Twenty years ago this day, Demon Hunter released this most powerful song of not just Zack’s lifetime, but even more so mine as I’ve continued to break everything down in hopes of making sense of the silent pieces of his existence. So, what better time to finally memorialize it than today by sharing my answer to a question that was posted earlier in one of my writing forums:
My “Triptych” story is bittersweet and unfathomable to most, but true nonetheless. Since I’m the “REAL Cat” and an admitted over-sharer, I’ll share. Demon Hunter was the all time favorite band of my late husband’s life after having been thrown away by his “mother THING” on his birth day. Years of burying his emotions after a dismal start in life eventually led him to me and my kids who he took as his own. He’d always said that me and my daughter we were the only two women he ever loved other then the grandmother who stepped in to raise him after “the THING” left him to rot in his own remains. The mental illness that had been slowly deteriorating him over YEARS of fighting against it finally caught up when he succumbed to the darkness on 8.22.19. No one except me and my daughter REALLY knows what happened in our home in the midst of his LITERAL insanity in the four months before he left when the devil himself took up residency inside his head. Lol, even his beloved German shepherd “saw it” inside of him, and by “it”, I mean the demon that was living in his body, to which end Walter Williamson LITERALLY tried ripped his hand off the night before the end for what seemed like no obvious reason … until it all became clear to us in the wake of his suicide and “we knew”. Meanwhile, on 8.9.19, the night after I’d discovered he’d made his final decision to “put the monster down” and purchased the Springfield he used, he’d written an email to me and her with the song “One Thousand Apologies” attached, but never sent it. I found it in his drafts while sifting through the wreckage months later. He’d always said this band wrote the soundtrack to his life, and, they did. For the record, I have long since forgiven him for crimes against our humanity that he / “the monster” committed against me and my daughter, and am thankful beyond words for all the delicate and NOT so delicate ways their music has helped me understand what may have been going on inside his broken mind and soul and the closure I’ve found I’ve found in so MANY of their song lyrics to let him hopefully be resting in peace. For the record, “Carry Me Down” was the last song we played for him at his services and it will be the second to last song played at mine. (“The Brighter Side Of Grey” by 5FDP will be the last.)
Someday, I’ll go back through his emails and drop a screenshot of that draft here for truth and accounting purposes, but for now I’m gonna safely out of them! I’m growing forward, not backwards, my friends, and some anchors just need to be cut as I continue to rise from his abyss. Here in Dallas it’s a rainy, dreary, pluviophile HEAVEN for me and all I intend to do tonight is enjoy my cozy little castle and the sanctity of blissful solitude I’ve found at home with ME. Goodnight. 🖤
The Diary Of My Perfection 