“Widow Guide” book
Woman opens her dead husband’s tablet – and discovers his dark side
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After her husband’s death, Jessica Waite also had to cope with the fact that he had been unfaithful for years. Her book “The Widow’s Guide to Dead Bastards” chronicles her healing.
Jessica Waite had a good marriage, or so she thought, until she found this Opened her husband’s iPad. Her husband Sean died completely unexpectedly of a heart attack – in Texas. The couple lived in Calgary, Canada. She searched the iPad for clues as to which hospital the deceased might be in. But as soon as she entered the first letters of Houston “HO”, the browser added the search to “Houston Escorts”.
The blow hit Waite. And that was just her first discovery – what followed was an odyssey through a world of fraud and pornography. Maybe she was too curious and shouldn’t have opened the browser’s search history. From then on, Pandora’s Box had her under control and threatened to devour her life. The supposed husband of the gods led a double life that took up more time and emotions than his official existence. Not only did he constantly book prostitutes, he also had affairs – in the area around his company. And when he was home, he spent nights devoting himself to a collection of pornography. He also kept a secret apartment for his escapades.
“The Widow’s Guide to Dead Bastards” has so far only been published in English
Nine years after the porn shock
At least that’s how Jessica Waite describes it nine years after her husband’s death in the book “The Widow’s Guide to Dead Bastards”. “The world Sean had built on the surface – his career, our family, our beautiful home – all were surpassed in size and scope by his underground activities,” she writes. Billing the credit card was the next low blow. The overnight stay seemed noticeably expensive to the widow. The reason: The husband was traveling as a couple and was happy to send for champagne and prosecco.
Jessica Waite’s world began to spin. Out of anger, she mixed some of the dead man’s ashes with dog feces and threw them in the trash. In another fit, she stuffed the ashes into her mouth. “The residue feels dry on my fingertips, coarser than baking soda, grittier than salt. It mixes with the tear water, a mineral sludge on the back of my tongue. I swallow.”
Pornography took hold of her
Then she dived into the depths of a hard drive – the “matrix of porn,” as she calls it. Neatly organized and cataloged. Her husband’s porn addiction now had her under control too. Using the metadata, she meticulously reconstructed Sean’s secret porn life. “Some nights he sat on it for up to five hours.” The journey into this porn cosmos was not without consequences. During a play at school, Waites suddenly imagined one of the students naked. She then realized that she couldn’t continue like this and sought psychological help. The book came out nine years after his death.
Posthumous love story
At first it was a catharsis diary to end the vicious circle in the head, she explains. Her point is to show how difficult it is to face the truth.
Gradually, Jessica Waite was able to make peace with the past. She says today that her book is a posthumous love story. It asks whether relationships can heal across the veil of death. She believes her husband had severe mental health issues that he was never able to face. “There’s a pressure that men feel to perform a certain way, to hide their vulnerability and weakness – it’s like an epidemic.” Sean always just compensated, isolated himself and covered things up. “It was the only way he was able to maintain a very successful career, a very strong network of friends and supporters and a family.”
In the brighter part of his life, Sean was a good person, she judges today. “He was not just a liar, a cheat and a traitor. He was a good son who loved and honored his parents. He was a loving father.”
Source: The Sunday Paper