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

by Michael Ausiello

“And don’t worry about heaven,” he added. “I’ll get it ready for us.” As I imagined my fastidious husband teaching God’s grounds keepers how to paint the Pearly Gates without leaving unsightly brushstrokes, I took another sip of wine and asked Kit if there was anything else he’d like to tell me. “Please don’t fix your teeth,” he said, referring to the crooked, crowded bottom row that had long wreaked havoc with my smile, not to mention my confidence, but which Kit had long cherished. “I love your imperfect smile.” I demurred. “Sorry, no can do. My first stop after your funeral is the orthodontist.” “Please,” Kit begged playfully. “It’s not up for discussion,”

We’d then sneak off to the bedroom—without, ideally, running into or engaging roommate Kirby, who, despite the occasional drive-by sighting, remained something of a Maris Crane figure to me—to devour our meals and share highlights from our respective workdays,

We’d already adopted pet names for each other. Kit was my “Poops” and I his “Doops,” both of which were derivations of “Poopiedoops,” a term whose origin has eluded etymologists to this day. Kit also answered to “Peepiedoops,” a nod to the delayed trickle of urine that would lightly moisten his tighty-whities after he was done peeing. This was something he was initially embarrassed about, but after seeing how giddy it made me to watch this strapping twenty-nine-year-old man run around with dew spots on his undies, he would excitedly point to his drizzly drawers and marvel with childlike wonder, “Peepiedoops!” (These names would all eventually be jettisoned and replaced with the far simpler Bodge.)

For all of our differences, we were incredibly compatible—physically speaking, as well. The size and shape of our bodies created the coziest, most soul-enriching canoodle. As the smaller of the two, I backed myself up into Kit’s embrace (while mimicking the dump truck–style warning beep), and he would promptly wrap himself around me like a human Venus flytrap. We were like two puzzle pieces connecting, so much so that Kit took to whispering “click” in my ear once we were fully attached. Whenever we attempted to mix it up by doing a reverse canoodle—little ol’ me awkwardly spooning big ol’ Kit—it would generally last about thirty seconds before Kit declared, “Let’s do this right,” at which point we would revert to our nature-intended positions.

Basically, I knew that if I was going to get this job done right, I would need an unbreakable erection that lasted up to four hours. So, after years of hearing about this magic little blue pill, I ventured to my primary care physician and asked him for “some of that Viagra, please.” Less than twenty-four hours later, I—ignoring my MD’s recommendation to “start with a half a dose, just to see how your body reacts”—popped an entire pill and showed up on Kit’s doorstep with what felt like early-onset bubonic plague. I was nauseous, dizzy, and feverish. But I was also sporting a rock-hard pocket rocket, and no amount of pre-performance anxiety was diminishing its firmness. The stage had been set for me to satisfy my man. “Tonight’s the night,” I declared, as I boldly, proudly grabbed Kit’s hand and placed it on my appendage. “Holy hell,” he exclaimed, before (I think) jokingly adding, “Did you pop a Viagra before coming over?” Oh, shit. I hadn’t really thought about whether I was going to divulge to Kit the truth about my chemically induced phallus. So faced with a split-second decision, I decided not to shatter the illusion. “No, I didn’t pop a Viagra,” I chuckled, as I held his hand over my girth-tastic groin. “This is just how much I want this . . .”

This was my first glimpse of “sick Kit,” so it was hard to gauge if he was exaggerating, downplaying, or something in between. Regardless, it was unsettling to see him in distress. Thanks to the considerable disease-and-death baggage my parents left me, it was even a little worrisome. Thankfully, my mind only took a brief What if it’s liver cancer? detour before comfortably parking itself at Kit’s unofficial food-poisoning diagnosis.

The movie ended and I immediately powered up my phone to check in on my under-the-weather man. I noticed I had a voicemail. It was from Kit. “Mike, it’s me. I’m at Mount Sinai Hospital not far from my apartment. I think it’s Tenth Avenue. I have appendicitis. I’ll probably be in surgery when you get out of the movie. My phone battery is about to die, so I need you to do me a big favor and call my parents to let them know what’s going on. My mom’s name is Marilyn and my dad is Bob. Just tell them you’re a new friend of mine.” He then gave me their phone number, before concluding, “My mother is going to insist on coming into the city. Tell her not to. I love you.”

Fuck me. Fuck Nicole Kidman. Fuck The Others. Kit needed me and I wasn’t there for him. With my pulse quickening, I called Kit back, hoping to catch him on his cell before he got taken into surgery. It went straight to his voicemail. Fuck. I took a seat outside the screening room to catch my breath and plot my next move. His parents. Kit asked me to call his parents. I have to call his parents. I have to call his parents who don’t even know I exist, let alone that their son is gay, to tell them that their only child is undergoing emergency surgery. Jesus. Mary. And. Joseph. Fuck. Me. I exhaled slowly, and as I punched the number into my flip phone, I appealed to the gay gods to help me not royally fuck this up.

One ring. Two rings. Three rings. Before there was a fourth ring, a gravelly-sounding man said, “Hello.” “Hi . . . Is this Bob?” I asked. “This is he.” “My name is Michael. I’m a friend of your son’s. His phone battery died and he asked me to call you to tell you he’s having his appendix removed. He’s in surgery now.” “Hold on a moment, let me get a piece of paper to write this down,” he said calmly, before plunking the phone down and returning a few seconds later. “Kit’s mother Marilyn is in Allentown at a basketball game so I want to make sure I get all the information. What hospital is he at?” “Mount Sinai,” I said. “Kit also wanted me to tell you that you shouldn’t come into the city.” “Oh, his mother is going to want to come in,” Bob said. “Kit assumed as much.” Crickets. “What did you say your name was again?” he asked, suspiciously. “Mike. Kit and I just met a few weeks ago,” I replied, choosing my words very carefully. “I’m headed to the hospital now. I can call you back with an update when I get there.” “You better give me your number,” he s...

I hung up and quickly conducted a postmortem of the call in my head: Had I just outed Kit to his dad? Had I gotten the message across that Kit did not want them coming into the city? Oh, and could Kit’s dad have been any more laid back and chill? I determined that I’d done the best I could have given the improbable circumstances, and ran outside to hail a cab to Mount Sinai. With any luck, Kit would be out of surgery when I got there and ready to receive me. On the ride uptown, my concern for Kit started to mount. What if, God forbid, they didn’t remove his appendix in time? Or there was a catastrophic complication during surgery? The thought of losing him just two months after I found him sent a sizeable shiver down my spine. We hadn’t even taken our first vacation together....

Instead, my mind fixated on another area of concern—I might not be granted permission to see Kit because I was neither a blood relative nor his legal spouse (if such things had been legal then), a prospect that brought my blood to a low simmer. I was fully prepared to go to war with the hospital staff if necessary. The image of an unglued Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment screaming at the nurses to “give my daughter the shotttttttttt!” popped in my head. Come hell or high water, I was going to be at Kit’s side. And if it meant delivering an Oscar-worthy breakdown scene in the lobby of New York’s M...

“We don’t have anyone here by that name . . .” “Give my boyfriend the shotttttttttt!” I interrupted, pounding my fist on the desk. OK, that’s almost what happened. In reality, I placed a muzzle on my inner MacLaine and looked at the receptionist all puzzled and confused-like. No one here by that name? Had Kit, in his presurgical haze, sent me to the wrong hospital? “Are you sure?” I asked. “Are you spelling Kit K-I-T?” “We have a Christopher Cowan,” she said. “Yes, Christopher,” I replied with enormous relief. “Kit is his nickname. I’m sorry. It’s Christopher Cowan.” It was the fi...

“Kit never mentioned a Mike to us before,” she added, suspiciously. Oh, boy, here we go. “We only recently became friends,” I explained, shit threatening to pour out of my ass faster than an aged-out soft-serve machine at Dairy Queen. “We met through a mutual friend . . .” “Let us know if anything changes, please, Mike,” she interjected, clearly preparing to wrap up the call, much to my relief. “I absolutely will,” I assured her. I resisted the urge to remind her of Kit’s wishes for her not to come into the city, on account of the fact that she was scaring the shit out of me. Also, prolonging the conversation meant risking her grilling me further about who I was and how exactly I knew her son. “Thank you,” she concluded. “Bye now.”

I hung up, took a deep breath, then raced off to the bathroom to relieve my extremely irritable and terrified bowel. Was she that chilly toward me because she suspected—feared—that I was more than just Kit’s friend? Or maybe she just didn’t have the warmest telephone demeanor? Regardless, I couldn’t help but feel like my relationship with Marilyn Cowan had gotten off on a decidedly sour note.

“Actually, I have a small favor to ask . . .” he said, the inflection in his voice suggesting said favor might be a size or two up from small. “I need you to stop by my apartment and, um, clean it up before my mom’s arrival.” “You mean hide stuff?” I clarified. “Pretty much,” he said. “I don’t remember what’s out in the open, but . . .” “I don’t have a key,” I interrupted. “Kirby will be home,” Kit noted, clearly having thought this through. “Just knock on the door and he’ll let you in. Explain that I’m in the hospital and you’re picking up a few things for me.” “OK . . .” I replied, barely hiding my concern about the prospect of being alone with the allegedly unpredictable, unpleasant Kirby. I’d never witnessed his volatile behavior firsthand. And the few times we had crossed paths in the apartment, he had been perfectly civil to me. But Kit had built him up to be something of a monster, a characterization he was now backpedaling on. “Don’t worry,” Kit said. “He’s not going to murder you. And if he does, you had a good life.” “Well, if he does murder me, you’re going to have a tough time explaining to your mother what that crusty washcloth on your nightstand is for,” I shot back. “Good point,” he said. “Well, you better protect yourself then. You’re an athlete after all.” “This conversation is endlessly amusing, but I have a sex dungeon to sterilize, so I better be off.” “I love yoooou,” Kit keened playfully. “Mmhmm,” I harrumphed with a mix of faux annoyance and real ann...

I entered Kit’s room and securely closed the door behind me. I dropped my backpack on the bed, rolled up my sleeves, and got busy de-gaying the space. As if equipped with a Terminator-like motion analysis detector, I scanned the room looking for vulnerabilities. I noticed among Kit’s little village of curiosities the statue of a small green man, smiling, with a disproportionately large, erect penis. I grabbed it. I combed over his bookshelf and spotted two VHS gay porn tapes sandwiched between the Sex and the City and AbFab box sets. I then raced into the bathroom and snatched the Peter Meter and the fornicating dinosaurs from the medicine cabinet. I surveyed the room one last time, looking for anything I might’ve missed. I pulled the curtain back on Kit’s wardrobe and looked around. As I was about to declare that space all clear, my eye caught the “Doops” tag atop my side of the closet. I stared at it for a second, before reluctantly pulling it down and adding it to the pile.

I grabbed one of Kit’s numerous empty shoeboxes, loaded all of the items into it, and kneeled down to stash it beneath the bed. While clearing out a space, I came upon Kit’s mini-hoard of sex toys. They, too, were in a shoebox, only the lid was off and the contents exposed. I had known the cache existed. But I’d never actually taken a close-up look at his collection, partly to be respectful of his personal space and partly because the gay sex shame ingrained in me as a child was still renting out space in my psyche. Also, I sensed—feared—that there were aspects of Kit’s sexuality he was protecting me from. Or perhaps I was protecting myself from. It was time I found out just how kinky my new boyfriend was, so I pulled the stockpile of personal pleasure objects out from under the bed and rested it between my legs. And I started rifling.

I didn’t recognize half of these freaky items, or the person they belonged to. I imagined his mother finding them, and having all of her base fears about gay people being sex-obsessed deviants confirmed. That is, if she had such fears. Maybe I was projecting my own mortification on her? And on Kit? No matter, I didn’t like how the treasure trove of erotica was making me feel, so I grabbed the lid, secured it tightly, and tucked the shoebox so far under the bed a cockroach would have trouble finding it. Next, I grabbed the new shoebox filled with Kit’s comparatively more PG-13-rated novelties and jammed it under the be...

Meanwhile, my head started spinning from the epically surreal nature of what was transpiring. I was standing in a hospital room with the man I loved and my future mother-in-law and I was trying like hell to pretend like this wasn’t a moment I would remember for the rest of my life. “We’re waiting for the nurse to come with the wheelchair and then we’re outta here,” Kit informed me. “How are you feeling?” “Sore, but the Vicodin is tasty,” Kit said, before adding with surprising sassiness—considering he wasn’t out to his mom yet—“I told the nurse I want total sensory deprivation and backup drugs.” (I would come to find out years later during a weekend-long AbFab marathon that this sassy retort, like so many of his sauciest zingers, was appropriated from the cult comedy. Every 15 minutes I’d hear one of the series’ two boozy leads—Eddy or Patsy—utter a strikingly familiar crack. And every time my jaw would hit the floor, after which I’d turn my head and, with a mix of disillusionment and reverence, shoot a gleefully sheepish Kit a look like, Are you kidding me?!)

“Marilyn, did you drive in?” I asked, a preventative measure to avoid what I sensed was a fast-approaching awkward silence. Kit let out a guffaw, as if the mere suggestion that his mother would operate a vehicle on the rough-and-tumble streets of Manhattan was preposterous. “No, I caught an early bus from Kutztown,” she explained, assuming I knew what the hell Kutztown was. “Ah, Kutztown,” I deadpanned. “I hear they have some of the world’s finest bus stations.” My joke landed with a thud. Kit just looked at me and shook his head. OK, then, well . . . small talk it was! “Did you hit much traffic?” “No,” Marilyn replied, as she lifted her suitcase onto one of the empty chairs, in preparation for our exit but mostly just to stay in motion. She was behaving like the bus in Speed. If she dipped below 50 mph she’d explode.

At this point, it was clear that I was going to be doing all of the heavy lifting over the next some-odd hours that the three of us were together. Kit’s eyes were fixed on the doorway, waiting for his ride to arrive. Marilyn was otherwise occupied reconstituting the hospital room. All of my questions were proving to be conversation-enders, not -starters. And no one was laughing at my jokes. Marilyn, were you aware that I’m fucking your son? I informed her, giddily. Well, actually, he’s fucking me most of the time. I occasionally fuck him. The important thing to know is that we are fucking. A lot. Yeah, so I didn’t actually say that. But the awkwardness in the room was such that I needed to create some form of entertainment, even if it was only in my head.

Michael Ausiello October 10, 2014 • Some exciting news in the world of Kit Cowan. Earlier today, Kit underwent successful colostomy surgery at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital. You did not misread that—the arrival of a colostomy bag is cause for celebration. Due to the location of the primary colorectal tumor, bowel movements have been—and continue to be—a torturous exercise for Kit. They’ve been the root of more than 50 percent of his pain. So eliminating them from his daily regimen should drastically improve his quality of life. He’ll remain in the hospital through the weekend to recuperate from the procedure and also to learn about the care and upkeep of his new friend Mr. Stoma.

Michael Ausiello December 2, 2014 • Kit Cowan update (warning: it stinks): The decision was made today by Kit’s primary oncologist not to continue with treatment. His disease is just too widespread and aggressive at this point—it would be cruel to subject him to more torturous chemo or radiation when the likelihood of success is so slim. And I agreed. In-home hospice care will start tomorrow. This comes as Kit’s condition has dramatically worsened over the past 48 hours. He’s barely able to stay awake, he’s not eating and, most unsettling, he’s becoming increasingly confused and disoriented. The stuff that makes Kit KIT is evaporating, and it’s excruciating to watch. Also, I think nine months of fighting like a champ is finally taking a toll on him. The focus now—my primary goal—is to make sure he is as comfortable as possible. And for him to know that he is loved. It would mean a lot to me if you could pray for not only Kit, but also for his parents Bob and Marilyn, whose courage and strength throughout this whole ordeal has been nothing short of inspiring.

Michael Ausiello December 23, 2014 • A few years ago Kit snapped up on eBay a vintage version of those “Now Serving” signs you’d see at your local bakery or delicatessen. Last December, on the occasion of his 41st birthday, he adjusted the dial to reflect his new age. This counter took on a whole new meaning nine months ago when he was diagnosed with cancer. It now represented something of a challenge, one that Kit was determined to conquer. I’m happy to report that earlier this morning, my indefatigable husband sprang out of bed, marched over to the counter, and pulled that fucking string like the champ that he is. Happy Birthday indeed.

Michael Ausiello January 18, 2015 • As if Kit didn’t have enough to deal with, last Wednesday he began exhibiting a new flurry of symptoms—fever, restlessness, and delirium. He may have to be transferred from our home to Bellevue Hospital’s in-patient hospice wing if things don’t improve. I’m really hoping it doesn’t come to that. Prayers and good vibes are welcome at this time.

With my decision made, I began to wrap my head around the very real possibility that Kit might die in a hospital and not, as I had promised him, at home. God help me if there was such a thing as an afterlife, because I could already picture Kit waiting for me at the Pearly Gates, shaking his head while wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “You had one job.”

“Apologize for not loving him better. He will tell you that you could not have loved him more, which is true, but you need to tell him that anyway.” My initial reaction: Really? Apologize for not loving him more? When it came to my relationship with Kit, I was sorry about a lot of things—like how my lack of willpower forced him to hide any and all snacks he brought into our apartment, like the time I wore his favorite white Armani Exchange dress shirt to work without his permission after he specifically said it was the one piece of his wardrobe he did not want me co-opting, like how my raging jealousy and insecurity prevented me from telling him how fucking hot his ass looked in his favorite khakis—but apologize for not loving him enough? That was one of the few relationship things I felt like I had actually aced, particularly this past year.

“One more?” I asked. He shook his head. He’d had enough. I decided not to let the remaining three ounces go to waste, so I finished it off myself. It was what Kit would have wanted, seeing as how during the hundreds of frozen yogurt dates that had preceded this one over the course of our thirteen years together, Kit had always ended up sharing his final two or three spoonfuls with me. And that was because I tended to attack my frozen yogurt like a honey badger at a competitive eating event, while Kit preferred to take his time, savoring each and every bite. That resulted in my finishing long before Kit, which, in turn, resulted in Kit being forced to make a decision: Did he eat the rest by himself while I stared at him licking my lips, or did he push his cup to the center of the table and go halfsies with me on the rest? Lucky for me and my insatiable fro-yo appetite, he usually opted for the latter. “Nice work,” I raved. “You ate pretty much the whole thing.” I gave him a kiss on the lips to formally reward him for a job well done. His eyes perked up, he opened his mouth, and much to my shock and awe, he eked out a very quiet, barely audible, but nonetheless heartfelt “Thank you.” Those would be the last two words Kit ever spoke.

Of course, I knew there still existed a chance—no matter how slight—that Kit could die while I was trudging away on an elliptical machine. I was reminded of something one of the hospice counselors had told us early on: “He will go when he is ready to go. And if you’re not present, that means he wanted to spare you that moment.” It sounded a little crackpot to me at the time. But it was proving useful now as I felt the strong compulsion to burn a few hundred calories.

“How long does he have?” I asked. “A couple of hours,” she said, as Marilyn sobbed in Bob’s arms. “Maybe more. Maybe less.” The nurse then echoed something we’d heard from a myriad of hospice personnel over the past two months when the topic turned to what to expect in his final hours: “He can hear you. Talk to him. Tell him you love him. Assure him that you will be OK without him.” The nurse offered to return later tonight to check on him again. I thanked her. Bob showed her out. Marilyn took a seat on the other side of Kit, clutched his left hand, and whispered, “Kit, it’s OK. We’re going to be OK.”

I just looked at her, marveling at her strength. Where was she mustering the courage to give her only child permission to die? I was not quite ready to go there. So I just sat there, on the other side of him, grasping his hand, fiddling with his wedding ring, keeping his lips moistened with the spongy Q-tips. Fixating on every one of his precious breaths. The evening wore on, and Kit’s breath output declined further. Marilyn continued to follow the hospice rulebook to the letter, letting Kit know he could pass on when he was ready and not to worry about us. Bob, meanwhile, toggled between the bed and the recliner, where he was now quietly crying. I noticed the coldness had now extended to Kit’s toes. I was ready to have “the talk” with him.

“Can you please give us a minute alone?” I asked Marilyn. She was at first reluctant to let go of his hand. But she eventually granted me my wish, planting a kiss on Kit’s forehead before informing him, “We’ll be right back, sunshine.” She then walked out with Bob and I closed the door behind them. I took a deep breath. And I just stood at the bedside and looked at my beloved Kit, lying there helpless and so fucking skinny and hooked up to so much shit and My God, he’s only forty-tw...

“You listen to me, Fuck Stick. I am going to be OK. It’s going to be unbelievably hard, but I will be OK. You go get heaven ready for us, because, thanks to you, I have high standards. Thank you for the past thirteen years. Thank you for giving me...

I kissed his lips, my cascade of tears dotting his long-sleeved, black-and-white striped cotton shirt. And I just sat there for a few more minutes, processing that after eleven months of fear and uncertainty and surgeries and doctors and appointments and Carmel trips back and forth to Sloan and final goodbyes with friends and pain episodes and intimacy and closure and colostomy bags and shotgun weddings and heart-to-hearts out on the deck . . . it ...

I got out of the bed to let Bob and Marilyn back in, and I noticed that resting atop the door frame’s ledge was The Lurker. Kit had relocated him from the living room to the bedroom a few months back when he started becoming less mobile; with the change of venue came a slightly tweaked narrative. Instead of The Lurker getting terrorized by a giant ceramic middle finger, it was now literally under attack from a little green army figurine. The soldier, down on one knee, was pointing a giant bazooka directly at The Lurker. Kit had perfectly positioned the diorama so that it was in full view of the bed where he had spent much of the past three months. Part of me wanted to pick the soldier up, stare him in the face, and scream, Why the fuck didn’t you do your job? All you had to do was pull the trigger. But there was another part of me that saw the i...

As we surrounded Kit, tissues and tears everywhere, the most remarkable thing happened. Like if I saw this play out on my favorite TV show I would roll my eyes and delete my season pass remarkable. Mister Scooch strolled into the bedroom and did something he had not done in the eight months since Kit tasked me with going to Bed Bath & Beyond with a 20-percent-off coupon to buy a foam mattress cushion, only to be told I had gotten the wrong one and sent back to get the correct, far plusher—and cheaper—one: Scooch hopped on the bed. For whatever reason, the texture of the mattress pad had been like Kryptonite to his paws, leading him to avoid the bed like the plague. So I could hardly believe my eyes as I watched him gingerly, carefully make his way over the morphine pump and past the catheter tubing before plopping down right next to Kit, one side of him grazing Kit’s abdomen and the other side of him brushed up against my leg. I looked at Kit’s mom and dad in utter disbelief. I pulled out my iPhone and took a photo of Scooch shoehorned between his two dads because I knew I’d want proof later that in my compromised emotional state I hadn’t imagined it.

The shock of Scooch’s improbable eleventh-hour visitation quickly gave way to sadness as I took in the beautiful, heart-annihilating scene before me. Kit and Mister Scooch—my family. Some of the happiest memories of my life were just of Kit and me snuggled up in bed or on the couch marveling at something ridiculous Mister Scooch was doing with his mouth or his paws. Scooch hung out for another two or three minutes, before hopping up and off the bed. It was just long enough, I supposed, for him to say goodbye.

Kit’s breathing continued to slow down and time began to stand still. The air was heavy, almost oppressive. I felt like I was in some kind of alternative reality as I watched the most important person in my life near the end of his. Each dramatic breath was now becoming an event unto itself, the three of us hanging on to each gasp of air, hoping, praying, another one was coming right behind it. For a split second, as I waited for him to inhale, I imagined Kit opening his eyes, looking ...

He began to take his next breath, and, somehow, the sheer force of the inhale told me that this was it. “Goodbye, Bodge,” I cried. As the final traces of air escaped his lungs, his mouth opened slightly wider, and the upper right corner of his lip curled upward. And it froze. I waited for another breath, but I knew one was not coming. Kit was gone. An overwhelming sense of loss spread throughout every ounce of my five-foot-ten frame. Like a vacuum was sucking all the energy out of me. Like a chunk of me had broken off and attached itself to Kit as he drifted away. The emptiness, and the finality that the emptiness represented, overwhelmed me. And, then, suddenly, I was startled by the . . . silence. The deafening, ear-splitting silence. It was the sound of the most important person in my life no longer making a sound. The oxygen machine was s...

I could really use a fountain Diet Coke right about now was an honest-to-God thought that popped into my head as I sat on the bed staring at the body of my freshly deceased husband. Widowerhood had left me parched. With a weeping Marilyn clutching Kit’s hand and Bob perched beside her, I stood up, ambled into the kitchen, opened the fridge, and reached for a Diet Half ’n Half Snapple (lemonade and iced tea), which was not far from a half-empty bottle of sauvignon blanc. Three months earlier I would’ve pushed the Snapple aside and seized the vino. But now that I’d been off the sauce for three months—and learned that I was capable of dealing with life’s greatest challenges head-on and without the a...

Michael Ausiello February 6, 2015 • It’s with a heavy, broken heart that I tell you that Kit passed away late last night. He died much the way he lived through this grueling 11-month ordeal—on his own terms: He went peacefully at home (per his wishes), with me and his parents (and Mister Scooch) by his side. And he fought like a champ until he took his final breath. It’s true what they say about grief coming in waves. I’m alternating between sadness, shock, numbness, relief. But I also feel a deep sense of gratitude, to a universe that put me in the right place at the right time 13 years ago, and to a support system that helped get us through these past 11 months. I never took the love for granted, and neither did Kit.

I walked over to one of the benches and took a seat, resting my backpack with Kit’s ashes down beside me. And I just stared out at the sparkling, peaceful river. I felt close to him. I started to talk to him, mostly just to remind him how much I loved and missed him. And how lonely Millersburg felt without him.

“If I go first, I want my ashes scattered in this river,” he told me. “Please promise me you will do that.” After pausing for a moment to wrap my head around what he’d just said, I replied, “I promise.” And then as we stood there silently, I dwelled on two thoughts: How beyond moved I was that after only a year and change of dating, Kit was already entrusting me with such an enormous ask; and, Please God—I beg you—let me die before Kit.

And now that I was here, it felt like every bit of the nightmare I had imagined it to be on that fateful summer afternoon in 2003. But I also felt a ripple of peace encroaching on my pain. The peace that came with knowing with your whole heart that this moment was fated. I was meant to be on that ferry with Kit twelve years ago. And I was meant to be back here again today, with his ashes in my backpack.

“Well, look who finally showed up.” Bob playfully ribbed me, to a chorus of chuckles. I smiled and extended a round of “Good morning,” which was followed by a round of hugs. When I got to Marilyn, I held her for a few more additional seconds than perhaps she was prepared for. And I started to cry. I missed her. And Bob, too. It hit me how dramatically our relationship had changed on February 5. Instead of clinging to me, as I’d feared might happen, they had done the opposite; they had pulled away. After either talking to or seeing them every single day during the eleven months Kit was sick, I could count on one hand the number of times we had spoken in the last five months. And, for the most part, I had been the one initiating the communication. It had never dawned on me that I would need them more than they would need me.

Instead of simply scattering the ashes from the shoreline, Bob and Marilyn had chartered Kit’s beloved ferry for a full hour. As the six of us walked toward the docking station, Marilyn took us past the town’s new swing sets that the two of them had donated in Kit’s name. They asked me if I would sprinkle some of his ashes near the swings and along the riverbank. I took a deep breath. I’d been avoiding making eye contact with the ashes. Missi had handled the Tupperware transfer for me last night at my apartment. I cracked open the container and lightly dusted the ground with . . . pieces of Kit’s heart. And his slightly crooked front tooth. And his lazy eyelid. He was really gone. Seven months ago we had walked along this riverbank together. Seven months ago Kit had stood in this exact spot. And now he was gone. A pile of ashes in a blue Tupperware container.

The captain anchored the boat in the middle of the river, halfway between Millersburg and Liverpool, and we all gathered at the front. I said a few words about Kit’s affection for this stretch of the river and for his hometown in general, and concluded by telling him how much we all loved him and that he would never be forgotten. I then knelt down, cracked open the Tupperware container, and then slowly released his ashes into the water below. His family immediately tossed flowers in so we could follow the path of the ashes down the river.

As I watched the ashes drift downstream, I felt outside my body for a moment. Like I was in a dream. Like I couldn’t possibly be depositing pieces of the person I had loved more than any human being ever into the Susquehanna River. But I also felt something else. Closure. Complete, utter, transcendent closure. I hadn’t realized it at the time, but Kit had given me an enormous gift the day he made that request of me. And I was suddenly overcome with gratitude.

I stood up and gave his parents a hug, as tissues were passed around. I then slowly made my way to the back of the boat, alone. I searched for the flower petals now off in the distance. I found them. And I kept my eyes fixed on them as I reached into my pocket and pulled out Kit’s wedding ring. I then slipped my matching band off my finger and placed it on top of Kit’s ring in the center of my palm. And for one last time, they clinked. I st...

As Kit heads upstairs, I step away from our quaint circa-1800s row house and take in the gorgeous store window and the unassuming sign above it advertising its name, “See You Next Tuesday.” And then I look up at our beautiful six-over-six sash windows on the second and third floors and . . . I wait for it. And I keep waiting for it.