𝙎𝙐𝙉𝙎𝙀𝙏 𝘽𝙊𝙐𝙇𝙀𝙑𝘼𝙍𝘿

𝘾𝙝𝙖𝙥𝙩𝙚𝙧 𝙊𝙣𝙚

New York City, 2024

ROSEANNE PARK ASTOR

After sixty-one years of sharing my bed with someone else, it was weird sleeping alone.

The Upper East Side apartment I've been so proud to call home seems too big now. With no one to share it with, it's just four walls made of drywall. What once was a home is now just a space. A space I spend my days in when I've got nothing else to distract me from the pain.

My wife, Y/N Astor, died four days ago on October 15th.

When you spend sixty-one years of your life loving one person and one person only, the pain of losing them forever is unbearable.

"Rosie? They're ready for you."

"Thank you, I'll be right down."

Lisa smiles at me, sadly. She's been a real good sport these past few days. She tried hard to make me smile even though I no longer could.

When Vogue came knocking on my door three weeks ago, asking me to do a time piece to celebrate my sixty-first wedding anniversary (a rare thing to have in Hollywood) and my rise to stardom, I had welcomed the opportunity with open arms. But that was three weeks ago, when I still had my wife smiling at me from behind her canvas, confidently telling me that the whole world is still in love with me.

That was before my whole world came crashing down.

Before I lost the love of my life.

All I wanted now was to lie in the casket with her, wrapping myself around her and never letting go. I vowed I'd leave this earth when she left and she had vowed the same. We were everything to each other — best friends, lovers and most importantly, family. That woman is my whole life and if she's not on this earth, then I can no longer exist.

I had attempted to end my life a day after she left me.

I couldn't walk this earth, exist in this earth, if she was not with me. I just wanted to be with her again.

Right before my eyes closed, right before I could take my last breath, I saw her again. Standing in front of me in that bathroom, with sleeping pills scattered across my hand, I saw twenty-five year old Y/N Astor again. Her signature scowl planted firmly on her face as she looked at the pills in my hands. In the entirety of our marriage, the love of my life obsessed with dressing well. She liked to keep the tradition of the 60's alive in our modern day lives. When everyone outside was wearing sweatpants and hoodies, she and I were in cashmere sweaters, silk dresses and wool suits.

The twenty-five year old Y/N Astor in front of me that day was no different. She was dressed in her signature navy blazer, the same one that I first saw her in. I was positive that my brain was playing tricks on me, I was already six sleeping pills in.

Then twenty-five year old Y/N Astor started speaking.

"How Hollywood of you," it had only been a day since she died and yet in that bathroom it felt like it had been decades since I heard her voice. She leaned on the bathroom counter and picked up my pill bottle. "Can't you think of an original way out?"

We had lost many friends due to drugs. Hollywood was a dangerously beautiful place. Los Angeles, the city of fallen angels.

By the 80's and 90's, drugs were so normalized that if you weren't doing lines then you weren't going to make it. Your name wouldn't be in lights. You'd be considered normal and Hollywood doesn't like normal. The expectation is that you morph yourself into this thing that everyone can worship and alter in any way they'd like.