Anyone who has read a fair number of my posts here will know that my sister’s partner—former partner, I need to get used to that nomenclature—has been a major character in my journey. A friend, a confidant, a brother. For the first months he seemed like the only person who came close to understanding my version of this grief, and I was thankful for his presence in my life.
I’ve avoided putting words on the page, so to speak, about many of the things that have happened about him specifically, out of respect for his journey and our bond. But it’s become clear he has not had this same mindset when it comes to me or the family, so in the name of being honest with my readers, I want to lay out the trajectory of our relationship since my sister’s untimely death to maintain the candor I’ve committed myself to having here.
My sister died on May 20, approximately six and a half years into her relationship with her partner, who I will call Andy for the sake of using a name. (His name is not actually Andy.) During the time it took me to travel from abroad to home, he and I were in constant contact. We were each other’s rock in the first weeks, too. I stayed in the house with him, we held each other and cried on the couch while letting TV show after TV show run in the background so it wouldn’t be quiet. We talked about life, death, and the futility of it all. We started sleeping on the couch—each of us taking up half of the U-shaped furniture—because retiring to separate rooms felt oppressive. We forged a hybrid friendship and deeper familial bond that I was grateful for, even more so when I had to return to my job abroad.
We were in incessant contact all through June and July and early August. I mean texting throughout the day, sending voice notes, talking on the phone for hours, even though sometimes that talking was just existing together on an open line. I put other people in my life slightly aside to make sure I was available to him. He did the same for me. I brought him into a virtual social group of mine, wanting him to stay connected to me and to have more bonds with people he would like. During a late-night phone call in early August, he dropped the emotional bomb on me that he “felt it was time he started looking for companionship.” It broke my heart. My sister’s celebration of life hadn’t even happened yet, and he was talking about finding someone else to hold, to confide in, to build life with. He couldn’t deal with the hole in his heart for even three months?
I took it poorly, but did not let Andy know. I talked to a lot of friends and found that people are very, very divided on the issue of when it is okay for someone who has lost a partner to move on. In that way, I’ve matured, I think, as I realize now there are two major camps—the people who cannot fathom having to be so alone at a time of intense grief, and the people that feel plunging into that painful aloneness is their duty. These two types of people do not seem to understand the other. I will let each of you decide for yourselves what is right. I don’t have moral authority, and I am biased anyway.
I went home again in August, when we dealt with many of my sister’s effects and held her celebration of life. During that time, Andy confided in my best friend that he was deeply attracted to me and wanted to be with me. She asked a lot of questions and advised him that if he really meant it, it should take time. She told me everything, and I had several conversations with her as well as my counselor about this and why I did not want to be with him—not like that. But I opted not to deal with this directly and to just allow him to decide what he would or wouldn’t tell me. After all, he had talked to my friend in confidence looking for advice. He hadn’t confessed anything to me, so there was no reason to change my actions, either.
In September, Andy and I traveled together to attend a concert he and she were supposed to go to. I stood where she should have stood and enjoyed music—something that brought the pair of them together. In the middle, the lead singer of the band talked about how it’s okay to enjoy yourself even when you’re going through hard times or aren’t okay, and Andy and I broke down in the midst of the crowd. I am glad I went. It also hurt. I met friends she had in another city and I did things she would have liked to do. I also was on edge the whole time wondering if Andy was going to do something, try something. He did not.
I went back to our home state one more time in October to decorate for her favorite holiday, Halloween. I sought advice from friends about how to handle a possible confession and what I knew. He still had not confessed anything to me, though he had throughout the months said things about my appearance, my suitability to date, my intrinsic value, my awesomeness… never quite attributed to him, but in aggregate too much to ignore. I didn’t know what to expect. He was weird around me, bringing up topics about dating and what his future held, but nothing happened still.
And then, shortly after I left, Andy dumped something new on me: he had someone he was dating. They had started seeing each other in July. This hit hard, because I realized how long he had been outright lying. The “friends” in a town 45 minutes from his house were not “friends” but rather a singular “friend.” He hadn’t waited even two months to seek someone out. And he had decided not to tell me, when we said we were telling each other everything. And he had told my best friend in August, six weeks after he started dating this new person, that he wanted to be with me. That I made him feel like no one else had, that talking to me was incredible, on and on.
I took it in stride, warned him not to fall victim to someone who wants to manipulate or “fix” him in his vulnerable state, and wished him well. What was I supposed to do? He’s a young man with a life ahead of him, and he wasn’t going to hide away for the next six decades single and alone. My sister wouldn’t have wanted that for him, anyway.
Then, a couple weeks ago, he called me to ask for advice about his relationship, because it wasn’t going well. It specifically wasn’t going well because his girlfriend claimed that I, Sarah, was masterminding their whole relationship, dictating the shots. Why? Because she wanted to be “Facebook official” and he complied, but did not put the date they met. He said it was out of respect for me, for the family. Except I later got him to admit that he was ashamed of what everyone would think, ashamed of how it looked. I was a convenient scapegoat, and I am now the nemesis in her eyes.
They were fighting about that and then about many other petty things. Neither of them, in my unprofessional opinion, is ready to take on the project that the other represents, but it is not my relationship or my choice. (Because, contrary to the narrative, I’m not a puppet master.) In this most recent conversation, I told him I was hurt by his lies and that he had damaged my trust in him. I said I recognized he needed to live his life, and that I hoped he would find a way to do so with less shadiness going forward. I told him I didn’t know what the long-term impact of this was on our relationship. He cried. He apologized, mostly. He told me he had been holding a lot of guilt. It’s hard to want to comfort someone when you also want them to feel exactly how they feel.
Andy then asked to have back some of what we had before—he wanted a weekly standing time to call and catch up, to talk, to maintain our bond. Except that bond is not the same for me, and I found… I didn’t want to commit to it at that level anymore. I don’t know what I want from him at all. Thinking about him, I am filled with the anxiety of the pain I know my parents will feel—they still don’t know any of this, though based on comments my mom made yesterday, I think she suspects something.
Can this fractured family unit make it to May 2024 when we have my sister’s second celebration and scatter the other part of her ashes? Maybe.
Will Andy choose to stay with this woman because she was the first one to make him feel a little better in the wake of this grief? I couldn’t begin to guess.
Is there a way for me to trust Andy again? Time will tell.
And sitting in this type of uncertainty is, I have come to realize, one of the biggest challenges for me. The uncertainty coupled with the lack of a moral “right” answer is nearly unbearable.
Such is life, I’ve come to find out.
Unmoored Sister 