From Miles' Wife, Leanne
I process through writing. And, right now, sharing these words and sharing Miles in every way possible feels important for me. I want everyone to see and know how big this loss is. I need us all to grieve him and praise him together.
The duality of grief and praise were important to Miles. He loved duality. He was brave enough to hold both the darkness and the light at the same time. Do you all remember the yin yang earring he wore for years?
In the past 7 days, I have said the word “no” thousands and thousands of times. “No, no no, please no” has become a mantra. And also, I have said, “I love you, I love you, I love you” thousands and thousands of times. That, also, has become a mantra.
Miles and I met in 2011, at a party in Philly. I was a train wreck of a person at the time. We talked and laughed and I got drunk and embarrassing and I wanted him to fall in love with me right then + there and I made that clear. We’d known each other for 2 hours. But nothing happened. He was a man of deep integrity and this was in no way the right time.
On March 7, 2012 I got an email. A year later, out of the clear blue, I got an email from Miles saying that for a year, he’d been thinking about me. He signed it, “why the fuck not.”
My immediate response to him was “If I woke up with my head stapled to the carpet, I wouldn't be more surprised than I am right now.” And my phone number. And, we were off.
A month later, he was at my house in Delaware for the weekend. A month after that, we had made plans for me to move in to his place in Los Angeles.
Some day soon, I will write about all of the years in between 2012 and right now to try to capture our collective timelines. There was so much.
But there are two things that I keep returning to right now, urgently.
ONE: Miles was a nomad and, knowing or unknowing, he prepared us all to be physically far from him. Even before touring with Akron/Family, he was not a homemaker, never a nester - his life was in constant movement, geographically and in every way.
The week that I moved to LA, he left on tour. When Akron/Family stopped touring, he began his musical journey with his Italian family. When Covid hit a year ago, and we were together in LA in lockdown, we realized that these 7 months were the longest consecutive months we’d ever lived together. In almost 10 years.
In our early years together, the distance was hard for me because I was so full of fear that he would leave me. From the first moment we met (hence, me drinking myself into fake-brave oblivion that very first night) I was so deeply in love with him and so certain that he would realize I wasn’t worthy.
I wish that I could take back all of the wasted time I spent with this fear. He was never anything but loving and devoted. I was playing out my self-consciousness on him and, my god, what a waste of time when we could have just been having fun.
After that first year or two, I started really building my own life in LA - a life separate from him and us and focused on my work and my communities.
In some ways, I did it to protect myself from the fear of losing him to the road. I leaned hard into self-sufficiency to stop the gnawing pain and fear that he wasn’t really mine.
But mostly, I did it because I liked it. I like living alone. I like building things and making myself impossibly busy and diving deep into communities and experimenting with huge life changes. So did he.
Whenever anyone would find out about our 2-months-together, 2-months-in-different-countries marriage, they’d say one of two things. Either, “oh wow, that must be so hard” or “huh, that actually sounds like a pretty great setup.”
And just like the duality that Miles loved so much - it was both. It was hard and painful and complex. It changed our relationship, and it changed both of us. And it was wonderful and liberating and perfect. Not either/or, but both/and.
TWO: In the fall, Miles and I started having some hard conversations about marriage. Thank you, Covid. Without months together and weeks without work, I don’t know when we would have had these discussions.
At no point were these talks coming from a lack of love. Even in the hardest moments, there was so much love. Crying and hearts ripped open, we both still said, “this shit is so hard and I am so hurt, but I love you because that is deeper than any of this.”
Understanding how our love fit into the structure of marriage and monogamy and domesticity was a struggle for me. What did those things have to do with our love? How did it serve either of us to live in celibacy or fear of feelings for others while living apart for months? Why would that matter, when our love for each other was obviously so much bigger than anything? And, shit. We were both punks at heart - why would we ever look to the state to sanction our love through marriage?
The idea that I forced us to ask these questions now feels like a petty excuse to cause pain and live without consequence. In the moment, I thought they were important to us both living our most authentic and liberated lives.
It’s hard to feel regret over that, because in the past few months, Miles was happier + more joyful than he had been in years.
And here’s the thing: WE DID IT. We were separated for 5 months and had painful, impossible conversations during that time. And, we came through it with a deeper and braver version “us” then we ever imagined. By January, we were sharing more honestly than ever before and our love was still huge and we couldn’t wait to spend time together in this new version of us. He was driving to LA for our reunion when he died. I still am unable to accept this reality.
Because Miles valued true, real connection even when it was hard; because he was courageous; because he wanted the real shit; we found ourselves in this new place on February 17, 2021 when he died. And this gift of closeness-over-comfort was how he was inside of every relationship he had, not just ours.
In true Miles fashion, the turmoil didn’t tear us apart because he wasn’t willing to hide from it. And he wasn’t willing to let me hide from it either. This is how he loved me and this is how he loved everyone he knew: by trusting that we could handle the terrifying depths, by taking our hands in his, by walking into the fire with us and, if we were willing to do the courageous work, by helping us emerge brighter and closer and braver and more full of life than we could have ever imagined.
I am just starting to unpack the millions of gifts and lessons that Miles shared with all of us. I am so grateful that I can spend this time grieving by also reflecting on this. The depth of this loss is only a mirror of the love he inspired in us all.