I found out about my ex’s suicide about twenty years after the fact. How he did it was typical but I didn’t find out those facts for another twenty years.

He was a drug addict. I imagined for twenty years he had died from AIDS. Instead, he downed a handful of pills, walked his dog to the levee and fell asleep. His dog went home without him.

I was lucky he didn’t have more of a hold over me than he did. I moved away from New Orleans and all of our friends. They blamed me for his death. When he killed himself I hadn’t spoken to him for eight years. It wasn’t my fault.