Why was I so racked with grief when my ex died?
THE landline rang on a Saturday afternoon, on the second day of the year. I was half-minded to ignore it. Then I noticed all the missed calls on my mobile.
Someone wanted to get hold of me, urgently. And that is rarely good news.
When I picked up the phone, it was my sister-in-law and I could tell she was upset. Had I heard? Heard what? ‘Ronnie’s dead,’ she said. She was talking about my ex-husband. We had been divorced for eight years, yet I was deeply affected by the news. Not least because I quickly realised that being the ex-wife is a lonely position. In fact, I am still alone with my grief.
Then my sister-in-law asked a question that wouldn’t be too forthcoming over the ensuing weeks. ‘Are you OK?’
No, I wasn’t. The tears started immediately. Huge, complicated ones. Not the acceptable ones of a loving wife but those of an ex, loaded with anger, confusion, pain and self-flagellation.
Why was I so upset? I had no claim to him. So why couldn’t I stop crying? I’d known he was ill — he’d had medical issues from adolescence — but dead? He was only 41 and died awaiting a kidney transplant.
Yes, I was happier living without him but that didn’t mean I didn’t still want him as a small part of my life, somewhere, silent, in the background.
The reaction of others wasn’t straightforward either. My dad was sympathetic at first. A hug and a ‘there, there’ as I sobbed, but soon I detected irritation creeping in and before long I was told to ‘calm down’.
Once a person is out of your life, the assumption is that you no longer have the right to be upset. But there is a term for mourning a loss that falls outside societal norms: disenfranchised grief.
It encompasses losses like mine, or the death of a lover who was married to someone else and never really yours. It also covers non-death losses such as accepting one’s infertility or the end of a platonic friendship. And my goodness, how it hurts. The day Ronnie died, I dug out the box in my wardrobe, full of cards, pictures and tokens of our life together.
We met in 2003 when I was 21 and he was 29, connecting online in the early days of internet dating. We talked on the phone every day for a fortnight before meeting up.
RONNIE and I lived in different cities, he in Glasgow and me in Edinburgh, so our first date took a little planning. We went out for dinner in Ronnie’s home town, completely ignoring the food — talking, laughing and kissing the whole night. Saying goodbye, I was so sad I burst into tears.
Within two months I had moved into his flat and in March 2004, just five months after our first date, we married at the beautiful Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire.
Friends were shocked, but I just wanted to be married to the man I loved. After the wedding, though, the depression that had haunted me since my teens, when I’d been in an abusive relationship, crept up on me again. The euphoria of being in love had masked my inner torment but although I’d moved house, changed my name and started a new life, the black clouds followed me.
When I sought help, severe depression was diagnosed and I was sent home to a man who couldn’t understand how I had seemingly changed overnight. I started taking antidepressants and attended counselling. Rather than recoiling in horror, Ronnie listened and held me as I wept.
Meanwhile, he was dealing with his own illness. He’d had juvenile arthritis and type 1 diabetes diagnosed at 17, and at times I felt more like a carer than a wife.
Ronnie started getting broody after turning 30 but I wasn’t ready. Soon we bickered constantly. When Ronnie tried to hold me at night I would flinch, and we lived increasingly separate lives.
Just after our third anniversary, Ronnie told me I needed to move out. I was heartbroken and humiliated at the thought of going back to my parents as a 25-year-old with a failed marriage behind her. On our final night together, we slept in the same bed for the first time in months and Ronnie held me as I cried myself to sleep.
In 2008, I received the divorce decree in the post, a single sheet of paper that signalled the end of a significant part of my life.
We might have split but the ties weren’t completely severed. I wasn’t close with his family but Ronnie was friends with my brother and sister-in-law, and I would often see his face on my social media timeline. In 2013, he remarried and had a longed-for baby boy, and I was genuinely happy for him.
I dated but struggled to make a relationship last, and realised I was happier single.
Then I heard Ronnie’s kidneys were failing. I was shocked to learn he had been put on the transplant list in 2015.
We kept in touch now and then: he messaged when he found out my mum was terminally ill, I reciprocated when his dad passed away suddenly. We made vague plans to meet for a coffee one day, knowing it would probably never happen.
Ronnie never got his kidney transplant and died on January 2, 2016. I opened Twitter when I found out about his death (he was an avid user) and found it odd to witness the reactions.
When the story of his life was told, our chapter was missing. I’d been written out of history.
I asked for a day off work for the funeral but my manager told me I couldn’t take compassionate leave as Ronnie wasn’t a relation, so I took annual leave instead. Some friends seemed surprised I was going. Wasn’t it in poor taste for an ex-wife to publicly mourn?
When I posted about his death on social media, friends messaged that my grief was ‘over the top’. So I scoured the internet for people who would understand my feelings and found forums full of others whose pain had been questioned by society. People separated for decades but who still ached from the loss of a former partner.
I was comforted to know I wasn’t alone but saddened by the scale of private mourning taking place.
ONLY one person I met on the day of the funeral acknowledged my presence, a friend of Ronnie’s. No one would meet my gaze or return my polite waves. Ronnie’s widow and mother arrived just before the service began and I didn’t get the chance to give my condolences in person, much as I’d have liked to.
Instead I stood at the back of the chapel, tears streaming down my face, as friends paid tribute to the man I once loved so deeply. My body shook with sobs for all the words left unsaid and all the stupid arguments we’d had.
I slipped away after the service, too upset to engage with anyone or attend the wake.
I’m not ashamed of the pain I feel now he’s no longer here, and I don’t know if I’ll ever truly get over his death. There is no real resolution when you didn’t have the opportunity to say goodbye.