( 2558 words and takes 11m 37 to read.)

Dear Internet,

It is actually December 8, not January 11 (which is one year and one day since Brendan’s suicide). I have decided to start writing this early as today I was hit with a round of grief so hard that I feel paralyzed about the work I need to actually do.

After Brendan (the selfish bastard) died on January 10, 2025, I started a file tracking my thoughts of him as time has gone by. After a few months, the tracking slowed down but I do add things here and there, like

• I emailed your friends to see if they would donate to my AFSP walk that I’m doing in honor of you in September. No one donated. Your friends suck.

• I think you would really like Slow Horses and The Lowdown since you tend to like anti-heroes in your TV shows.

• I’ve been making a lot of jars of iced tea using Lipton tea bags. I can hear the mockery from beyond the grave.

• I heard otters live near one of the libraries I work at and I wanted to report that to you and then you could send me a picture of your Otter.

And on it goes.

I asked for, and received, a few things of Brendans’ as mementos but I needn’t to ask since he is every where in the gifts he’s given me in the years that I’ve kept. The glass tea strainer in my kitchen cupboard and the notebook with a Viking rune on it he got me when he saw the Oseberg ship in Norway. There are other things, small things, that I see every day from him. I wore his t-shirt once to feel closer to him and washed it. Now that it doesn’t smell like him anymore, it’s buried in my drawer. It’ll probably live there for the rest of my life because to see it would mean to know that at some point that shirt was him and now I have it. I shouldn’ t have it. I should have him.

As of today, December 8, 2025, the caffeine molecule tattoo I’ve been planning has not come to fruition yet but it is on my to do list when I have money. I keep tattoos of dead things on my body as a reminder of their place in my life. Wednesday’s rune on my left wrist and my dad’s name in Gallifreyan on the inside of my right arm. Mr. Lisa is already there as the symbol þ (thorn) below it as his father wanted to name him Thor. Since Thor became Thors-day which became Thursday, the pug is already taken care of. My mother’s name in block letters on the inside of my right wrist, a tattoo I sometimes regret. I covered up the original tattoo of her name which was on my right bicep. Now it’s part of my sleeve. I stare at her name and feel nothing.

I grieve for Brendan more than I grieve or will grieve for my parents; especially my mother.

(Aside: In October I chanced upon seeing my mother’s grave (finally) with the headstone now in place. Her grave, which she shares with two of her sisters, was unmarked for many years due to the pandemic and the near stoppage of headstone production. Their grave is a few places down from my grandparents and on that October day, I found myself beyond angry with my mother and I did not want to be there. I said nice things to my two aunts and then moved on to my grandparents. One who died when I was 5 months old and the other when I was 24. I spent considerable chatting to the aged headstone as if I was visiting them for afternoon tea. I got in my car and left and I’ll probably never go back. Fuck my mother.)

So, back to Brendan.

Brendan was a snowboarder and a hockey player. I have thought, even in my clumsiness, to learn how to snowboard to feel closer. That’s a wild idea if I ever heard one since even putting on skis worries me and I haven’t worn skis in over 35 years.

I am, at some point, taking a trip to New Zealand, a place Brendan and I planned on going to, I think for his 50th in 2029. He was going to snowboard and I was going to sit in the ski haus and read trashy novels drinking hot chocolate so basically, moving my Michigan activities half a world away. We would go to Hobbiton, of course, and explore NZ. Mr. Lisa was fine with all of this since in his head, the very idea of traveling so far in a cramped space gave him hives. (And we’re to travel to Hungry at the end of March for a river cruise down the Danube so that’ll be fun with him for 14 hours travel.)

Brendan and I, we had a lot of plans. Things to see, eat, and do. He would get mock pretentiousness when I did not do, eat, or see something he felt was important but at the same time, he wanted to share it with me. To see the world through his eyes.

I’ve always talked about Brendan as being husband #2 because everyone knew that if Justin kicked the bucket, I’d marry Brendan in a heartbeat. (And to be fair, Justin is convinced he won’t leave another 10 years due to his genetics and his own health issues while I remain, at 7 years older than him, impenetrable).

Brendan and I have had half-serious talks about this conviction of mine because he carried as many mental illnesses as I do and the idea of two bipolar people together is enough to blow up the world even if one of us (me) was relatively stable. There was that worry of co-dependency and destruction to in my head, this was all worth it.

Mr. Lisa will tell you, without hesitation, he had no worries about Brendan and I having an affair and was supportive of me visiting Brendan this past March. He met Brendan and he knew neither of us would cross the line. And even now, he acknowledges Brendan was probably one of, if not the, closest friend that I have. Had. Past tense. He’s dead, that selfish bastard.

The other thing that is spinning in my head is my reaction to when Mr. Lisa were to die before me. I have walked the dog before and gotten so worked up about Mr. Lisa not being my husband that I was inconsolable when I got home. We were talking just the other day about something and I started tearing up at the thought of being away from him.

If Brendan being gone is sending me on this spiral, I will implode if Mr. Lisa goes before me.

At the time of this writing, I’m reading For Whom the Belle Tolls by Jaysea Lynn. In part of the plot, the protagonist dies and when she gets to the afterlife, she learns that each faith and their version of the ever after exist within one giant world. You can be judged by the faith you follow or as the universe as a whole. If you pass muster, you get your own paradise set-up like a village with all of your favorite things where other paradises exist in that village. Hell exists but it is not fire and brimstone (unless you’re on the 9th level per Dante where Hitler hangs out), but it’s a world where it is not about eternal torment but about justice being metered out. Demons exist, but they are kind, and sometimes helpful. Lucifer likes to play trivia night and drink fruity cocktails.

When I was 8, I asked one of my aunts if God existed and 45 years later, I’m still as confused as ever. But reading this fictional version of the afterlife made sense. I felt comfort that when I die, and I let the universe judge me, that I’ll end up somewhere where I can be with all of my people (if they want to be with me, that is).

December 29

I was prepping for the next issue of AMUN after the December 28th issue to include an update on Heated Rivalry (I binged the series in one night. The cottage episode, omg) but then I remembered I had started this issue talking about my grief about Brendan and putting in something cheery seemed wrong somehow.

2025 was such a shite year in many respects. Brendan killed himself, Mr. Lisa was laid off (he did find another job, thank god), my brother had major foot surgery, and then a few weeks ago a good friend’s wife reached out to several of us to tell us that Jon had passed away unexpectedly. Jon just had filled out my form to get a holiday card from us and he was frequently in contact with Mr. Lisa about finding Mr. Lisa a job in his field so that felt super surreal. Per Jon’s wife, Sarah, he died of bronchial pneumonia coupled with his sleep apnea, he had a heart attack and died when he was in the hospital. Jon just turned 46 and I’ve known him for more than 1/2 his life. Per Sarah, Jon’s death was preventable if only he had taken himself into the hospital sooner and used his cpap machine more frequently. Sarah is raging, of course, because Jon was an idiot. But now he’s dead, so there is that.

I’m not super close with Sarah but we are good friends and I reached out to her on WhatsApp the other day where we talked a few hours. I knew it was important to check in with her and see how she and the kids are doing. Their families are in shock, of course, but it is important to me that Sarah feels supported. I told her losing Brendan wasn’t the same as her losing her husband, but people reached out to me to support me and I was grateful and wanted to pass it on.

Sarah, Jon, and their kids, originally from Indianapolis, have been living abroad for over a decade. They are having an Irish wake in the UK (where they live) and a celebration of life in Indy in the spring. I want to be physically with Sarah but I’ll have to be satisfied in seeing her and the kids in Indy.

I have re-read what I wrote on December 8 and I’ve made only one small grammar fix; the rest I’m keeping. What did strike me is I sound like I’m in love with Brendan and I’m not worried about my marriage to say that I was a tiny bit in love with him. It’s just that we spent over a decade with me hating him (tl;dr he was roommates with ex-fiance #2 and Brendan and I would snipe at each other online and in person. It wasn’t until he reached out in 2012, and Brendan divulged a few things about Paul I should have known then, that my anger towards Brendan softened and eventually went into best friend love) and it just feels, now, so much time was wasted. Even though I was a tiny bit in love with him, us as a romantic couple, as I said earlier, would have been a huge mistake. That relationship would have imploded as soon as it started and I would have lost someone that was an integral part of my life.

Mr. Lisa and I plan on going to the city NYE to see Dead Snow, a Norwegian horror film where a group of med students come across Nazi zombies. The film is so much fun and watching it on NYE sounds fantastic.

To be honest, I’m not sure if Brendan likes that kind of stuff (my answer right now is probably not) but he would have gone with us to see it because it meant he would spend time with me and with that, my heart breaks more.

I think about the last time I physically saw Brendan which was in December 2023 when myself, Mr. Lisa, Brendan, my niece and her husband, Whisky Karen, and her husband met up in Vegas. I gave Brendan a huge so deep and long when I saw him at the hotel that it was nearly obscene.

I think about how we would walk together and bump shoulders or played as teammates during rounds of darts. When he got overwhelmed with people-ing, I would text him all night about what we were getting up to and he’d send me updates about what he was doing and pictures of Otter, his corgi.

I’m a selfie maniac but I don’t have picture of him with me alone; in fact, the only pic I have of him is when the group of us took a selfie at the fancy restaurant we went to. The seven of us are standing in front of a Christmas tree. Brendan is in the back and his is off center a bit and in the picture he is somewhat smiling but his face is not that clear. It tears me up this is the only picture I have of us together.

January 11

It is officially 366 days since Brendan committed suicide. I posted his picture and a note across my socials yesterday as the anniversary reminders. Texts and DMs started coming with people being kind and I could not handle it. I’ve responded to one person, soon to be two. I wear this grief like a coat and I do not want to take it off.

Yesterday I taught two workshops back to back. Since I give 1000% to my students, when I’m done teaching a workshop, I am mentally exhausted and checked out. After back to back ones, all I wanted to do was wake and bake to honor Brendan, and that is what we did.

We were set to get about 6” of snow yesterday (we got closer to 8”) so after the dog was taken care of and I was done with classes, Mr. Lisa and I drove to our village to pick up stoner snacks before it started snowing. We came home, I popped some gummies, and started reading.

The afternoon ticked on and I finished my contemporary romance and moved onto non-fiction (Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley). Then I got antsy and started reading Reddit. Then it was back to books. Mr. Lisa made dinner (pork chops and risotto), we ate, and then we both popped more gummies. The night ended with the finishing of S1E2 of The Pitt (which I think Brendan would have liked).

Then it was bed.

None of Brendan’s other friends reached out to me nor I to them. My nose is still out of joint that they didn’t donate to my walk last summer. I also haven’t spoken to his family nor have they reached out to tell his friends where he’s buried. Honestly, I think I’m OK with not knowing. I’d probably create a Jim Morrison pilgrimage every year.

And this is where I’m at.

in grief,

lisa x