Dear reader, I apologize in advance because today I’ll be discussing grief, ex-husbands, hot potatoes and Beetlejuice all in one strange emotional ADHD soup-post. But it’s really the only way I’ve figure out how to make these concepts make sense inside my own mind, so I’ll see how it does when sloshed across paper. Or the rather, screen.

The hardest lesson I’ve ever had to learn (so far) is holding two very different things/feelings/ideas in both hands. Two emotional hot potatoes, if you will. I’ve had to sit with them and say to myself, “These two things are the opposite of one another. They don’t make sense side by side. But I have to hold onto both of them no matter how much they scald my hands.”

In the 1950’s some important dude named Leon Festinger came up with the idea of “cognitive dissonance.” (Unrelated detail, he was also divorced.) Cognitive dissonance is, according to Google, “the mental discomfort or psychological stress experienced when holding conflicting beliefs, values, or attitudes, or when an action contradicts one’s beliefs.”

Me and my emotional hot potatoes know a little something about this.

My first ex-husband passed away last month. He fought a long, brave battle against glioblastoma. But for anyone who knows anything about that brand of cancer, it always wins in the end. We were together for 15 years, married for 13, and had Jane together. We met in college when we were 19. The first time I laid eyes on him was during Harding chapel, when he and another friend got into a slap/punch fight, a story we all laughed about over the years.

Over the past 11 years I have hesitated to write much about my divorce because, to be frank, there are a lot of people who have hung around for a decade+ trying to find out more “scoop.” And I have two things to say.

First, there’s no scoop in this post. I won’t be dredging up bones or stories. Although, sidenote, Matt did tell a hilarious story the last week he was in the hospital. No one could hold court and tell a story better than Matt, and he did just that, telling a room full of us about a fire at his house and the firemen finding a human femur bone under the rubble. When the firemen asked what he wanted to do (it was found under a historical structure) he told them, “Just put it back.” So. That’s how I feel about the things that transpired in our marriage. We are going to leave them where they lay, under the rubble, undisturbed, as god and Matt intended.

And two, honestly, if you’ve come here to find out some dirt or some gossip, and I say this with love, get a life. I would bet the entire cost of my 2017 car that you are probably running desperately from some hot potatoes of your own. Either way, this won’t be the tell-all story you’re wishing for. It won’t be the juicy scoop that distracts you from the things that really need attention in your life. Call your therapist. Or your mother. Or go fight your mother. But please for the love, move on.

So. Matt died. It was gutting. We tried to get Jane to the hospital as much as we could so she could spend as much time with her dad as possible. And they did have time. And it was special and sweet. And then he was gone. It still doesn’t feel real that someone as strong and charismatic as Matt could ever be gone.

The rest of this story will be from my perspective, because that’s the only perspective I have. I can’t speak about how this was for his family, or Jane. But for me, it brought up a million emotions I never expected. And I didn’t know how to process them. Or how to feel about them. I was on emotional overload, and I didn’t know what to do with it all. And I’m still grappling with that.

When your ex-husband dies, you’re not a widow. You’re not a friend. You’re no longer family. You’re probably a parent of the child you shared with your ex, which inextricably links you to them, even in death, without a quantifiable place for you. You’re just sad, and maybe a little mad, and worried sick for your child, all the while relegated to a weird spot out in no-man’s-land. It’s a weird place, emotionally reminiscent of the desert in Beetlejuice.

When your ex dies, you find yourself in an alternate reality that makes no sense. There’s a seat reserved for you, but it feels like a 1980’s plastic folding chair with a hole in it. There are old photos strewn about that you haven’t seen in years, that both tug at your heart strings and simultaneously bring back conflicting memories. And somewhere out in this weird Beeltejuice-esque purgatory is an emotional sandworm ready to pounce, filled with mental images and hard memories that you’ve probably worked very hard to box up and shove in the attic of your mind palace.

And while you’re sitting in this weird place with a million good and bad memories swirling around in your mind, you’re also talking to people you haven’t seen in years. People you loved deeply. People you missed. You’re reminiscing. You’re hearing stories about how wonderful your ex was, and all the great things they did. And he did do great things. And he was wonderful to a lot of people. But also, you have your own memories, some good, some not good, and all bursting out of those carefully taped up boxes in the back of your mind.

This is a hard topic to write about. I stifled it for a while. But anyone who writes knows that sometimes “The Thing” that wants to be written gets aggressive. Sometimes it lights up a cigarette and kicks the door in and yells, “Write about me OR ELSE. Now go get me another pack of Pall Malls, we’ve got work to do.” So we agreed to write this together. And somehow we came up with a hot potato and Beetlejuice analogy. Matt, btw, was a fan of both the movie and the food group, so I feel like he would have given it a green light.

Anyway, back to Beetlejuice-ex-spouse-purgatory. There’s lightning on the horizon, just above the sand dunes. You’re watching a parade of memories. Happy memories. Sad memories. There are also not-so-great memories swirling around. You eye the landscape worriedly and a sandstorm kicks up and blows grit in your eyes. And you apologize and wipe your eyes and people think, “Oh she’s crying because she did love him, after all.”

And in reality, yes, of course. You were married with the intention of being married forever. You had a child together. But also there’s sadness and anger mixed in those tears. Because there will never be closure on a lot of things. You’re not going to get a “thank you” for all the years of sacrifices, bills paid, laundry done, children born, and public images preserved. You’re crying because the only other person alive who remembered your past, your old dog, your old house, the things your child did as a baby, is gone. And there is no one to remember any of it now, but you. You’re crying because someone you used to love very much is dead, and you’re crying for your child’s loss, but you’re also crying for all the years and youth you can never get back.

And the two things I ended up holding in both hands were this:

1. He was a good person who did a lot of good things and was really wonderful in a lot of ways and I cared a lot about him.

2. He did a lot of things that hurt me, and I hurt him, and we spent years resenting each other.  

Holding those two things at the same time is painful. It makes the cognitive dissonance in my brain scream like a potato wrapped in saran wrap in the microwave. But the only other choice is for me to decide that my ex was a saint and wonderful, and gaslight myself about my own experiences, OR to reject all the positive things about my ex and swerve into the “he was a terrible person” camp. I can choose the black or white versions, or, I can hold those potatoes and accept the gray. Because neither of those potatoes are actually the whole truth. No one is all good, or all bad. And clinging to one over the other would be a terrible choice for myself, as a mom, as an ex-wife, and as a human being.

My only choice is to hold both of these weird potatoes at the same time. My only choice is to sit with them in my weird chair in ex-wife purgatory. My only choice is to gaze at old photos of us together, young with faces full of collagen and think, “That was a good time, at that moment, in that picture.”

Because no experience or person fits into an easily labeled box. There are no Disney heroes and villains in life. We’re all a bunch of onions, with a lot of layers, and a lot of life chapters. This world is full of flawed, struggling, funny, wonderful, giving, selfish, honest, dishonest, secure and insecure people. And we have to learn to accept that holding two very hot potatoes at the same time is a mandatory requirement to facing our past, present and future with honesty.

And instead of fighting these damn potatoes, I’m going to sit right here and hold them. It’s helping me open those boxes, blow back the cobwebs, and deal with reality. And in honestly facing my grief and disappointment, I also find it easier to laugh about the good times and remember the fun moments with him. Like the time he wore an Abominable Snowman suit and raced around the house in the dark and scared the absolute crap out of a bunch of trick-or-treaters. Like the time we hid on a fire escape and squeezed an entire bottle of Jergens lotion on top of a couple who was making out in the alley below. Like the time Jane refused to wake up from a nap and Matt bounced her up and down and yelled “BOB” reminiscent of Dr. Leo Marvin while she giggled.

And when it’s my turn to leave this earth, I hope I leave people behind who can hold both potatoes at the same time for me, as well. I am, myself, a many-layered onion who will probably leave behind some people who wish they had closure. I won’t mean to, but I might. And I hope I leave my children and husband and family and exes with not only good memories, but also with the ability to process the bad ones in a way that moves them forward in life.

In the mean time, I’ll be here, processing Matt’s death, thinking about the good and the bad, and knowing that it can all be true at the same time. May he rest-in-fun in an epic after-life party. If anyone can pull it off, it will be Matt.