That Easter was particularly hot. As I lay in the inflatable kiddie pool in my dried-up yard in California’s Inland Empire, I squinted my eyes and watched the balmy sun flicker between the palm trees. The garden hose sounded like a fountain as it flowed into the pool.
I dreamed of the life stretched out ahead of me. I could see it all: the spacious adobe house painted into a sage and cactus-dotted desert with terracotta dirt; the kids trudging to the kitchen, grumpy for breakfast, the aroma of espresso from a new moka pot; the tenured position I’d pounded the pavement for. Those dreams were dead by lunch.
I ended the day face down, head buried in my dusty grey carpet, shards of the person I’d been that morning. I think of that day now – of that moment – as the great non sequitur of my life; when the world – and myself – as I knew them were irreversibly altered. That was the day I learned that my husband Stanton, whom I’d left just four months earlier, had died by suicide.
This is the story of how his death shaped my life. While this story isn’t about Stanton, it can’t be told without him. I used to joke that we’d met on Craigslist.
Before moving from England to the United States in the fall of 2013 to start my PhD, I landed on the internet to find housing. I discovered an advertisement posted by a sociology graduate student living in a house with all my desired specifications. We first spoke on the phone – chatting for more than an hour as we exchanged.
