Marriage and sometimes even a love story (Part two)

“Let’s watch this movie together tonight,” I had suggested to David a few weeks before this event.   I remember distinctly watching the movie “Ordinary People”.     “That was exactly what it was like for me growing up,” I said to David.  “You’re just stupid,” he retorted angrily.  He got up and left the room.  How does the person in whom you could confide your deepest secrets become the last person in the world you can or would confide in?    

“Get out,” I told David again the day after he had smashed the toys.  I said it every day for weeks after that.  He simply ignored me.  He pretended nothing out of the ordinary had happened.  How can he do that?  It made me feel like I was crazy.  Was I imagining what happened?     I knew Jessica had seen it and that gave me comfort and strength.    I couldn’t afford to move anywhere with the children.   I didn’t have the money for the deposits needed to move into an apartment. I didn’t have money to go to a hotel.   I didn’t have money to hire a lawyer and I am not sure that would have helped if I did.  The next several months passed without any further incidents of violence.  Then the violence returned with even more force.  It was now directed at me.   I am not sure the children really knew the difference.

 “You are out of control. You are crazy!” I yelled at him.  “You make me do the things I do because you are such a lousy wife!” David shouted as he hurled something at me.   I ran in the direction of one of the bedrooms. He followed me.  I turned to face him in the doorway of the bedroom.  He punched me and I fell down.  Samuel was standing behind me and he fell too.  I landed on top of Samuel.  He was five years old.

  “You are not going anywhere,” David said to me.   He stood between me and the door.  He wouldn’t let me leave the room much less the house. Every time I tried to leave he pushed me back into the room. I tried not to scare the kids more than they already were scared.  I heard the kids in the next room playing together.   They came in and said good night to me.

The next day David got Samuel and Jessica off to school.  Ellen went next door to the sitter’s house.  Eventually David dragged me into the car with him on some errands.  He stopped for a red light. I jumped out of the car.  I was fortunately only a few blocks from the office.  I can’t really remember what I said or did at the office.  I know I really didn’t tell anyone what had happened.  I was too embarrassed.  Somehow I got a ride back to the house.  I called the police.  David didn’t come back to the house that night.

“We can’t do anything m’am since your husband isn’t at home.   If he comes back give us a call,” the police officer said to me. 

I went to work the next day. The children went to school and the sitter.  The children were understandably acting out at home.  I was feeling totally overwhelmed.   I called a few family lawyers but I didn’t have the money to hire one.  That night David came home again.   The next time David became violent and tried to keep me in the house I was able to run out the front door and get to my neighbors.   My neighbor called the police.    I ran back home immediately to see David pulling out of the driveway with Samuel in the back seat of the car.   My heart sank.

“Do you have someplace you can go for the night?” the officer asked me.  Finally I was talking to a compassionate officer who didn’t look at me like I had horns.  Domestic violence wasn’t taken very seriously by police officers or even the courts back then.    I frantically searched in my mind for someone to call.  We had just moved to this city several months ago.    This isn’t exactly something you want to talk to good friends about much less new acquaintances. “You need to call someone,” he insisted.  Since David had fled before the officer arrived there was nothing that could be done to him right then.

 “He is your son’s father and there is no custody order so I can’t do anything about him taking the boy,” the officer said.   Very reluctantly I picked up the phone and dialed the person I knew the best in my new city.  “Eva can the kids and I stay at your house tonight?” I heard myself ask. I felt like I was outside my body – like I was watching this happen to someone else.   I knew Eva was going to ask why and I dreaded that.   She did and I responded, “David has hit me and tried to keep me from leaving the house. The police officer does not want the children and I to stay here tonight. ”   Eva hung up the phone without saying anything.  “We will be all right here,” I told the officer.  I spent the better part of the evening in a panic wondering where Samuel was and if he was OK.   David dropped Samuel off at the house later that night and left.  Maybe things are going to get better I thought.

I had a restraining order issued but I could never get David served with it so it was of no use.  During that time I think he would have simply ignored it anyway.  I filed for divorce. By some miracle David simply stopped coming back to stay at the house.  That didn’t mean he disappeared from our lives entirely.

I was afraid if I told people at the office I would get fired maybe not right then but eventually.  I kept everything a secret for a while emulating my upbringing.  I must have made some excuses for leaving the office on occasion but I don’t remember anything about that.   I know that I never told anyone about the violence.  We never spoke about it with the children but I know that the children kept everything a secret as well.  We were an isolated island of misery and despair surrounded by and functioning in a huge ocean of normalcy at least for others.  I went to work. The children went to school.  We carried on as if our life was not all about fear and violence.  I felt disconnected as if I lived in two separate worlds.  I had no idea how to help the children cope.

 “I am going to kill you, cut your body up into little pieces and bury it in the desert so no one will find you.  I am going to kidnap the kids and take them to Mexico,” David spewed this venom. He had barged his way into the house on the pretense of picking up the children for a visit.  Suddenly he stopped.   Jessica had entered the room.  It had become a pattern that was repeated over and over again.  He would say these things every time I had contact with him. Each time Jessica would enter the room David would stop.  I know Jessica heard what he said.  My poor Jessica!  I was afraid David would really carry out his threats.  I think Jessica was too.  He was crazy enough, at that time, to do it.

The phone was ringing again.   I looked at the clock. It was 2 am.   “Who are you sleeping with tonight you whore?” I heard David scream.   I hung up the phone. I double checked to make sure all the windows and doors were locked.  I lay awake all night.  I was afraid if I didn’t answer the phone he would come over to the house and do something worse. 

David picked up my mail from the mailbox and read it.  He broke into the house, answered my phone and ransacked my things.  He stole my car.  He called me at the office and at home accusing me of having affairs with every man I came into contact with.   He would come to pick up the kids for a visit and punch me in the face when I opened the door.  

How does one respond to all of this?   Should I fight back?  Should I be passive in hopes of placating him?   Would it really matter what I did?  Is my response really going to affect his behavior to any significant degree?   It seemed no matter what I did he was hell bent on abusing me.    Nothing could stop that.  Any change that could have affected his behavior would have to have been done long before he first raised his fist to punch me.  I knew he was in a rage and wanted to destroy everything.   Things like courts and police have no power over such a person. That was perhaps the scariest thing of all.

I apologize to the reader if this all seems out of order or makes little sense.  As I write this I am overcome by potent remnants of the fear and anger.    I feel confused.   It is as if my defenses kick in and my mind becomes foggy to protect me from too many bad memories.  I have tried so hard to forget the details of what happened.  I don’t even want to remember them here.

These events went on regularly for at least nine months during which David engaged in all of the above and more on a weekly basis.  The children and I lived constantly, every minute of every day, with the fear generated by his actions.  I was trying, perhaps mistakenly, to keep things as normal as possible for the children.

I don’t recall why I did not get more help from the courts or police.  Was I right to feel bad about myself because I didn’t fight back?    Or should I just judge myself as a victim who is helpless to change, at that particular moment, the course of events?  I tried not to judge myself too harshly.  In some way I sensed that if I fought David too much and involved the courts and police he would fight harder and maybe carry out one of his threats.   I hoped David’s rage would eventually be spent and he would simply go away. That strategy didn't work all that well.  (To be continued)

Loneliness

I hadn’t been back since it all happened.  It happened quite a long time ago – almost 16 years ago now.   As I prepared for this business trip I promised myself I wouldn’t do it.   In fact I swore I would resist any and all such urges.   As soon as I disembarked the plane I am afraid it started.  

Why do I insist on revisiting the past?   Do I just like to torture myself or is there some positive purpose to this exercise?    I was on a mission to revisit my past even if I didn’t want to.   I was inexorably drawn back there.

It is this past – the events that happened in this desert city - which I sought to escape by marrying Warren.  When I met Warren in Italy, I hadn’t resolved or come to terms with this past.  I was still mired in the past.   I wanted an easy escape and I found it in my new relationship with Warren. Oh I didn’t realize that at the time.  I only see that now.

 New relationships are so full of possibilities. They can be the catalyst for new beginnings in every aspect of our lives.  Romantic relationships, when they are new, have the euphoric effect of a drug.  At first, new relationships seem like an escape from the past. But in fact the past, if left unresolved, will haunt and destroy any new beginnings as it did with my relationship with Warren.  The seeds of our divorce were sown in the very beginning by the unresolved issues of our past lives.     

 The first encounter with my past, on this business trip, did not occur of my own volition.  I passed by it on my walk from the gate where I disembarked the airplane to the baggage claim.  I was struck by the starkness of the scene.  The last time I was there it was teeming with life.  Back then these were the United Airline gates my young children used to fly out of to visit my sister or parents.   Now even the chairs had been removed.  It was a big empty room.  The emptiness served as an even stronger reminder of how much time had passed and how much had happened since the last time I waved goodbye to the children as they disappeared down the ramp.    I continued to follow the signs to the baggage claim and then to the car rental shuttle.   As I crossed the street to the island to catch the shuttle I remembered that this is where I used to drop my parents off to catch the plane back to my hometown.    I see myself hugging them and saying good bye with tears in my eyes.  It all seems so real!    My children grew up here but they don’t think of this place as their hometown.  Sadly, my children don’t have a hometown.  I catch the rental car shuttle bus and silently celebrate that there are no memories here.

This is why I left.   Memories were everywhere.  They surrounded me and, for a while, they suffocated me.  The memories were painful back then. The memories are still painful.   I was surprised by the strength of those memories after so many years.  I felt tears welling up in my eyes.    Some memories are merely poignant as so much of my life is behind me now.   Some memories evoke regrets for my choices and failures and for the roads not travelled.   Then there are memories of the unhappy events over which I had little or no control.  These are the most powerful memories.  I felt paralyzed by the intensity of the pain those memories evoked.

Oh there is much to regret and there is much to celebrate about my life here.  I do feel sad that so much of my life has gone by.  I feel like I failed to enjoy so much of it.  I do regret getting caught up in the treadmill of life.  I imagine myself as a hamster running inside the wheel in its cage.  In my drive to get to the next task I missed out on the joys of the moment.   I remind myself that I did gain valuable insight and wisdom during those years which has helped me to avoid this pitfall in my later years.  If I allow my thoughts to dwell here too long I will be overcome with sadness for what is past.

But there are other memories as well here in this city.  A real tragedy happened in my life when I lived here.   In many ways that tragedy has defined my life.  I calculate events as prior to or subsequent to the tragedy.  I calculate my personal growth before and after that event.  I mark the emotional growth of my children based on that event.   That event marks my life and the lives of my children in so many ways. 

  If I ignore my memories I feel like I am acting outside of myself.  If I indulge myself and go back in time I feel overcome with grief and regrets.  

I found myself driving, without any conscious thought, around this city in the desert where I spent so many years of my life.  It was here I spent my life as a young adult, wife and mother.    It was almost as if someone else was in control of the vehicle.   I drove past the last place I worked.   I drove past the first place I worked right after I moved here.     I drove past the historic district where so many events in my life took place.  I stopped in front of the beautiful historic home that houses a restaurant and is a venue for private parties.  The wedding reception for my last marriage took place in that house.  Many years before that I threw a 40^th birthday party for Eloise there. She was one of my closest friends.   I tried to recall the last time I saw her. 

 “Eloise, Eloise!”  I called as she walked past me in the cavernous hallway of the sports arena.   She finally turned and said hello.  We hadn’t seen or spoken to each other in months.   She didn’t ask me how I had been.   “Can you and Brian come over for dinner with some friends next weekend?” is all she said.   “We are going to be out of town that weekend,” I responded.  “Another time then,” she said.    I never heard from her again.  

I can’t help but wish that I were staying with Eloise and her husband while I am here on this business trip.  We could be reminiscing now about when our children, who are now young adults, were toddlers.   We spent that part of our lives as friends.   We had met quite by accident.  We instantly connected.   We did so much together with the children and with our spouses.  We spent all our holidays together.  In fact we saw each other almost every weekend when the children were young.   Our spouses even became good friends.   Then one day our friendship ended just as suddenly and mysteriously as it had begun.

 Eloise and her husband didn’t come to the funeral.    They didn’t send flowers or even a sympathy card.  Maybe they didn’t know that Brian had died.  They knew he was sick with Lou Gehrig’s disease.  

 I ran into Eloise at a restaurant a few months after the funeral.   She was waiting in line in front of me.  I recognized her immediately.  I hoped she wouldn’t notice me.   When she turned to go to her table she saw me.  After I placed my order at the counter I sat at a table at the opposite end of the restaurant from where Eloise was.  I deliberately sat with my back to her.   A short time later, I looked up from my food to see here standing next to my table. 

“Don’t you want to talk to me?” she asked.   I wanted to scream some things at her but I didn’t.   Did she even know what had happened in my life since I last saw her? Did she even know Brian was dead?  Did she care?  “I have nothing to say to you,” is all I said.    She looked hurt, turned and left the restaurant.  What would I have accomplished if I said those things to her?  We could never be friends again not after what she had done.    She was my closest friend.  Right after Brian was diagnosed she and her husband disappeared from our lives.

  Still for some mysterious reason I called her many, many years later.  I lived in another state by then.  We chatted.  We brought each other up to date regarding our children.  We exchanged contact information.  Neither of us ever contacted the other again.   

  It feels so incredibly empty to return to a city where I spent so much of my life – 14 years- and so many important events in my life occurred and yet I am seeing no one from that time in my life.   It feels like a huge void.   My thoughts returned to Eloise.  What if I had said those things to her in the restaurant? What if I had told her how much she hurt me?  Would we have rekindled our friendship?   Do I really want to be friends with a person who deserted me at one of the most difficult periods of my life?  Maybe, while I am here on business, I should pick up the phone and call her to see if she can get together for a cup of coffee.  I was tempted to call her but I never did.  

Blended Families - Can we make them work?

It struck me that it was a very strange thing to think about at that particular moment.  It was just a few moments ago that Warren and I resolved our divorce after two years of acrimony.  As I was walking to my car from the courthouse I realized that I would never see or hear from them ever again.  I would never know if they graduated from college, married, and had children.   Why did I care?   It seems to me that under certain circumstances a connection can never happen no matter how hard we try. Even in the best of times of our marriage a connection never happened between Warren’s two daughters and I.   Circumstances can make it impossible. That was the case here I think.

It was ten years ago – the first time I met them, Teresa and Louise.  They were young girls at that time and very timid and shy.  They had come to my house to spend the day.   Somewhat sheepishly they examined everything in the house carefully. They tried to do it so I wouldn’t notice.  After checking everything out in the house they wanted to go swimming.  That seemed like a good idea.  Participating in an activity together usually is a good ice breaker.  It is certainly beats standing around trying to make conversation with a stranger.

“Where the heck is Wentworth, Mississippi?” I asked Warren after the girls had returned home.    I had never heard of it.  That is where his daughters lived.  It is a town of about 100,000 people.  I had absolutely no point of reference to understand living in such a small town in the South. I would later discover, to my surprise, that our lack of such a common experience would be significant.  In this day and age of so much national and international travel, communication and information it struck me as so odd that this difference could be so powerful. 

“The girls are coming to visit for the summer,” Warren told me.  They would be coming to the megalopolis of Southern California. Warren and I had married and moved there a few months earlier. They had spent vacations there before so it was familiar to them.  For my family it was a new full time living environment. We had visited there but never lived there.  There were a lot of firsts and new beginnings that summer.   It was definitely too much change all at once but I was blind to the need to introduce change carefully in those days.  Maybe this was a result of my impatient nature.  I wanted everything to be resolved as fast as possible or maybe “in place” would be a better phrase.

It was, to put it mildly, crazy that first summer.   We had six kids living with us ranging in age from 6 to 21.   We, the parents, or at least I, were walking around on egg shells. I can’t speak for Warren.  I so wanted all of us to somewhat gel, i.e, to at least arrive at an amiable tolerance of each other that had the potential to blossom into something more when everyone matured.  I understood it was a difficult process. I had been through it before.   I did not want to adopt the attitude of let’s wait to enjoy ourselves until the kids no longer come to visit or no longer live with us.  I am not sure what Warren thought because we really didn’t talk about it.   I should have pressed him to communicate about it but people’s children are such a sensitive topic.  We did what I imagine most second marriage couples do – we muddled through without any thoughtful plan.  Maybe we were just too involved in enjoying being with each other to formulate a plan.   Did we naively think that because we were happy the children would follow suit?   It is hard to believe we could think that!  That first summer ended up being all about damage control.

“I’m not going to do it!”  I heard someone shout downstairs.   I heard some more commotion downstairs. It sounded like someone was screaming or crying.   When I got to the kitchen Teresa was standing by the dishwasher with her head bowed down. The phone was in her hand.   Her shoulders were shaking. In between sobs she was able to blurt out, “I have to unload the dishwasher!”  I hate it here. I want to go home,” she continued.   By that time the commotion had drawn an audience – pretty typical for those early days of the marriage “Did you call your mother because you have to unload the dishwasher?” I shrieked.   “Everyone is pitching in and helping out.  You need to the same,” I said not very nicely I’m sure.  I left before I said more I would regret.    The crowd dispersed.  I have no idea if Teresa ever unloaded that dishwasher.  I went upstairs to finish getting ready to go to the office.  I was already late.  

I am sure it started earlier but this was the first time I really saw it.   Of course on the drive to the office I went over everything about that scene in my mind.  I remember observing that my kids, except for my youngest –the six year old, were elated.   Warren and Louise were silent.  I know that when I spoke to Teresa she reeled to look at me with eyes filled with hatred and loathing.  I knew previously there was some animosity but this was something more.  Did it start that morning?   Is that when the animosity turned to loathing?  No, I think it started on our wedding day.  On that day Teresa looked like she was attending a funeral not a wedding.    She never said she was unhappy but then she didn’t need to.  Her demeanor said it all. 

 I had intentionally asked very little of Teresa that first summer.  Before this explosion Warren and I had discussed nicely with Teresa on many occasions that she had to help out at the house.  Everyone had some assigned responsibilities.   Her response was that she didn’t have to do any chores at home and she didn’t see why she should do any here. She managed to avoid doing anything for several weeks but eventually my children started getting angry.  Children always feel like they are doing more than their siblings.  It is much worse when the other sibling is a step-sibling.   Truthfully Teresa was not doing anything.  I had made a point of observing her for a few weeks because I didn’t want to be favoring my children or being unduly harsh on Warren’s children.  I wanted to be fair.   Warren acknowledged Teresa wasn’t doing anything.   We discussed that she needed to pitch in.  Warren was going to insist that she do some chores.  I guess he must have insisted that morning.   Maybe I finally insisted with him.   So what happened during the first overt breakdown of the summer?    I got angry, lost it and I yelled at her.  As I drove to the office, I remember regretting my behavior and asking myself what it would take to make things work.  I wasn’t asking for the moon. I just wanted everyone to tolerate each other.   Even that may have been asking too much as I found out later.   As soon as I got home that night I should have gone downstairs and apologized to Teresa for my outburst but I didn’t.  

To be continued...

Death and Love Together (Part Two)

          The disease ate away at and ravaged our emotions just as it ate away at and ravaged Brian’s body.  Brian first lost total use of his left arm.  It just kind of hung on his body like a dead tree limb hangs from the trunk of a tree.  When he walked it would flap around like a dead tree limb does in the wind.  Brian developed the habit, whenever he moved, of using his right arm to hold his left arm close to his body.  His left arm would still hang loosely at his side when he held Gary with his right arm pressing him close to his chest.  That left arm was a gruesome and constant reminder of the disease that was eating away at his body.

Physically his body deteriorated in increments.  Brian started to shuffle when he walked.  He couldn’t stand for long periods of time.  His right arm deteriorated.  He couldn’t hold our baby son in his arms anymore.  After 18 months he was in a wheelchair on a full time basis.  The damage was irreversible.  The doctors had informed us that there are just about as many variations in the way the disease progresses as there are individuals that have it.  We had no information regarding the emotional deterioration.

I do believe some people experience or feel things more deeply than others. I believe I am one of those.  Oh I wished many times that I wasn’t. 

            Right after the diagnosis the best time for me was early in the morning when I was half awake.  Initially, when I was waking up, I would have this ominous feeling in the pit of my stomach that something bad was going to happen.  In my half awake state, I could convince myself that the foreboding feeling was just the remnant of a very bad nightmare.  I would sigh with relief.  But when I was fully awakened I could no longer delude myself.  As time went on I could no longer be comforted by the delusion that this was all a nightmare.  I would bolt awake with the feeling that I was going to throw up.  It was a nightmare - just not the kind you have when you are asleep.  Fortunately whatever I was feeling could not be front and center for very long. There were many things to attend to including a crying baby.  However, this evil was never forgotten for long.  It had taken up permanent residence in my psyche.  It was like a black blot in my consciousness comprised of every horrible feeling you can imagine – pain, desperation, loneliness, rage, fear, anxiety.  That black blot grew in size and shape as the disease progressed until at the end it swallowed me.

            Tears would have been such a relief.  I couldn’t do it.  I couldn’t cry except on a very few occasions.  And I wouldn’t describe what I did then as crying.  I emitted some kind of a primitive sound deep from within my body.  It scared the hell out of me. I couldn’t believe that sound came from me.  It was a primordial sound.  The first time it happened I was in the bathroom of our house.  It was shortly after Brian told me about the disease.  The last time was when I first saw Brian’s lifeless body.  I have no idea what brought it on the first time.  I was alone in the house except for the baby who was sleeping.  I collapsed onto the bathroom floor, screaming, crying, sobbing, heaving, writhing and emitting that sound. I must have looked like some primitive animal that had been fatally shot and was slow to die.  Words were not coming out of my mouth only that weird, non human sound.  After several minutes I was exhausted.  I lay on the floor quietly for a while, more exhausted than I had ever felt.   I heard the baby cry.  I slowly pulled myself up off the bathroom floor.  It was time to get back to the demands of the living.

            Adversity by its nature is unique.  We each define it differently and we each cope with it in our own way.  Hearing the stories of other widows and widowers gave me hope that I could survive but it really didn’t give me the tools to get through each and every day.  I didn’t want to go about my business as usual pretending everything was “fine.”  Yet what was the alternative?   I had to find my own way to live with the pain just like I would eventually have to find my own way to heal.  I felt like I was slowing sinking into a quicksand of despair.  No one seemed to be able to throw me a lifeline.  Certainly Brian could not.

Have you ever been haunted by the what ifs of your life? ( Part Four)

The following "chapters" of this blog contain some of the experiences, observations and insights I have acquired in living my life.  The "chapters" are in no particular order.  The events related in each "chapter" are in no particular order.  The "chapters" are not really connected except for the fact that they relate my personal experiences and observations.  The "chapters" don’t build on each other.  You can read the "chapters" in any order you wish.

            I hope you, the reader, can find at least one thing of value for your own life in the pages of this blog.  Perhaps you will start thinking about the choices you have made in your own life and about the roads you have travelled.  It may help you to understand why you made the choices you did.  It may help you to recognize what you have learned along the way.  It may help you abandon the fantasy of the roads not travelled.  It may open the door to discussions between you and your family or friends that can lead to a closer connection with them.  It may help you make peace with where and who you are.  It may help you to be open to the spiritual side of life.  It may help you decide what roads you want to travel in the remaining years of your life.  I humbly offer my own personal experiences and insights to you in hopes they may help you on your own journey wherever it may lead you.

Have you ever been haunted by the what ifs of your life? ( Part Three)

I know I cannot change the past but I want to make better choices in my remaining years.  I want to actually make a choice. I am not sure I did that before.  I felt more buffeted around by forces and emotions that I didn’t understand and by misperceptions about myself and others.  I convinced myself that none of my decisions were impulsive because I took a lot of time to analyze and think about them.  I dissected the consequences, pluses and minuses in my mind of each proposed course of action, sometimes for a year or more.  But I realize now that I was just rationalizing my impulsive decision.  I see now that I often dismissed the voice of reason or prudence.  In my loneliness over the loss of my husband, I overlooked the warning signs that this most recent relationship would never work. 

What if I had decided not to marry early?  What if I had decided not to marry my ex-husband?  What if I had married instead my first serious boyfriend?  What if I had decided to seriously pursue a career?  What if I decided to delay or not have children?  You see what I have been doing to myself these last few years.  I can’t live in the present as I am continually dragged back to the past.  Sometimes I feel paralyzed to act because I recognize that I have made so many “bad” choices in my life.  How do I move forward?  I think I can only do that by coming to terms with my past.

I don’t have any idea if I can answer all or even any of those questions.  The” what ifs” are infinite.  I know that I have to try if I am going to find any peace.  And above all I want to make peace with my life and my choices.  Only then will I make peace with where I am right now and begin to live more in the moment.  I will keep my eye on the future –where I am going but with more of a sense of trust that I am making choices and those “choices” are taking me where I want to go. 

I have tried but I can’t find peace in superficial answers or in busy activities.  So I have to venture down this difficult path that is strewn and overgrown with “what ifs”.  I reluctantly look down the roads not travelled.  I try to imagine my life if I had made another choice.  I imagine I would be happier, more successful or in a better place.  But I don’t really know that.  That is all fantasy and I don’t want to base my journey on fantasy and imaginings.  I only really know the outcome of the roads I have travelled.  And so I decide to embark on a journey to review the roads I have travelled in hopes I may come to terms and make peace with the roads I didn’t travel.

This is not meant to be a comprehensive or chronological recounting of my life.  This is the story of an emotional journey, not a physical one.  Emotions or should I say emotional memories don’t lend themselves to any kind of order.  They perhaps are better told as they are remembered, that is, as a series of unconnected vignettes.  Their formation and experience is a process and not a very orderly one at that.   Emotions surface at inopportune times.  Emotional growth does not progress in any chronological order.  Oftentimes an experience will have an impact on us only many years after it has happened. 

As I look into the mirror I see the face of a middle aged women staring back at me.  The image reminds me so of the passage of all the years.  It frightens me that so much of my life is now behind me.  Why did I do the things I did?  If I understand that will it make any difference in my life as I look toward the future?  In the end will my life have any meaning? 

I started on my life journey with no roadmap.  It might be more accurate to say I had small bits and pieces of a roadmap that were unconnected and huge pieces were missing.  In some of my darkest hours I would sustain myself by saying if my children learned from and were able to avoid even some of the mistakes of my life it would all be worth it.  I hope in my life and with this journal I have provided them with at least a rudimentary roadmap for their journey.  It would give my life some meaning.

What about God? (Part Two)

Where have all the men gone?    That is a question often asked by clergy.  The men of my father’s generation attended church.   A much smaller percentage of the men in my generation attend and are involved with the Church.   This next generation has even less. Sure attendance is down as a whole but that doesn’t explain the conspicuous absence of the men.  I knew Brian had attended church and several Bible studies before we met.   I liked that about him.   After I divorced when my children were very young, I started to have a vague sense that God was important.  After Brian and I were married the vague sense became something more.

Something was pressing in on me kind of like a person  in the airport security line who gets so close that they invade your personal space.  I have had this feeling at various times in my life.    I am usually busy and it is easy to ignore it in the beginning.  I push it into the background hoping it will eventually go away.  But usually it persists.  It is kind of like being followed around by an omnipresent specter.  It keeps its distance as long as I am moving but when I stop it gets close enough to really annoy me.  It presses in on me more and more as time passes and I ignore it.  It starts to engage in a “persistent nagging.”   The specter won’t go away.  It won’t stop “nagging.”   I am in a constant state of annoyance.  This feeling starts to interfere with my ability to enjoy my life.  Eventually I can’t enjoy anything I am doing.   I feel like I am being suffocated.   When that happens I am compelled to deal with it.  There will be no peace in my life until I do.   In my case I don’t really know what I am being nagged to do.    I have to conduct a sometimes exhaustive search.  It is strictly a search by trial and error.  I know when I have hit on the “right thing” because the discomfort stops.   So it was that I was visited by my specter of discomfort when I was 37 years old.  

At the time my “specter” was pressing in on me, my life was incredibly full or more appropriately incredibly busy.  In fact I was so busy I wasn’t enjoying my life.  Back then, the innumerable daily demands prevented me from savoring any moments.  Now my life is devoid of everything that made it so busy back then.   Now I have time to savor the moments but not as many daily moments to savor.   It seems that life is so out of balance. Is there any way to arrange it so that we aren’t robbed of enjoyment by the overwhelming demands of making it all work?  Is there any way to keep the memorable moments from clumping together like small metal fragments stuck to the end of a magnet?  At that time in my life I couldn’t’ imagine where I was going to find the time and energy to add anything else to my life.   But something kept “nagging” me relentlessly. 

“I want to tell you a story about a time I was disappointed,” the young minister said. “I really, really wanted to go to this particular college.  It was the only school that I wanted to attend.  My parents forced me to apply to other schools but I just knew I would be accepted and go to the school of my choice.  Sadly I wasn’t accepted.  I was very angry at God for a long time because I thought He could have made it happen for me if He wanted to,” he said as he continued to tell history.   As I sat in the church pew that morning and listened to this eerily familiar story, I kept wondering to myself why I had come to church that Sunday.     At that time in my life everything was going smoothly at least by my standards.  I was married to Brian. I was pregnant with Gary.    I was employed in my field.   Money was no longer a huge issue.  The children were settled and doing well.   The roller coaster ride of the previous years had become more of a train ride or almost.  The trip still included travel over big mountains and valleys but they were smaller, fewer and farther between.  Why then urgency to go back to church?   I realized that my “specter” had stopped “nagging” me as I sat in church that morning.  That was reason enough for me.

 “Do we really want all that space?”  I asked Brian   He was so excited that I hadn’t wanted to say anything for fear of spoiling this for him.   I am not sure why I did ask.  I knew it wouldn’t change anything.  It was too late in the process anyway.   Brian looked at me quizzically and resumed giving instructions and orders to the construction crew.  We would be moving to a new house on the other side of town in a few months.   Everything would have to change including the church I would attend. 

 Eventually we settled into our new home.  I found a church close by where Brian had attended services in the past.  I remember our first visit was to attend a Thanksgiving service. Gary was about 5 months old at the time.  He sat quietly on my lap during the service.   It was, obviously, about giving thanks.  I remember thinking that was a strange topic for us at the time.    We had already received the preliminary diagnosis of Lou Gehrig’s’ disease, months earlier.  I didn’t feel like I had much to give thanks for at the time.  Brian was going to die.  In the early days of the illness, the church service offered me some peace but not because I experienced God there.  I enjoyed the familiar hymns, the message, the chance to mediate, the rituals.   I didn’t connect these things to God.

 My decision to attend church at this time had a rational component to it.  I knew, even though I thankfully had no idea how difficult things would be, that I could not cope with Brian’s by myself.  I knew that I needed help.   That was a big admission for me given my background and temperament which I won’t repeat here.  You see I had resolved that I would no longer just soldier on and suffer through difficult times.   I wanted to arrive at the end feeling like I had “triumphed” not just survived. By triumph I don’t mean patting myself on the back or blowing a horn of rejoicing like we do Easter morning.  I am referring to getting to the end and saying something other than,”I made it” bitterly.   I had no idea how to do that.   The church seemed like a good place to look for that kind of help.  I wasn’t really thinking of it as a place to seek a relationship with God.  I was thinking more in terms of finding people who could offer me some support in the ensuing months or years.   

I saw it announced in the church bulletin one Sunday.  A new group was forming.  I think it was called “Living with Chronic Illness.”   That wasn’t quite my situation but I decided to give it a try.  I was totally new to this church so I did not know a soul – no pun intended.  

I arrived at the appointed time or a few minutes late as is my habit.   The door to the meeting room was closed.   I wanted to secretly peek in to see what was happening but there were no windows.   I put my hand on the door handle but I couldn’t turn it.   I let go of the door handle.   I was afraid- no terrified.   Was I afraid of facing my feelings?  Was I afraid of sharing my life with strangers?  Oh there were so many fears back then it was difficult to know.  If red was the color of fear my entire body would have glowed bright red.   I was shaking.  Something made me open the door a little bit.  People were sitting in a circle wearing name tags.  Ugh I hate name tags!   The leader saw me before I could close the door and escape.  I hope they don’t expect me to say anything I thought as I entered the room.

We talked and prayed at the “Living with Chronic Illness” group meetings. After all this was church.  I went through the motions of prayer.  I didn’t get anything out of it.  Maybe that’s because I didn’t really believe anyone was out there listening or at least anyone who cared.  Prayer to me was just empty words but the community of people, especially the leaders, did nourish me emotionally.  That is what kept me coming back.  I was staring into the dark, cold, black abyss of despair and anger.  At times I was totally immersed in it.   This group was a light in the darkness.  It was the only light.   I couldn’t talk about my life in the “real world.” 

“Don’t talk to your friends about what you are going through,” a woman whose husband had recently died from Lou Gehrig’s disease advised me.   “If you do you won’t have any friends,” she continued.   How sad that she was right!  God not only afflicted us with terrible suffering but left us friendless and alone in the process.  Why should I talk to Him?  He obviously was not going to answer any of my prayers.  There was no way Brian was going to get better no matter how much I prayed.  I knew that.    I didn’t believe in miracles.

To Be Continued...