On Seeing the Obituary of a Passed/Past Lover

We had already broken up almost 50 years ago, and we’ve had no contact in all those years.  As I’ve moved into my sentimental, looking-back phase, I’ve Googled his name from time to time, just to see what turned up – curiosity, wistful instead of morbid, about times and lovers past.  I wonder if he ever searched mine?

I never found much.  He’d moved up north.  He had a partner (later husband) of many years.  They owned houses together, donated to worthy causes, adopted sons.  Not much else.

And then this year, as I searched again, his obituary led the list of hits – dead at what increasingly seems a shockingly young 72.

“Must be someone else,” I thought.  “Not an uncommon name; how could it be him?” 

But after the initial shock there was no denying it. Though he’d grown old, as I have, I recognized the man in the photo. No longer the image of youthful maleness I’d held in memory for 50 years, but still the dimpled smile, the twinkle in the seductive eyes.  Dead.

Facebook provided more photos – even video: a last birthday party just days before the end, husband, sons, sister, dog, trying to hide their sorrow behind a cake and song. Not the robust, virile, handsome, even funny man I’d remembered all those years. An old man, ill and shriveled, his face uncomprehending – of the party perhaps, one last celebration of his too-short life? – or even less, what lay ahead so soon? Or was it my own incomprehension I was seeing? How could this be him, even after decades? It was beyond my understanding, never mind that I’d grown old myself, and must also be sliding toward my end. But I’d watched that happening day-by-day, not shuddered from the jolt of half a century flashing by instantly.

The sentimental words of Nilsson singing “Can’t live, if living is without you,” filled my mind – as they had for a while all those years ago, when he left the first time.

For a year or two we burned hot, fueled by passion, drugs and alcohol; so hot we almost burned each other up.  But fires that hot don’t last, not often anyway, and ours exploded and went out – though perhaps a few remembered embers still glowed through the years. 

Amends were never made by either of us, as called for by the program we both turned to in later years, and amends would have been appropriate in both directions.  I’m sure we’d both have made them long ago if we hadn’t been too timid (or too stubborn).  I’m sure we both intended to make them before it was too late.  Oops, mistimed that, I guess. But never mind that now.

I should say that I haven’t clung to any foolish longing for him all this time, no matter how my musings and online searches might make it seem.  I’ve had a partner (now husband) myself for most of those many years, and we too have owned houses together, had worthy causes – no sons, but a satisfying marriage which transitioned over time to sustaining love.  So I have no lingering longing for this man from another time, a now foreign age of youth, when engulfing love often came with pain as well as passion.

Or maybe a little longing seeing those eyes again, flashing me back to pre-AIDS days of pot and poppers, a time of wishing that my youthful fantasy of love would keep going on forever.

Remarkable how thoroughly an obituary knocks the wind out of forever.

There comes a time when you begin to notice that death is all around.  It always is, of course, but when you’re young, and even for a while as you get older, when you’ve escaped alive in the face of AIDS and addiction and just living, it’s tempting to think you may be the exception.  You may have seen your parents die, and some of your friends perhaps, and famous people you’ve known about for decades.  Still, death may not be vivid for YOU. 

But the obituary of a long ago lover – someone who shared your body and whose sensual body you shared, whose memory you have preserved in the precious amber of smoldering, young eternity – puts the definitive lie to that.  He was not the exception, and you will not be the exception either.

I may, or may not, be more afraid of death than others.  Or perhaps it’s not fear so much as anxiety about things unknown.  Since I first read it, years ago, I’ve often thought of William Hazlitt’s opening to his essay “On the Fear of Death”: 

There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern - why then should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be?

Reasonable words to stay sane by, though not always easy to apply at 2 a.m., when the lights are out but your eyes are open.

But it wasn’t so much death that seeing his obituary vivified, as the certainty that memories - and the yearnings and comforts and tumults they generate - have no eternity either.

Oh, seeing those Facebook photos, that video – how the tears flowed. I felt like an intruder, barging into their lives, into their time of aching sorrow – but I couldn’t look away. He was part of my life too, my sorrow, though even he, the only one who might have known why I had claims to join them, was beyond validating my right by then.

The loving husband or loving sons who wrote his obituary made no mention of me, though in a way he’s lived with me – within me – longer than any of them have known him.  He may never have mentioned my name to them, nor even namelessly alluded to me in glances back, just as I’ve hardly named him to anyone else in 40 years. 

But we shared a past, shared memories.  Those days and nights of passion, pain, happiness, anger have been gone for half a century.  Now he’s gone; soon I will be too; and then the memory will be gone as well.  With his death they’re half gone already.  Who’ll write the obituary of our memories when we can’t?

The trouble with cheap sentiment is knowing when to stop it, and how. But really, no reason to worry, I suppose, since nature has a way of making sure it doesn’t go on too long. Shakespeare’s seven ages come to mind, though by now they’ve dwindled almost to none. There’s no more “sighing like furnace” – the sentimental tears have cooled those flames. Still clinging to the “shrunk shank” and “childish treble” for a little while, awaiting the “sans everything” which will come so soon. What will be left of us, him and me?  But what difference does it make?  So long, young lovers.  What a hard reality to face. 

Another look at the photos. Nilsson still wailing in the background, though soon for someone else. Beyond comprehension. And then it’s over, just like that.