There are certain milestones I never wanted to hit. Like telling the neighbor I had met only once that my boyfriend died. He was the first stranger I told without crying. Check.
The first strangers I had to tell were the ones who cared the least. On the phone, I asked the credit card agent to cancel our joint account. But I was only an authorized user, not the primary account holder, so they needed Ian’s permission.
“No,” I said. “He can’t give his permission.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because he’s dead.”
Oh.
Flat apologies followed. I could feel her skin crawling through the phone when she realized I had begun to cry. Quickly, the call ended. She didn’t send a condolence card. She didn’t wish me well.
Same with the utility company. They kept asking for Ian’s signature to transfer the account to my name, and they wouldn’t take no for an answer. “No, he can’t come down to the office to sign,” I said. And then I finally told them why.
“Well, then you need to bring his death certificate into the office,” the person said.
Instead, I just paid the bill and let his name be on the account for two years.
I became accustomed to crying on hold while that stupid elevator music played through the speakerphone. I learned how to shut my tears off, like turning the handle of a faucet, when a person finally took my call. I never wanted to be good at that.
I grew up in a big house with three siblings, a dog and two parents who never set a limit on how many friends could come over to play basketball in the driveway. When my partner died, I lived alone for the first time. Another milestone I didn’t work for.
We had just moved to Page, Ariz., into a house that we shared for 12 lovely days before he became a missing person. He was training for a 100-mile ultra run, which I told him was entirely too many miles for me, so he ran alone to summit his favorite mountain, Hesperus, just northeast of Mancos, Colo., where we had been living.
I became a widow at 27, a milestone I didn’t train for.
Am I allowed to call myself a widow, or is that too much? Technically the word is reserved for surviving spouses, and he wasn’t my husband. But we lived together. In a house, in a van, in a tent, in a tepee and in the backcountry for three years as wilderness therapy guides. We did the things married people do. We split groceries, gas and car payments. I drove him to doctor appointments and held his hand when the news wasn’t what he wanted. Epilepsy is never wanted.
I was going to propose in the fall. I had a plan to send him on a solo bike-packing trip where I would have friends stationed along the way who would join him on his way to me and my proposal, which involved nudity. The hope was to have enough butt cheeks lined up to spell “Marry Me?”
But he vanished that summer. That terrible summer.
Our lives were intertwined with fierce loyalty, so I guess I’m wondering if what I have been through in losing him counts as enough? If I approached a table of widows, would there be a seat pulled out for me? Is a club for widows even real, or are we all just grieving alone?
I never planned to take his last name. We scoffed at the idea of spending any money on a ring. We were going to be married in the wilderness, without a permit on a rock overlooking the intersection of three major canyons we had backpacked many times before. We were going to kiss our love into eternity in front of whoever could hike that far to witness us, and then we planned to disappear into the canyon for days, weeks, maybe months as a honeymoon.
All our plans washed downriver.
In 2023 there was too much snow in the La Plata Mountains. Over 160 percent above average. For months and months the snow fell. Freezing temperatures kept the blanket thick, feet piled upon feet of snow until mid-June, when it all started to melt rapidly.
Ankle-deep creeks became waist-deep roaring rivers ripping at the banks, leaving roots exposed. It was a landmark year, one for Colorado’s history books, followed by a year of tear-streaked pages in my journal.
I spread ashes into the wind for the first time, a milestone I expected I would hit one day, but I never imagined it would be my lover turned to dust. A good mortician would never use the word “dust.” Or “ashes.” They would say “remains.” New terminology I never sought to master.
Experts know what we don’t. When I held the little round tube of his remains in my hands and shook it, I was surprised to hear a small thump where pieces of bone hit the wall of his container. We don’t disintegrate neatly into dust. More milestones.
I didn’t want to know death so intimately.
Ian and I had been hired as elementary schoolteachers in Arizona. I was planning to decorate my classroom with maps and posters with the Leave No Trace Principles. That’s why we moved to this small town in the red rock desert, to teach. But my grief was too immense, my tears too unpredictable, my mood too depressed to be a role model for children. While searching for Ian, I forfeited both of our jobs. We weren’t going to make it. They hired someone else.
I used to be someone who loved a raucous good time, who loved to laugh. But now I sat in my barely furnished house with my dog and for the first time in my life I forgot what my own laughter even sounded like. I hid from the world because I was no longer the life of the party. I wouldn’t be dancing on tables or inviting a live band into my living room for my birthday that year. I wouldn’t be reading poetry at open mic night.
The only thing that made sense to do was to sit at my desk and write a book about my boyfriend who went missing in the mountains. Whose body was found in a creek two months later when the four feet of gushing water turned back into inches.
Who would want to read a story like that?
How many readers would press the back arrow on their webpage when they realized this story was about a man who died way too young? I used to write funny stories. I used to make up bedtime stories for my sister about talking unicorns. My writing used to make people laugh, not cry.
If my application for the Widows Club is denied, can you please tell me where I might belong?
Perhaps society does not expect boyfriends and girlfriends to part through death. Perhaps we are all supposed to live until old age with our spouse and gracefully hold them until their end. Perhaps it is too cruel to imagine needing to collectively agree upon a dictionary word for partners who die without a ring.
Am I so unusual?
What I’ve been through — is it too much to talk about in public?
I used to cry in my car while pumping gas because it had been a fun errand Ian and I did together. Life is better when shared; chores are better when shared. My card got declined, and I had to go inside to pay. The attendant asked, “How’s your day?”
I couldn’t take it anymore; I couldn’t lie. “Downright dreadful,” I said.
She laughed.
The man behind me said, “Isn’t that the truth.” He paid for my coffee.
And it made me feel a little better.
It got me thinking — maybe we don’t need to shrink our grief so small that it can fit inside our pocket and hide. Maybe we need to talk about our grief out loud at the gas station and write about it in a book or in the newspaper. Maybe it helps some people to hear sad stories. Maybe it will help me to tell mine.
Beth Henshaw, a writer and small business owner in Page, Ariz., recently completed a book about the search for her boyfriend.
Modern Love can be reached at [email protected].
To find previous Modern Love essays, Tiny Love Stories and podcast episodes, visit our archive.
Want more Modern Love? Watch the TV series, sign up for the newsletter and listen to the podcast on iTunes or Spotify. We also have two books, “Modern Love: True Stories of Love, Loss, and Redemption” and “Tiny Love Stories: True Tales of Love in 100 Words or Less.”
The post He Vanished on a Run Before We Could Marry appeared first on New York Times.
