TheBanyanTree: Tony

[Margaret R. Kramer]

He was always a fat kid.  Every picture I saw of him, as a baby, as a little
boy, as a teenager, he was fat.  He was the youngest of three brothers, and
his mom had him when she was 47 years old, so I think she fed him to keep
him pacified.  No one else in his family was heavy.  Naturally, he was a fat
adult.

He wanted to lose weight.  In fact, he had two gastric bypasses.  But they
only work if you don’t go back to your old eating habits, and Tony
invariably did.  Tony did make half hearted efforts to lose weight, but they
were short lived.  I think when we separated, he weighed close to 350 pounds
and he was only 5’6”.

He wasn’t a bad looking guy, basically average with dark brown hair and
beautiful brown eyes.  And Tony talked too much.  Blah, blah, blah.  He was
a horrible conversationalist.  His favorite subjects were “I” and “me,” and
they were very boring, because he had no interests and no hobbies.  He was
not a good listener.  He told me once he was uncomfortable with silences and
felt he had to keep talking to cover them up.

But I fell in love with all this stuff and we were married 16 years ago.  I
felt bad about his weight, and I thought if I get him out of the environment
he was in (he was living with his mother at the time we married) that he
would be happier and lose weight.  Of course, that didn’t happen.  He gained
weight and I did, too.

Tony had more energy back then, more drive to improve his life.  But as we
were married longer and longer, that drive came to a crawl, and finally
stopped.  He stopped doing anything around the house, he stopped grocery
shopping, he stopped doing things with me, and he stopped living.

Our marriage deteriorated as time went on and the outward effects were
apparent.  We had no money.  I constantly had to rob Peter to pay Paul.  I
was fat.  Tony was fat.  I smoked like a chimney.  Tony drank Pepsi and ate
baloney luncheon meat constantly. We didn’t enjoy doing things together.  We
had no common interests.  We had no friends.  Our house was falling apart
and needed serious repairs.

We existed without fighting.  We moved through each day to get to the next
one.  It was a marriage without zest, without energy, without life.

About seven years ago, I met Ray on the internet.  He was in a miserable
marriage, too.  We only met in person three times, but we decided to take a
chance and try living together.

Ray told his wife and I told Tony.  Before I told him, I made sure his gun
was hidden.  I knew he would have shot me and maybe himself, too.  It was
the hardest and easiest thing I ever did.  It was hard telling him he had to
leave, but once he walked out that door, and I wasn’t dead, I felt a
tremendous weight off my shoulders.  My life was moving forward again.

Ray and I share our house.  We have money in the bank.  The house looks
wonderful.  We do things together.  We enjoy each other’s company.  We share
the ups and downs of our lives.  I lost 65 pounds.  I quit smoking.  We’ve
been together for five years and every day is a joy.

Tony went back to live with his mother.  I was hoping he would get an
apartment or townhouse and try living on his own, but he didn’t.  After his
mother died, he bought out his brother’s equity in the house and it became
his.  My son drove by it last summer, and he said the grass was almost knee
high and there were newspapers piled up all over the porch.

I’m sure the inside was a mess, too.  His mother was a major packrat, so the
small house was already jammed with stuff.  Tony was a PIG and being so
heavy made it difficult for him to move around, so he just didn’t.

I didn’t keep in contact with Tony that much.  We weren’t “friends.”  I only
heard from him during the long and involved process of paying him half the
equity in our house.  After I paid him, then he wouldn’t sign the quit claim
deed, so I had to hire an expensive lawyer to get him to do that.

We were supposed to divide up the retirement funds, too.  Since I made the
most money and had the most money stashed in a 401K, I was supposed to pay
him a certain amount so we would each have the exact same amount of
retirement money.  We never did resolve this.  After three years, he finally
agreed on the figure, but he never signed the agreement needed to take the
funds out my account.

The last time I heard from Tony was last spring when he left a message on
our answering machine.  He had just put one of our German Shepherds down and
bought a new puppy.  He wanted me to send him pictures of Romeo, because he
didn’t have any.  Well, I didn’t feel too sorry for him, since he had the
dog for five years and had plenty of time to take pictures of him.  I never
called him back.

Last Sunday, Ray saw Tony’s obituary in the paper.  I was shaken.  Tony was
only 47 years old, but fat people don’t live long.  He was a heart attack,
stroke, cancer, and etc. waiting to happen.  Even when we were still
married, he was getting staph infections in his legs because all the fat he
had prevented his blood from circulating in his body.  I knew he would die
young, but I just didn’t expect it so soon.

I feel kind of like a widow.  Tony and I were married for 11 years.  A
person I had lived with for that period of time was now dead.  Creepy.  I
felt sad, too.  I hoped he had a good life, that he found some happiness,
some way of being content.  When I told him to leave, I was hoping that
would be a “wake-up call,” and he would get his life in order.  I hoped Tony
“woke up.”

Obituaries don’t tell much.  Tony died on July 10.  His stuck up brother and
wife were listed, but I didn’t call Alan.  Should I go to the funeral or
not?  I finally decided to send flowers and I did.

The funeral was on our wedding anniversary, July 18, and it was in the same
church we were married in.  Too creepy.

Good-bye, Tony.  I feel bad I wasn’t the wife you wanted.  I feel bad things
turned out the way the did.  But it was the right thing for me to do and I
hope you found your way, too.

Margaret R. Kramer
margaretkramer at earthlink.net

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