorry, QG.

[The Wizard Joseph]

I grieve that you grieve. I will go now unto the food co-op and eat an orange to honor your loss. Take care. If you need to talk I'll be around.

[Cain]

 

[altered]

If you need it, you have my number. I don't really know what else to say.

[hooplala]

I'm really really sorry for your loss.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

I think the saddest thing is that he never learned this alchemy, never learned how to turn his shit into art.

[hooplala]

"What could have been" is always the part of death I wrestle with the most. It's so fucking permanent and just over and all you can do is think about everything that didn't happen. I'm sorry this is probably not a healthy mindset for your thread, but I stew about death a lot.



edited for speling

[The Wizard Joseph]

I think the saddest thing is that he never learned this alchemy, never learned how to turn his shit into art.

I've been very close to death both spiritual and physical. I believe that something like angels of a sort exist on the border between this world and oblivion. Some souls are fortunate enough to hear them calling them back from the threshold. After you hear the heart and soul have no choice but to make Art in reply. If you will not or cannot reply they don't have time to chase you Because there are many on the precipice. The saddest truth is that not everyone can make it back. Everyone Falls Down eventually, but for those that have been there and back there is no choice but to try and convey to the living what an inestimable gift life is. This message and the celebration of life itself are to me what art is.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

"What could have been" is always the part of death I wrestle with the most. It's so fucking permanent and just over and all you can do is think about everything that didn't happen. I'm sorry this is probably not a healthy mindset for your thread, but I stew about death a lot.

It's easy to get caught up in that and especially when it's someone too young, but it's a distraction from the business at hand. Sure, part of grief is missing out on the could have beens, processing the fact that you're going to live your life without someone. I guess for some people that's the bulk of the process. But when people die they stop writing their own story, they're given up to the myth makers to do with as we see fit. And I am not here to let them sanitize him, to strip away the things that made him, to fit him in four short lines with no scandal and no mistakes and not a drop of blood. He was a person, real and whole, and the only parts of him left are the stories we tell. They will put me in the ground before I let them sacrifice the smallest piece of him.

[altered]

That is an incredibly powerful message.

Thanks for that. Really.

[hooplala]

"What could have been" is always the part of death I wrestle with the most. It's so fucking permanent and just over and all you can do is think about everything that didn't happen. I'm sorry this is probably not a healthy mindset for your thread, but I stew about death a lot.

It's easy to get caught up in that and especially when it's someone too young, but it's a distraction from the business at hand. Sure, part of grief is missing out on the could have beens, processing the fact that you're going to live your life without someone. I guess for some people that's the bulk of the process. But when people die they stop writing their own story, they're given up to the myth makers to do with as we see fit. And I am not here to let them sanitize him, to strip away the things that made him, to fit him in four short lines with no scandal and no mistakes and not a drop of blood. He was a person, real and whole, and the only parts of him left are the stories we tell. They will put me in the ground before I let them sacrifice the smallest piece of him.

I love this.

[Cramulus]

You paint a powerful and touching portrait

I'm sorry for your loss and am here if you need

[Fujikoma]

I'm deeply sorry for your loss, QG. As usual, this is powerful stuff.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

I cant be mad at him yet. I know what it's like being angry with the dead, I've done more than my share of it already this life, I'm not afraid or ashamed of it. It's just not there, at least not yet. I can shake my head at the stupid things he did, the laundry list of "I told you so"s, the fights we had, the time we lost, the things that killed him in the end. All I can feel about him is happiness for the time we had and sadness that it's over. I have not lost the ability to feel other things towards other people, and maybe there will be a day I can be angry at him but I am not looking forward to it. The hard part is hearing other people getting mad at him for all the things I know he did wrong. The animal of myself rises up with tooth and claw and possessive fury screaming in the hole inside my chest. There is no bringing him back, but here I am standing guard over his prone body, ready to kill any scavengers that come sniffing by. My love is a sword and shield.