Passing in the Night

My ex-husband was found dead this week and even though I hadn't seen him in probably 15 years, he's the only ex-husband I had so I thought it was worth commemorating. I'm just not sure how to do it.

A Yahoo! search of his name, Walter Choate Sweet, turns up nothing. "Walter Sweet" nets several listings -- a professor emeritus in geology at the University of Iowa, a painter born in 1889, a philanthropist in New York (sorry, took me awhile to stop laughing at the prospect of that being him) and an auto mechanic who went on to own that dealership who just died this week also -- none of them my ex. "Walt Sweet" on both Yahoo! and Google turns up a musician and designer of a keyless Irish flute, hardly my ex. He (my ex) wasn't particularly musical himself -- in fact his sense of rhythm was so off that it drove me crazy to dance with him -- though he did buy me a stunning Yamaha upright grand piano, which I still have. I keep it at my stable mom's house because if it had gone with me on all of my moves since I trekked east nearly 19 years ago, it would've been jostled and moved some nine times. Reminds me, I need to get it tuned again.

Well, at least the Walter Choate Sweet that I knew and loved at one time will be on the Web, even if it's just here. Actually, I need to do the same thing for my wonderful father, John Walter Schriener, whom everyone knew as Jack Schriener, who died in 1994. He wanted to be cremated, which we did, and although as a World War II veteran, he was eligible to be buried in one of the military cemeteries, there is no place to go to see his grave, no marker or tombstone to even let people know he existed. So I will do that at some point, just not here and now. This is for Walt, or at least about Walt.

Walt and I were married for just two years. It was incredibly tumultuous. We didn't even know if we'd make it to our first anniversary, let alone our second. In fact, we were not together on our second and our divorce was final later that month. He swore when we got divorced that he'd never be friends with me, but, fortunately, that didn't hold. He came to visit me after I moved to New York -- well, he was there anyway for something else and stopped by to visit me, let me buy him a pizza and put him up for the night (platonically, not that it matters). At that time, we looked at each other and both marveled that we couldn't imagine that we'd ever even really known each other, let alone been married. Time heals all, I guess -- by that time, we'd been divorced for eight or so years.

But let me talk about the good stuff. He was smart and always interesting -- one of the reasons I married him was that I knew I'd never be bored. He was affectionate and loving and took great care of me throughout our marriage. He was creative -- I still have (somewhere) a huge envelope of all of the inventive cards he gave me, most of which were originals. He had a sense of humor and wasn't afraid to look silly. I have a great picture of him in a lawn chair with his "horny hat" on, a maroon baseball cap with silver horns. He had great respect for skill and accomplishment, even if it was at his expense. He was a judo player, and in one tournament, his opponent felled him with a stunning move that prompted Walt to applaud him along with everyone else. I always admired that about him.

The saga of our divorce could fill a book. It was traumatic, as all divorces are, and about that I'll only relate one little story. He was the consummate list maker. We took our property division list to the one lawyer that we were going to share (bad idea! don't do it) and as the lawyer perused the list, he said, "I've never seen a swingtop wastebasket on a property settlement list." I said, "Wait til you get to the lightbulbs." True story.

The best thing about our marriage, it turns out, was his daughter, Carey, who was 12 when I met her and 15 when we got divorced. Thank God, she and I have kept in touch all these years and even though we don't talk or see each other all that often (we are on opposite coasts), every time we do, it's like we are finishing a sentence we started the day before. She used to tell people about us and the fact that I used to be married to her dad, "We dumped him and kept each other." It wasn't true, of course, but it made me feel great. I'll have to do a blog item on her too. She's been the true gift from my marriage to Walt.

The second best thing, believe it or not, is his first ex-wife, Sheila (pronounced "SHY-la"). Of course, we didn't start out being friendly, even though I came along awhile after they had separated. But before Walt and I got divorced, she and I had grown to be quite friendly, and then we got friendlier after the split (yes, somewhat hilariously at his expense). One of the highlights of a couple of my trips to Phoenix a year or two ago was having lunch and dinner with Carey and Sheila -- and, at one of them, also Carey's half-sister Elizabeth. So those are great gifts from a marriage gone bad.

See, I'm having trouble keeping to the subject of Walt. Well, for one thing, the "bad" stories about him are far more entertaining, incredible, amazing and, for some of them, far sadder than the good ones, but I really don't want to do that in a commemoration (I wouldn't call it a tribute, as such). He seemed to isolate himself and have a fair amount of fear or even paranoia, I'm told, in the last few years. So I'll just say that I hope he finds the peace in his passing that he didn't seem to be able to find on earth. And, for a variety of reasons, I'm grateful he was in my life.