Ashes to Dust

She said she had worked with him and that he scared the children, was too hard on them, expected too much from them, filled them with anxiety and stress. That doesn't fit the character composite I knew of a life time of knowing or did it? I remember the times I was talking to Hyde and Jekyll would come out and tell me to just fuck off. He said, "He was so callous and awful and untrustworthy..." But the stories were so good after he died. Everyone remembering the best. Now the unpretty side is seeping up. My best friend said it in an answer to the "Why?". He said "you just don't know what really went on, you don't know, maybe he did something he couldn't face, couldn't allow anyone else to face..." And something rang true deep down inside of me. We had all left that little town to be "more like ourselves" with the constant magnification of what "they" expected us to be, so earnest in our desire for extra-ordinary lives. And now that the stories are coming to the surface, now that the romance of an ended life is over and the human that was really is no longer, the dirty clothes are coming to the laundry.
It's almost a year and I've been so pained for the loss of him that I knew and loved so well & on the brink of it, maybe I just didn't know at all, maybe this is just the next stage of the grief, the separation of one life to another, maybe the last of his molecules are evaporating, the little flecks of DNA on his items are truly becoming dust, maybe the passing to the other side is nearing completion, maybe his life force is waning and the energy is dispersing too much to be recognizable.
Maybe they're all wrong with their stories and it's just bad perception. The thing is today, I'm just not sure.