Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Other Four-Letter Words

by Michael Ausiello

because Scooch was in many ways the four-legged embodiment of our relationship—our mascot, if you will—when Kit showered him with love, it felt as if he were simultaneously wrapping his arms around us.

It felt good to fight for something without worrying about my emotions getting the best of me or how I’d be perceived or what the possible blowback would be. It felt good to love someone so much that literally nothing was as important as making sure that person was safe and comfortable and protected.

I couldn’t help but feel today’s bus was a metaphor for that. Making me strain to make you out behind its smoked glass. Making me rely on my idea of you. Causing me to think what I would do if you weren’t there. Weren’t here. Weren’t in my life. Staring through my reflection I looked at myself and wondered who you saw. Then I asked myself where are you going?

The question of what my relationship with Kit’s parents would look like without Kit had quietly been weighing on me for months. The fact was, I just didn’t know the answer, mostly because I just didn’t know how all of our lives and priorities would shift when the person tying us all together was no longer here to tie us together. Would Marilyn and Bob want anything to do with me, or would my presence be an aching reminder that their only child had been snatched away from them?

Thirty minutes later, Kit was sitting on the couch next to the giant ornament box, pointing out the “huge area in the middle of the tree” where I had failed to string any lights. Some things never changed.

I found myself handling his body as cautiously and carefully as if he were still alive, my natural instinct ignoring the fact that he was dead and therefore couldn’t feel any pain. I no longer had to worry that Kit was suffering—that was going to take some getting used to, so much so that at one point I actually uttered the words “I’m sorry, babe” when I accidentally elbowed him in the chin while pulling the shirt over his head.