Dr. Taylor is survived by his wife of thirty-five years, Deborah Taylor (55) of Palo Alto, and three children: Charles (32), Evan (31), and Cynthia (27).
Preliminary reports have determined Taylor died of a heart attack, sources say.
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MJ
I’VE ALWAYS HATED THE TEDIOUSNESS of Mass. The empty words, spoken with such grandiose reverence. Try to figure out their meaning, though, and you come up empty. Slippery words spoken by slippery folks. I’ve had little affection for priests since our parish rector violated a good proportion of the altar boys entrusted to his care, including my little brother Thomas, now a sad and troubled man. The annual altar boys’ picnic back in the 1980s was a bacchanalian orgy that effectively polluted a generation of young men in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Glorious Gateway to the Great Smoky Mountains, my ass. That dog won’t hunt, as I used to say. Talk about a wasteland of the spirit—Gatlinburg was it.
I’m standing in church now, trying to find a place to sit. For John. John’s funeral Mass. I haven’t been in a church for many years, much less a Catholic one. All the back row pews are taken. I certainly remember that phenomenon, Catholics wanting to put as much distance as possible between themselves and their dubious priests. I’m forced to keep moving up the aisle to find a space to squeeze into.
I’m in a strange state. I’ve spent the two days since I read about John’s death in the newspaper wandering around the house in a kind of trance, fits of crying interspersed with those of absolute fury, and bottomless panic. I’d managed to call some friends, listened to their disbelief and outrage, but nothing really penetrated the numbness underlying all the emotional outbursts. I told my two sons, who despite being adults couldn’t refrain from rather hurtful told-you-sos. And my brother Thomas accepted the news with silence. John’s death effectively quenched a few of Thomas’s grand financial schemes. But everyone is pushing me to move past the shock, and the hurt, and to be practical. To take action.
In particular, my friends are urging me to get a lawyer. Last night I went so far as to start reading Yelp reviews of local divorce attorneys. Surely that type of lawyer would have experience with property rights. I don’t know where else to turn. I doubt anyone would have any legal advice for my particular situation.
For what do you do when your husband not only turns up dead, but already married?
According to the Mercury News, he was wedded for thirty-five years to a Deborah. His beloved wife. So where does that leave me?
We had (I thought) been married for five happy years. Our house is in my name, and in John’s will—stored safely in our safe-deposit box—it is clearly left to me. But what if there is another will? What’s my legal standing? This Deborah predates me in John’s life by at least twenty-eight years. And California is a joint property state. Do I need to tell the bank holding the mortgage about John’s death? Will John’s real wife have any grounds for claiming the house? After all, John contributed a substantial down payment, and we’ve built up quite a lot of equity in it. Even if she doesn’t, can I manage the mortgage on an accountant’s salary? As my daddy’d say, I’m in a seat so hot it’s making my teeth sweat.
If all this sounds cold and calculating in the face of the death of the man I’d called my husband for five years, forgive me.
Walking up the aisle of the church, I am getting uncomfortably close to the front, where John’s real wife is certain to be. His real wife. I can’t help it, that’s how I already think about the situation. Her, real. Me, false. My life as a fraud.
My shrink tells me this is my fault, that I keep seeking out life situations where I am bound to be an outsider, creating scenarios where I hover on the periphery. I had actually thought, in my marriage, that I had overcome this unhealthy tendency. I was finally inside, I finally had found a place where I belonged, had created an intimate circle that for the first time excluded others, rather than being excluded myself. What a joke. Now I’m not even sure I own the bed I sleep in.