Grieving for Jon, Ten Years Later

18 December 2021

For the past couple of months, I’ve been thinking about what to write in my blog for the ten-year anniversary of Jon’s death. Jon died a decade ago tomorrow.

Jon Hrusa on a mountaintop in Lesotho
Jon hanging out with the locals on a remote mountaintop in Lesotho, September 2010. For those who haven’t read my blog for ten years, Jon was my boyfriend when I moved to South Africa in 2010. He was, in fact, the whole reason I came here and the reason I created 2Summers. Jon died on December 19th, 2011, after years of suffering with addiction and mental illness, when he was 46 years old. Here is a link to his obituary in the South African Sunday Times.

I don’t think about Jon’s death anywhere near as often as I used to. For the first couple of years I obsessed about it constantly and December 19th loomed in my mind for weeks in advance. I wrote an intense post about Jon on the one-year anniversary of his death, and I’m sure I referenced it in subsequent years, too. But the pain faded with time. There were years when I only thought briefly of Jon on December 19th, and more with a feeling of wistful nostalgia than grief.

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From the Melville Cat: A Breakup

20 September 2017

From the Melville Cat:

I’m writing this post as a favor to Heather. She’s been trying to write it for days – I’ve been watching her – but today she gave up and asked me to do it for her.

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An Update From the Real Me

16 September 2014

My blog lives a double life. Most of the time it’s a fun, informative guide to living and traveling in Joburg and surrounds. But other times it’s a personal account of what’s happening in my actual life.

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