Obituary

“Pale death knocks with impartial foot at poor men’s hovels and king’s palaces.” (Horace)

How strange it is to read the obituary of the man who for nine years beat my mother on a regular basis. Who pointed guns at her, threatened the lives of her parents and siblings, who controlled her time, her money, her life. I have wanted to see this obituary for years, and now that it is here, I don’t know what to feel, how to think. How strange it is to read that her ex-husband, at 63, is dead, is gone, “after a long illness.” It’s relief, a little bit of malice, and plenty of guilt for feeling that way. And sadness, that his life was the way it was, that whatever made him that way probably didn’t ever fully leave him. I suppose now that he is dead I am allowing myself to pity him, to feel something closer to pity.

The obituary says he has a child–a daughter, a daughter–and a grandson, “who was the light of his life.” I have mixed emotions.