A Whimper or a Bang /Short Letter to my dead ex-husband

CW: Coerced abortion

A Whimper or a Bang /Short Letter to my dead ex-husband

A Whimper or a Bang 

A month before his death, my ex-minister-husband texted me. “I would prefer that you not attend my funeral.” I wanted to text back, “Gracious as ever, on your way out,” but I went with the decidedly more Christian, “Of course, I will respect your wishes. God bless you.” That would be a wrap if there were such a thing.  If he hadn’t made his dying request or if I hadn’t agreed to it, I would be sitting in the corner of the last pew in the same white clapboard church that once welcomed me, my new minister-husband, and our first child—the child who saved my life but not my marriage. 

Instead of sliding into the last pew reserved for latecomers and disenfranchised former spouses, I float near the windows on the east side of the balcony. The floor to ceiling windows overlook a Norman Rockwell-like town green in this too quaint for human eyes New England town. I have a bird's-eye view of our children and grandchildren who sit below in the first two pews, reserved for family. Their stepmother of twenty-five years is in the middle of the first pew, right of the center aisle, flanked by our daughter and our two sons. All wear black. Our five grandchildren sit together behind their parents. Three from our oldest son, the one who charmed the church in his rainbow-striped overalls the morning his father accepted an invitation to serve there fifty years ago. Two from our daughter, the youngest, who cried her eight-year-old self to sleep when I moved out of the marital home and into my parents' A-frame half a mile away.

I remember the morning I drove my minister-husband to the hospital to have surgery for suspected prostate or testicular cancer; I can’t recall which. The rainbow striped overall wearing child was going on seven, and I was pregnant with our second, or our third, depending on how you count. I sat in a beige plastic recliner in the hospital room during the surgery, holding a folded letter my minister-husband handed to me that morning, addressed to both our born and unborn sons. In case he didn’t make it. The Waterford crystal vase I filled that morning with black-eyed Susans from our garden sat on the bedside table. After a few hours, a doctor, who was a member of the church and the kids’ pediatrician, arrived with good news. Just a scare. 

As the organist plays “Nearer My God To Thee”, I remember a morning ten years before the cancer scare, when my student minister-boyfriend sat in the waiting room of a Hartford hospital while upstairs I aborted our eight-week fetus conceived on the floor of my dorm room. That rainy November morning, my aspiring minister-boyfriend drove. I vomited when the hospital came into view. Pressured by him to have the abortion, afraid to lose him, afraid to tell anyone for fear that they would talk me out of it, I gave in. Our marriage, six months later, two months short of my 20th birthday, was a Hail Mary attempt to move on. I never forgave him or myself. 

Our middle child, the unborn son of the fourth paragraph, makes his way to the pulpit to give the eulogy. I remember the lines from the 1925 T.S. Eliot poem my husband quoted when he was afraid of losing me. “This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.” I know it’s important to my ex-husband to go out with a bang today. I hope he gets it.

A polished black marble urn is center stage at the front of the church, underneath the pulpit my ex-minister-husband preached from for thirty-seven years. Our middle son looks down on the mourners, clears his throat, and unfolds his notes. The church, built in 1645, bears silent witness to centuries of flawed ministers and their flawed flocks, who tried and failed, tried and failed, to serve God with a joyful heart. This morning, the sun shines on a man who lived, loved, and sired three to four children, depending on how you count, who then sired five children who will, in turn, sire more. Mostly good and mostly faithful servant, rest in peace.  

Short letter to my dead ex-husband

Dear dead ex-husband,

The business of dying, writing your eulogy and memorial service, and picking out which Grateful Dead song to play before the call to worship (Ripple) kept you busy right up to your end. When you requested that I not attend your funeral, you neglected to bar me from paying my respects at your grave, so I drove to Nut Plains Cemetery this morning to look for you. By the way, five hundred people attended your service. I hope that makes you happy.

Ye olde colonial graveyard is buried under two feet of new snow. Wilted Christmas wreaths peek out from snow drifts on fresh graves. Tilted pots once filled with flowers look like drunk snow cones. Scrambling over a snow berm at what seems to be the graveyard entrance, I tromp through snow in my faded purple REI hiking boots and look for new headstones even though I know you are still waiting for yours. You were buried eight days ago.

Our youngest told me your ashes are buried at the back near a stream, next to your poker friend Donald Johnson, a COVID casualty. I skirt the worn graves engraved with winged cherubs. When I was your wife, an amateur colonial historian parishioner of yours told me the oldest graves here date back to 1794. Donna Summer sings MacArthur Park in my head, and I hum it along with her. Somehow it fits. Someone did leave the cake out in the rain. And I’ll never have that recipe again.

When my feet start to feel numb, I call our oldest, who suggests I follow the driveway loop that starts and ends at two stone flanked gaps in the old Connecticut stone wall. You are buried in the back of the graveyard near the center of that snow-covered driveway loop, he says. No grave stone yet, but next to Donald Johnson. I never liked Donald Johnson, but I am happy to use his headstone to get closer to you.

On the verge of giving up to save my feet, I walk where I think the driveway loop must be and spot Donald and a J on what looks like a 21st century headstone behind vestiges of limp greenery at the rear of the cemetery. I brush away the snow to be sure I have the right guy. It’s him, good ol’ Donald Johnson, born in 1948, died in 2021. You did his funeral and his burial. I bet you told some entertaining poker tales at his church service. You must have stood where I am standing now to pray over his grave.

I hear the stream that flows between snow banks in a gully at the back of the cemetery. Above the spot where you are buried, or at least close enough, two empty wooden birdhouses hang from an old oak tree in the morning light. Surely, your second wife will fill them when she visits. Even now, I can hear the birds singing and waiting. You picked a sweet spot.

The snow is deep, and I am wearing cheap yoga pants, but I kneel anyway. It seems the least I can do. Head bowed, I recite the Lord’s Prayer, then the 23rd Psalm, and address you. I forgive you, I say, and I hope you forgive me. Then I stand, brush the white snow off my black pants, and walk out the way I came. Rest easy. No one saw me.

Love, Your ex-wife