John

Once Reviled, Now, Remembered.

My ex-brother-in-law John was a shit. At a 60th birthday party/family reunion for his wife, my sister-in-law Amy, he met her forty-year-old cousin and that was that. They were in love. A few weeks later, he walked down the stairs, suitcase in hand, and told Amy he’d be taking the car and $200. Their marriage was over.

That was more than twenty years ago, more than twenty years during which I’ve steadfastly disparaged John and supported Amy in her hatred of him, cheering her on as she cut his head out of every family photo. I saw him once, at their son’s wedding, and stood by Amy’s side, refusing to acknowledge him.

Then, yesterday. I was going through a box in the attic and came across a poem John wrote for me before he blew things up.

You are our Nantucket:

offshore, a

fairy’s ride

away, bright

blue aye

flower when

all’s failed

or gone

gray.

Suddenly, I remembered that John: a sensitive, deeply creative spirit who railed against the monotony of everyday life. He’d been a philosophy professor, and after an ethics violation that has never been explained to me, held a series of jobs low in both pressure and pay. He had struggled with addiction and had gotten sober. He ran daily, despite the observable fact his knees were shot. He took his nieces and nephews, my children, to art museums and jazz concerts. He was attentive and genuinely kind to my aging parents.

It is so easy to paint transgressors with the broad brush of bad. Yet, who they really are is nuanced, even contradictory. How could a man who caused so much pain be anything other than vile? Simple. Because he is human.

Years ago John saw me as the subject of his poem. Finding it now feels like a gift I don’t deserve, after so many years of stony silence and assumed rage. But I’ll take it.

He did devastate a person I love, but he also nourished others I adore.

My feelings about John had long been reduced to a bitter solo note, but like anything categorical when it comes to being a person in the world, we are never just black or white, but shades of gray, and occasionally, as I was recently reminded, bright blue.