If I could tell you what happened after I died, I don’t think you’d believe me.
I didn’t know what came after death. I don’t think any of us really do. But if I could go back to the beginning, I’d start with the truth. January 22, 2020. The day I died.
I didn’t intend to die. I wasn’t trying to die. I wasn’t saying goodbye. I wasn’t making some final decision to leave this world.
I thought I was going to wake up the next day. I thought there would be another day. Another argument. Another apology. Another chance. Because that’s what we always had. Another chance.
I’d been awake for four or five days. Drugs were keeping me going. My mind was exhausted, scrambled, and nowhere near where it should have been.
But before everything went wrong, I had asked her to marry me. I told her I wanted to marry her. I told her I wanted to get clean. I told her I wanted to do better. I told her I wanted to be a father to my kids. I told her I wanted to be her husband. I told her I wanted to be good to her. I told her I wanted to change my ways. I said all the things she had spent two and a half years wishing I would say. And I meant them when I said them.
At least, I think I did.
I wanted to believe I could become that man. I wanted to believe I could finally give her the life I’d promised her. And she wanted to believe me. That’s why she went into the bathroom.
She wasn’t just hiding in there. She wasn’t simply taking a break. She was trying to decide whether to believe me. Whether this time was different. Whether she could trust the promises I’d just made. Whether she could marry me. Whether she could stay. Or whether she needed to walk away from me for good.
And while she was sitting in that bathroom thinking about all of that, she kept thinking about her son. He had told her that as long as she was involved with me and living this life, he couldn’t have anything to do with her. And that was what she was thinking about. Me. My promises. Her son. Her daughter. Her life. Everything she’d already sacrificed. Everything she was afraid she would lose. She stayed in that bathroom for a long time because she was conflicted. Because I’d finally said everything she’d wanted me to say for two and a half years.
I had asked her to marry me. I’d told her I wanted to get clean. I wanted to change. I wanted to be a father. I wanted to be her husband. I wanted to be good to her. And then she had to decide whether those words were worth believing.
Eventually, she came out. And I was asleep. She woke me up. And she was angry. She wanted her car. I had come home without it. She wanted to know where it was. She was yelling at me.
“Where’s my car? Bring my fucking car home. I want my car back now.”
And then she told me she wasn’t going to marry me. She didn’t want to be with me. She wanted me out of her house. She never wanted to see me again. Everything I’d just promised her was being thrown back at me. And I panicked. I didn’t know how to handle losing her. I didn’t know how to handle hearing that she was done. I didn’t know how to handle the possibility that this time she really meant it.
So I grabbed the gun. TJ was sleeping in the living room. He and his girlfriend had come over the night before and had fed her because she hadn’t eaten for four days. And in my desperate, drugged, exhausted state, I threatened to kill him. She told me to put the gun down. She was scared. She told me I was going to shoot one of us. And I remember thinking:
“How the fuck am I going to do that?” The gun was empty. I thought it was empty. I pulled the slide back and showed her. She could see the barrel. There was nothing there. Empty. And that’s where everything went wrong.
Because somewhere in all that confusion, I put a round in the chamber. And I didn’t know I’d done it. I didn’t remember doing it. I believed the gun was empty. She believed it too. So she relaxed. She leaned back on the bed. And she kept arguing with me. Kept telling me she was done. Kept telling me to leave. And I was still being dramatic. Still trying to make her understand how serious I was. Still acting like I was in control.
I wasn’t.
I’d been awake for four or five days. Drugs were keeping me going. My judgment was fucked. My memory was fucked. But I still thought I knew what I was doing.
I put the gun to my head. Not because I wanted to die. Not because I had decided my life was over. Not because I was saying goodbye. Because I thought it was empty. I thought I was making a dramatic gesture. And I pulled the trigger. And everything ended. Just like that.
The most horrifying irony is that on the very first day I met her, I had gotten into a fight with her over Keith. Her husband. He had died by suicide. And I called him a pussy. I said suicide was a pussy way out. We actually argued about it. The first day we met. That’s how strongly I believed suicide was something I would never do. And years later, I died because I put what I believed was an empty gun to my head.
Not intentionally. Not because I wanted to die. Because I made a catastrophic mistake. A stupid, irreversible mistake. And now I can imagine all the questions she must have carried.
Did he mean to do it? Was he trying to kill himself? Could I have stopped him? What did I miss? Why didn’t I know?
But if I could answer those questions now, I would tell her: No. I wasn’t trying to die. I didn’t know there was a live round. I thought the gun was empty. I thought I was being dramatic. I thought I was going to wake up the next day. I thought I had more time. And I didn’t.
It doesn’t excuse the drugs. It doesn’t excuse threatening TJ. It doesn’t excuse the fear I caused. It doesn’t excuse the things I did to her.
I was an addict. I made terrible choices. I hurt people. I could be a terrible person in terrible moments. But I loved life. And I didn’t want mine to end. She knew that. She knew me. And she knew that I would never have intentionally chosen death. But knowing that doesn’t make the aftermath any easier. Because she was still there.
She had to live. She had to wake up the next morning. She had to remember that the man who had just asked her to marry him was suddenly gone. The man who had promised to get clean. To change. To become a father. To become her husband. To finally be good to her. All of those promises were suddenly frozen in time. And twenty-three days later… it was Valentine’s Day. February 14, 2020.
Twenty-three days. That’s all.
She was sitting in her apartment, surrounded by boxes. She had been forced out because of the violence. Her entire life was in chaos. She had lost me. She was losing her home. She was thinking about her son. She was thinking about her daughter. She was thinking about the promises I’d made. She was thinking about everything that had happened.
She sat down on the couch to take a break. And there was a little heart sticker on her. A heart. On Valentine’s Day. Twenty-three days after I died. If I could do anything in that moment, I think I would have wanted to tell her something. I would have wanted to tell her that she didn’t have to spend the rest of her life wondering whether she could have saved me. She couldn’t.
She couldn’t save me from the drugs. She couldn’t make me sleep. She couldn’t control my choices. She couldn’t know the gun wasn’t actually empty. And she couldn’t know that the thing I believed was an empty gun would be the thing that killed me.
My death was not a failure of her love.
She had loved me for two and a half years. She had given me chance after chance. And even when she was sitting in that bathroom trying to decide whether to leave me, part of her was still wondering whether this time I really meant what I said. Because she wanted to believe me. She wanted that life. She wanted the husband. She wanted the family. She wanted the man I’d promised to become. And then, twenty-three days later, she was standing in the aftermath of a life she never imagined. And then she took a photograph.
She wasn’t looking for me. She wasn’t trying to find a ghost. She wasn’t expecting anything. She just took a picture.
Later, she looked at it. At first, she didn’t really see anything. Then she looked again. There was a face in the darkness. And when she changed it to black and white… she saw me. Or what looked like me. The shape of my face. The eyes. The nose. The familiar arrangement of features. And then she pulled up a real photograph of me. And compared them. And suddenly this wasn’t just some random face in a picture to her. It was me.
And what made it even stranger, is where the face appeared. Right over the place where I had died. Twenty-three days earlier. Twenty-three fucking days.
Maybe it was shadows. Maybe it was light. Maybe it was pareidolia. Maybe her brain recognized a face it wasn’t ready to stop looking for. Maybe it was coincidence. I can’t tell her which one it was. But if I could choose what that moment meant to her, I wouldn’t want it to frighten her. I wouldn’t want it to pull her backward. I wouldn’t want her to spend the rest of her life looking for signs from me.
I’d want her to hear something simple. Something gentle. Something I couldn’t tell her while I was alive.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry for the things I did. The abuse. I’m sorry for the fear. I’m sorry for the promises I made and the times I broke them. I’m sorry she spent two and a half years waiting for me to become the man I kept promising I’d become. I’m sorry that the last promise I made was that I wanted to marry her, get clean, be a father, be her husband and be good to her… and then minutes later, I was gone.
But most of all, I’m sorry she ever thought she could have prevented it. Because she couldn’t. She couldn’t save me. And my death was not proof that she didn’t love me enough. It wasn’t her failure. It wasn’t because she didn’t say the right thing. It wasn’t because she went into that bathroom. It wasn’t because she came back out. It wasn’t because she was angry. It wasn’t because she broke up with me. It wasn’t because she didn’t believe my promises.
It was a terrible accident. And she was left to survive it.
So if I could tell her anything now, it would be:
Go live. Live the life I didn’t get to finish. Love. Laugh. Make your flowers. Tell your stories. Be loud. Be soft. Be your “stubborn ass self”. Be ridiculous. Build something beautiful.
Love your children. Love the people who stayed. And when you remember me, remember all of me. Don’t make me into a saint. I wasn’t one. Don’t erase the terrible things I did. They happened. Don’t pretend the drugs didn’t destroy pieces of my life. They did. But don’t let the worst parts of me erase the fact that I loved life. That I wanted another chance. That, at least in that moment, I wanted to get clean. I wanted to change. I wanted to be a father. I wanted to be your husband.I wanted to be good to you. And I didn’t want to die. I just didn’t know that the gun wasn’t empty.
So maybe that photograph was nothing. Maybe it was everything. Maybe it was simply light and shadow on Valentine’s Day, twenty-three days after my death. Maybe her brain found someone it wasn’t ready to stop looking for.
Or maybe… just maybe… I got one little moment to say goodbye.
And if that’s what it was, I wouldn’t waste it. I’d tell her everything I never got to say.
I’m sorry. I love you. I never meant to leave this way. It wasn’t your fault. My death was not a failure of your love. You were never supposed to save me. And you don’t have to carry me like a punishment. Then I’d tell her the one thing I hope she finally believes:
Go live. Because I didn’t get to. You did. And if you see my face again… don’t be afraid. Don’t follow me. Don’t stop. Just look at me. Smile. And say:
“Hi, Jason.”
Because maybe… just maybe… that’s all I was trying to say.
Hi.
❤️
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