A Eulogy for My Ex-Wife

Her friends won’t want to read this. That’s why I wrote it.

October 21, 2025.

That’s the day my ex-wife of fifteen years was found dead on her living room floor in Denver, Colorado. It’s been just over one hundred days, and I’m finally ready to break a silence that has lasted far too long. Not just since her death, but through eleven years of watching someone I loved disappear into a disease that our society still refuses to recognize as one.

Wendy McCallum died of alcoholism. Not a one-night binge. A lifestyle. She was 55 years old.

I’m writing this for my own grief. But I’m also writing this for you, Wendy’s friend, who believed her story.

This is for you, because you’ve forgotten the story.

Your belief in Wendy’s version of events will stay with you forever. So will your blindness to the obvious signs of her addiction. I hope that weight changes something in you. Because the damage here goes beyond Wendy’s death. A life was lost. A mother was lost. My daughters, Carolyn and Avery, lost the chance to have their mom back. And every one of you had the opportunity to do something about it. You didn’t.

You could have stood up. You could have said something. You could have called me. You could have thought, even once, about whether I was actually the person Wendy claimed I was. I wasn’t. I was never that person. And you knew it, or you would have known it if you’d stopped to think about it for even a moment.

In 2014, when Wendy and I separated, entire circles of friends disappeared. People I had known for years, people who had been to our home, who had watched our daughters grow up, simply vanished. They chose Wendy’s version without ever asking me for mine.

I don’t mourn individual friendships. We weren’t that close. But I do grieve how easily you all believed the worst about me. Your gullibility, your willingness to accept her story without a single question, cut me off from a community I thought I belonged to. That blind acceptance hurt more than I can describe. And in the end, it cost Wendy her life.

We won’t be friends again. That’s not why I’m writing this.

I don’t need anything from you now. I’m not looking for acknowledgment or apology. I just need to get this off my chest. I need to tell the story that Wendy made sure you never heard.

I’m also writing this because silence kills. When we choose not to talk about deaths that result from addiction, like Wendy’s, we rob other families of the chance to recognize the disease early, to intervene effectively, and to understand that love alone cannot cure alcoholism.

And I’m writing this to process grief that operates on two fronts. Carolyn and Avery lost their mother to a slow, grinding addiction to alcohol and substances that consumed the last decade of her life. And this same addiction is what ended our marriage.

What You Chose to Believe

I tried everything I knew how to try. Anyone who was truly close to Wendy during those years knows this. They know I attempted to organize an intervention before our divorce, an effort that failed and accelerated the end of our marriage. They know that during our custody proceedings, the court ordered regular drug testing for both parents, and over six months of testing, Wendy failed every single week. More on that later.

If you knew Wendy, you knew she had a problem. You may have chosen to look away. Wendy certainly didn’t want to discuss it, and she was skilled at changing the subject or deflecting with charm. But you knew. And in knowing and doing nothing, you enabled it.

Since her death, the Estate has gained access to Wendy’s digital life: her emails, her text messages, her photos. The theme running through eleven years of communications is clear. Wendy told all of you that I was an abuser, a drug addict, and a criminal. She told you she moved to Denver to “escape my abuse.” She told you I was the one with the substance problem, that I was dangerous, that I was trying to destroy her. None of this was true. Not a word of it. I have never abused anyone. I have never had a drug problem. I have no criminal record. These were the lies of a disease that needed to protect itself, and Wendy’s brilliant legal mind made those lies convincing in ways that most people’s lies never could be.

You all believed that Wendy was an amazing person, and she truly was, beneath the addiction. But you also believed she was a victim of my abuse. When we separated in 2014, nearly all of Wendy’s friends and family treated her version of events as gospel. She’s fine. She’s the victim. Patrick is the aggressor. That narrative kept her sick. It kept her surrounded by people who would never challenge her drinking because they were too busy seeing her as someone who needed protection from me.

I am truly sorry that you lost your friend. But I am equally sorry, and yes, angry, that you let it happen. The signs were everywhere. Wendy died of alcoholic fatty liver disease. In her final years, she suffered public seizures. The swelling in her face was visible in every recent photo. Her body was telling a story that her words denied. None of you called me. None of you reached out directly to the girls to ask how things really were. You all persisted in the comfortable fiction because maintaining Wendy’s friendship required it. And maintaining that friendship required not just listening to her lies about me, but believing them. Repeating them. Using them to justify your distance from the truth.

Now, over one hundred days since Wendy died, I am choosing to do the difficult thing: tell the whole truth.

Before the Disease

Wendy was extraordinary. That’s not revisionist history or the kindness we extend to the dead. It’s simply a fact. She had a warmth that drew people in, a hunger for life that made ordinary moments feel like adventures. When Wendy walked into a room, you felt it. She had a way of making you feel like the only person there, as if you really mattered.

We met on a blind date in Denver. That first night, something upset her at the bar (I never did find out what), and she left abruptly, very drunk and very distressed. I went home and called her to make sure she’d gotten home safely. We talked for an hour. That conversation, her surprise and delight that I’d called to check on her, was what sparked our relationship.

Wendy was brilliant. She earned her BA in History from UC Santa Barbara, where friends would say, “That’s just Wendy,” with a shrug and a smile, no matter what she said. She went on to law school at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she won both the CU Mock Trial Competition and the Northwest Regional Mock Trial Competition, often boasting that she had beaten her friend George Brauchler (one of Colorado's top criminal prosecutors). Her legal career was stellar. She built a reputation as a fierce advocate, first as a Deputy District Attorney and later as a Guardian Ad Litem. She was unstoppable in a courtroom, fighting for people who couldn’t fight for themselves.

She loved animals, especially dogs. Every dog. All of them. We had a Bernese Mountain Dog together named Zermatt, who was with us when the girls were babies. Zermatt was hilarious, with this peculiar OCD about walking through doorway thresholds. He’d pause and carefully consider each crossing as if it required strategic planning. Wendy would laugh every single time.

After I graduated from law school, my work took me to Germany. Wendy moved with me without hesitation. We explored Europe together, talking about our future family, making plans. I proposed to her on the Charles Bridge in Prague, and we rubbed the bronze fixtures meant to bring good luck to young couples in love.

We were young. We were in love. We both drank a lot.

When Everything Changed

Here’s what I didn’t understand then: Wendy and I were drinking similarly early on, but we weren’t experiencing it the same way. I would have wine with dinner and feel satisfied. Wendy would order a second bottle. Always. Then a third. When our daughters were born, I tapered my drinking significantly, limiting it to weekends, then to special occasions. Wendy never stopped.

She added Ambien. Then benzodiazepines. Then opiates when she could get them. She loved our family trips to Mexico because she could stock up on over-the-counter Tramadol and Codeine.

The mornings started to smell like alcohol. I found hidden bottles when I returned home from work. The excuses multiplied. She became someone else when she drank: argumentative, critical, mean-spirited. Our daughters were small and didn’t understand why Mommy was different at night.

In early 2014, one of Wendy’s family members called me. They were worried about her drinking. I was so relieved. Finally! Someone else saw it too. Together, we identified an excellent inpatient treatment facility. My employer at the time, Google, had fantastic insurance and approved the stay. We carefully planned an intervention with Wendy's family member. We were going to offer her eight weeks at a first-class facility, full support, everything she needed.

Wendy found out we were planning this. She confronted me about it, and the next day she walked out of the house and told me to be gone in a week.

I didn’t. I stayed for two more months, trying to make it work. Then one night, she got so drunk she chased me down the hallway, trying to start a physical fight. I locked myself in the guest bedroom while she stood outside screaming, kicking the door, out of control.

The next morning, she came downstairs and told me I had five days to find an apartment. Then she walked out of the house again. I moved out in April 2014.

The Divorce and the Denial

In court, Wendy insisted she was sober. She told the judge, her lawyer, her family, and all of our friends that I was “out to get her,” that I was making up vicious lies about her drinking to gain an advantage in custody. She was a brilliant litigator with an impeccable reputation as a prosecutor and Guardian Ad Litem. The judge knew her professional reputation. Initially, no one believed me.

But the court-appointed psychiatrist recommended a simple test: one week of daily urinalysis. If Wendy could stay clean for one week, there would be no more questions.

Wendy couldn’t stay sober. Not even for one week.

Her tests showed benzodiazepines, opiates, and on one occasion, a blood alcohol level well into the “drunk” range at 8:00 AM, while she was driving our daughters to school.

The court ordered six months of monitoring. Wendy failed every test. The court ordered outpatient treatment. She went, but kept using. The court ordered supervised visitation. She kept using. The court ordered a driver-lockout device, so she had to pass a breathalyzer before starting the car. She continued to use.

Finally, in April 2016, the court issued an emergency order for me to take full custody and relocate the girls to California immediately. The judge found that Wendy’s conduct created “imminent danger” for Carolyn and Avery. Per the court order, I had to pull them out of school in Denver that day and move them across the country to California. It was brutal. The girls weren’t ready, I wasn’t ready, but Wendy’s disease (and the court’s order) had made it necessary.

Through all of this, Wendy maintained to everyone who would listen that she did not have a drinking problem. She said I was a vindictive ex-husband, manufacturing evidence to destroy her. Many of her friends and some of her family believed her.

Eleven Years of Trying

After the emergency order, I told Wendy I would still share custody if she moved to California and maintained sobriety. She told me, plainly and directly, to fuck off.

Six months later, she called. She’d been in AA for two months, she said. She was sober. She was ready to move to California and share custody. I said yes immediately.

For about six months, it was good. She was present. She was sober. She took me to one of her AA meetings in San Mateo to show me her commitment. We co-parented cooperatively for the first time in years.

Then, suddenly, it stopped. She went back to drinking, harder than before, if anything. The late-night drunk texts resumed. The angry phone calls. I blocked her number, then unblocked it to try again, then blocked it again when the abuse resumed.

This cycle repeated for years. I wanted to reconcile, not as partners but as parents. There wasn’t a week that went by that I didn’t think about calling her to say, “Let’s put the past behind us and focus on the girls.” I tried multiple times. It never lasted more than a few days. She’d drink, start up with a barrage of angry texts and calls, and I’d block her again.

In 2023, Wendy moved back to Colorado. When she did, she effectively abandoned all contact with our daughters, one of whom was still in high school. I still cannot understand what would drive a mother to move out of state when her children are right there. The only explanation I can find is that her addiction demanded it. Moving to Denver meant she could drink without the friction of an ex-husband worried about the girls’ safety or teenage daughters who were becoming intolerant of her behavior.

Drinking ruled her life. And in the end, it took her life.

How She Died

On October 17, 2025, Wendy drank herself to death. October 17th was Carolyn’s 21st birthday.

Wendy and Carolyn were not on speaking terms. Carolyn had cut off contact because of years of verbal abuse from her mother, abuse fueled by the disease. But that night, alone in her Denver home, Wendy had laid out memorabilia from the last time Carolyn lived with her. Carolyn’s 8th-grade diploma sat on the desk. Stories and homework projects from junior high were spread around her. She was looking backward at a relationship she had destroyed, on the birthday of the daughter who could no longer bear to speak to her.

She couldn’t have done this in a more depressing way.

At some point that night, Wendy had a seizure. She vomited in the bathroom, started to clean it up, then collapsed on the living room floor while walking to her bedroom. The scene was covered with vodka bottles and evidence of substance use. She laid there for four days.

On October 21, Wendy’s friends in Denver realized they hadn’t heard from her. They requested a wellness check. Police entered her home and found her body. She was pronounced dead that day, but she had been gone since the 17th.

The physical signs of Wendy’s disease were not subtle. Alcoholic fatty liver disease does visible, recognizable damage. In her final years, Wendy’s face was swollen with edema, the puffiness that comes when a failing liver can no longer regulate fluid in the body. The seizures went back years. Friends witnessed them. Friends were alarmed by them. Friends took Wendy to the hospital after them. And yet those same friends chose to believe that these episodes had nothing to do with Wendy’s obvious, long-standing drinking problem. They accepted her explanation that the seizures were of “unknown origin.” They didn’t push. They didn’t ask Wendy or the doctors the hard questions (and, some of her closest family members are doctors). Nobody connected what they were seeing with what they already knew. Everyone chose the comfort of denial over the discomfort of confrontation, and Wendy paid for that choice with her life.

I understand why her friends made the choices they did. I had already lost my relationship with Wendy by confronting her drinking. Most of our mutual friends chose her side. They saw me as the aggressor, the vindictive ex making false accusations. By the time she died, I had been cut off from nearly everyone in our former circle, isolated from Wendy’s family, left to raise Carolyn and Avery alone while being painted as the villain.

Her friends made a different choice. They stayed close to Wendy by accepting her version of reality. They agreed she was a victim in the divorce. They agreed she wasn’t an alcoholic. They agreed there was nothing to see here.

That’s what denial looks like. That’s what enablement does. It keeps the sick person comfortable, and it keeps the disease alive.

What I’m Angry About

I’m not angry at Wendy. She was sick. Alcoholism is a disease as real and as deadly as cancer, and it killed her just as surely as a tumor would have.

But I am angry at the situation. I’m angry that our society still treats addiction like a moral failing instead of a medical condition. I’m angry that Wendy’s brilliant legal mind, her warmth, her potential, all of it was consumed by a disease that we have treatments for, if only people would accept the diagnosis.

I’m angry that I lost dozens of friends and family members who decided to “side” with Wendy and cut me out. I loved those people. It was painful beyond words to be isolated from them, to be seen as the enemy when all I was trying to do was protect my daughters and get Wendy help.

I’m angry that for eleven years, Wendy told people I was lying about her drinking, and then she died from drinking. I was right the whole time, and it doesn’t matter, because she’s still dead.

I’m angry that her friends saw the seizures, saw her declining health, saw the signs, and didn’t connect the dots because Wendy told them not to, and they valued the friendship more than they valued her life.

I’m angry that Carolyn and Avery feel guilty about their mother’s death. They weren’t speaking to her when she died. They think they could have stopped it. They couldn’t have. No one could have, except Wendy, and the disease wouldn’t let her.

What I Want You to Know

If you’re reading this and you recognize your own family in this story, please listen:

Alcoholism is a disease. It’s not a moral failing. It’s not a lack of willpower. It’s a chronic, progressive disease that changes brain chemistry and makes it impossible to choose recovery on willpower alone. You cannot love someone out of addiction. You cannot reason with it. You cannot ignore it and hope that it goes away.

The alcoholic will tell you they don’t have a problem. They will blame you for “exaggerating” or “making things up.” They will be convincing. This denial is part of the disease itself. But if you’re worried enough to be reading this, you’re probably right to be worried.

When you accept the alcoholic’s version of reality to keep the peace, you’re not helping them. You’re helping the disease. Love sometimes means risking the relationship to save the person.

When Wendy learned we were planning to seek her help, she saw it as an ambush. The disease convinced her that people who loved her were attacking her. But trying to get someone treatment is an act of love, even when they can’t see it that way.

If you’re married to an alcoholic, get support. Al-Anon exists for a reason. Therapy exists for a reason. You need people who understand that you’re not crazy for seeing what you see.

If there are children involved and you may need to protect them legally, document the behavior. I know it feels like you’re betraying your spouse. You’re not. You’re protecting your children from a disease that could harm them.

If your loved one is having seizures, they are in medical danger. Seizures from alcohol use or withdrawal can be fatal. This is not something to wait out.

And yes, you may lose people. I lost friends. I lost relationships with Wendy’s family. People believed her narrative that I was the problem. It was devastating. But I couldn’t let that stop me from protecting my daughters. You may have to make the same choice.

What I Wish I’d Done Differently

I carry guilt. So much guilt. I wish I’d found a way to reconcile with Wendy. I wish I’d been able to get through to her, to help her see that admitting the problem wasn’t defeat but survival.

I wish I’d been more persistent with her family and friends. Maybe if I’d tried harder to make them understand, they would have stopped enabling her. Maybe she’d still be alive.

I wish I’d known earlier in our relationship, back when we were both drinking heavily, that alcohol had a different hold on Wendy than it did on me. Maybe if I’d recognized it then, we could have addressed it before marriage, before kids, before the disease had such a grip on her life.

But the truth is, I don’t know if anything I could have done would have changed the outcome. Alcoholism is a disease that resists treatment, that convinces its victim that treatment is the enemy. Wendy would have had to choose recovery, and the disease never let her make that choice.

To Wendy

I don’t believe in an afterlife, in karma, in any kind of cosmic justice. But if there’s some part of you that can hear this, I want you to know:

It became clear over the years that our lives and values had diverged to the point of incompatibility. But it’s possible to still love someone even when you can’t be together. In that sense, I never stopped loving you. Even when I had to protect our daughters from your disease. Even when you told people I was lying. Even when you cut me out. I loved who you had been, and I never gave up hope that person might come back. I grieved watching the disease take over your life long before you died.

I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. I’m sorry that my attempts to help felt like attacks.

Alcoholism is a disease that few people understand, but even more people refuse to learn about because understanding it requires making tough decisions. It requires confronting people you love about what they are doing to themselves. I wish that had happened more with the friends and family who were still in contact with you. I wish they had realized that I was not lying, being manipulative, or exaggerating. I was ringing an alarm bell, hoping it would be answered, hoping it would save my daughters’ mom. It could have made all the difference. You might be alive today if the people around you had been willing to see the truth and act on it.

I hope wherever you are, you’re finally at peace. I hope you’re barefoot and petting all the dogs, just like your obituary said. I hope you’re free from the craving that ruled your life for so long.

And I hope, God, I hope, that your story helps someone else’s family choose a different ending.

To Everyone Else

Wendy Lynn McCallum was an incredible person who died from a disease that our society still doesn’t understand. She was intelligent, warm, loving, and brilliant in a courtroom. She made everyone she talked to feel valued. She threw memorable parties and turned chaos into memories.

She was also an alcoholic. And that disease killed her.

These two things are both true. They’re not contradictory. They’re the whole story.

If you knew Wendy and you’re reading this, I’m not trying to tarnish her memory. I’m trying to honor the full truth of her life, including the part that killed her. Because the only way we prevent more deaths like Wendy’s is by refusing to participate in the denial that surrounds this disease.

If you’re living with an alcoholic, please get help. If you’re watching someone you love destroy themselves, please intervene. If you’re being told that you’re exaggerating or making things up, trust what you see.

And if you’re the one who’s drinking, if you’re reading this and recognizing yourself in Wendy’s story, please, please ask for help. Admitting you have a problem is not a weakness. It takes courage, but it can save your life. There are people who will help you. There are treatments that work. You don’t have to die from this disease.

Wendy did. But you don’t have to.

My heart breaks for the life Wendy could have had. For the relationship she could have had with Carolyn and Avery. For all the years we lost to this disease. But if telling her story, the whole, complicated, painful truth of it, helps even one family recognize the disease earlier, intervene more effectively, or refuse to enable the denial that keeps people sick, then something good can come from this enormous loss.

To Wendy: I miss you. I’m sorry. I wish things had been different.

And to you, the friend who believed her story and is reading this now: I don’t need anything from you. I’m not waiting for an apology. I just needed to say this out loud, finally, after eleven years of being the only one willing to tell the truth.

Now you know.

And to everyone else: Don’t let denial kill someone you love. It’s never too late to take stock of your relationships and ask yourself what’s really happening. The truth is hard, but silence is deadly.