“He’s a brick around your neck and you’re slowly drowning.”
I looked up from my crumpled posture on the stairs. I thought I was alone when my husband, Larry, left the house—shouting, as he slammed the door, but there was my youngest son, Daniel, standing above me on the landing. Though numb from the anguish overwhelming me, I still sensed the urgent plea in Daniel’s words.
“Don’t stay with Dad on my account.” He turned and walked briskly back to his bedroom, cranking up the volume of his rock music--as was his custom of late--to drown out, I suppose, the incessant bickering that had in recent days broken the icy silence of the tomb we called our home.
Daniel was right: I was on the brink of despair. Years with Larry had broken my spirit and had reduced me to painfully enduring a hopeless marriage union that had long since destroyed my dignity. Larry begrudged the care and nurturing required by a family and had selfishly forced senseless, domineering restrictions on us—resulting in a meager, subsistence lifestyle. Though we earned a better than average income, the smallest household expenditure, or the simplest request for bare necessities, drove Larry into a veritable rage. He was sneering and derisive in every comment he made to the children and me, making our family miserable because he loathed living.
For years I’d felt sorry for him--over the course of our twenty-five year marriage, my earnest desire had been to share the joy of family-life. I wanted Larry to celebrate the fact that we had five beautiful children, a charming 6 ½ acre farm outside Portland, Oregon with a full view of Mt. Hood out our front window, and we were surrounded by loved ones that cared about us deeply. Life had handed us much good fortune, but Larry viewed living as a bitter joke; blind to our blessings.
During those years, I don’t remember even the shortest length of time when I didn’t want to try my best to make our marriage work, but two and a half decades had resulted in no measurable change in my husband’s perverse disposition and I struggled to suppress a mounting spirit of bitterness. I was discouraged and irritable because my future promised nothing but the same cold and lonely bleakness of the past.
“Just leave him!” my mother said as we talked the next day about the marital problems I had faced for so long. “If you’re scared and don’t know what to do—I’ll do it for you!” I appreciated my mom’s willingness to come to bat for me; it felt strangely comforting to hear the aggravated tone in her voice. I knew if any of my children faced similar issues, I’d encourage them to leave--but for myself--I wasn’t sure what to do.
“I don’t know, Mom…divorce just doesn’t seem like the answer.”
“There’s a whole lot worse in life than divorce,” my step-dad piped-up. He and Mom had gotten married when I was 16 years-old—more than thirty years before. We all sat together on the porch swing in the backyard of their cozy home on their lovely, neighborhood golf course. The foliage of the trees that swayed peacefully around us, in contrast to the grassy green lawn, was turning orange-brown. I could smell the scent of smoldering leaves on a nearby neighbor’s burn pile; fall was in the air.
Looking at my mom with a smile, “Dad” reached over to pat her hand. “How do you know that your best days aren’t ahead with someone new?” he said to me. Mom smiled back at him; I loved the fact that my parents obviously adored each other.
“I just don’t feel like God wants me to get divorced…I’m waiting for Him to open a different door.” My parents looked at each other as my step-dad shook his graying head.
During long years of frustration as Larry’s wife, I remember someone saying once, “If you want to talk to God--pray; but if you want God to talk to you—read the scriptures.” Searching for answers to my troubled marriage when my children were little, while studying Proverbs one day, I felt inspired as I read: “Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life.” The moment I read that passage I knew God was aware of me and had something special in mind for my future. For years I clung to His promise that someday I would have a peaceful, contented life.
An avid journal writer, I often wrote about my anticipation of happier days as my “‘Tree of Life’ life”--the belief consoled me when times were especially tough with Larry. Because the teachings of my church discouraged the break-up of families, I rejected divorce as the solution to my troubles, waiting patiently for better times to take place some other way. I was sustained by my faith that happier days would come…someday.
A few weeks after talking with my folks on their porch swing, I knelt alone in my living room by the front door--it was my custom to pause and pray before leaving for work each day. That particular morning my heart was heavy, and my eyes filled with tears, after a bad run-in with Larry. I pleaded as I prayed, “Please, Father in Heaven…please…Tell me what to do…open a door for me!” Immediately behind me, the front door blew open.
Astonished, I raised my head and looked around, sensing the uncanny certainty that God was listening to me! This startling experience triggered the realization that the door was open to me, but I had to be the one to walk through…God expected me to act for myself.
Decades of daily heartbreak—that’s what marriage had been for me; and though I was willing to stay and live out my commitment, gratefully, over the ensuing days wisdom flooded my mind and unraveled the tapestry of reference I had woven for myself. A saner, more judicious truth began reorienting my inner compass as I came to understand that vital to growth and progression is fundamental happiness; and I was not only unhappy, but suffering. What was I teaching my children--and grandchildren--about love and honor by staying with a man who had treated us treacherously for so long? It was obvious Larry’s heart had hardened against us years before. Summoning all the courage I could muster, within a few days, I filed for divorce.
“More power to you!” said Roselyn, my second oldest, when I called to tell her. She was living in Utah attending school at the University of Utah. “My biggest fear in life has been, ‘What if I ever end up in a marriage like my mother’s?’ I know it takes a lot of guts to do this, Mom, but you’re doing the right thing.”
All my oldest kids weathered the news of the break-up well; over previous years each one had told me they held no allegiance to their father--his uncaring manner had alienated them year’s before. For them, the end of my marriage brought long overdue relief. Suzanne, my oldest child, was in Utah, too, living with her husband Richard and their three children—my adorable grandkids, Joshua, Aaron and Callie; and my oldest son, Garth, was in Kentucky on a two year mission for our church. Each of them applauded me for finding the strength to leave my soulless marriage.
Because my two youngest boys were still at home, my greatest concern was for them. Daniel, 15, and Brian, 17, witnessed the separation first-hand and had watched their parent’s agonizing interaction before their father finally left for good. For five weeks before leaving, Larry fluctuated between accusatory outbursts of anger and heart wrenching remorse, begging me to not make him leave; all the while begrudgingly packing his clothes and pieces of furniture into a beat up old trailer. Enduring the torment of his seething and wretched pejorative displays was torturous for my sons and me.
The day the boys and I woke to find Larry’s battered old truck gone, and the barnyard strewn with the remnants of years of foul accumulation he had picked through and left disheveled in the wake of his departure, we wandered around our farm examining the aftermath-- like victims emerging from a dismal vault following a damning hurricane. It was both a great and a terrible day.
“Does this mean we can turn the heat on in the house?” Brian asked jokingly. Once we realized Larry was finally gone for good, we did turned the heat on in the house—which he seldom had allowed--and for the first time my son’s ever remembered that winter our home was warm and comfortable; we finally gained the freedom and comfort we had been deprived for decades.
Though my divorce was a good move in the chess game of my life, after so many years of living with someone and longing to create something beautiful, to me the break-up felt like an amputation without anesthesia. During the following months, the raw grief I experienced was unbearable. At night, when the house was quiet and I thought the boys were asleep, I gave way to my devastation and moaned in physical and emotional pain; not tears of despair, but tears of heartfelt mourning. Divorce felt like a terrible death.
I wanted to exhibit strength and courage and get through the ordeal without upset, but the pain was beyond my power to manage. Gradually, the strain on all of us began to takes its toll. Within a few months, agonizing trauma started manifesting in the lives of my youngest sons. It began on a Saturday.
After struggling through a fitful night sleep, I got up earlier than I normally would that morning. My bare feet absorbed the shock of the icy linoleum as I walked into the kitchen. There I found Daniel sitting alone at the dining table eating cold cereal; his bare shoulders hunched over his bowl as milk dripped off his spoon. He didn’t greet me with a cheery response when I said ‘good morning’, but paused and then turned to look up at me. After a moment of staring with red-swollen eyes, he asked:
“Why do you do that?” His words were harsh and demanding, as though I had offended him.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I answered, puzzled.
“Why do you cry like that? You know….in the middle of the night?” His eyes started tearing, despite the anger on his face. “Life’s better now, Mom,” he cried, “So, why do you cry like that? I hate that sound…I hate the sound of you crying!”
I wrapped my arms around his bare shoulders and hugged him close to me. Patting his head, it was my first awareness of the damaging effect holding onto my grief was having on my sons—they needed to see me strong and confident, whether I felt that way or not.
“You’re right, Daniel. Life is better now…” I managed to say, though my soul filled with the burden of unfulfilled dreams and the anxiety of being the sole support for the family weighed heavy on my mind. Remembering the credit card I had tucked away for emergencies, I said, conjuring a cheerful voice, “Why don’t we go to lunch today? You and Brian pick the place!”
Brian was my fourth child--born with cerebral palsy which partially paralyzed the right side of his body. He had just graduated from high-school and was preparing to leave for college at the end of the summer. Though a typical teenager in most ways, Brian’s condition had required frequent physical therapy throughout most of his life; as well as special assistance when participating in track and swimming events at school—he was the only swim team member that required the help of others to lift him out of the pool after competition. He was very popular with those who knew him, so much so that even at practices they gave him standing ovations. Notwithstanding his physical challenges he possessed an engaging smile that brightened everyone’s life.
That gray-skied Saturday, Daniel and Brian chose a restaurant in the strip mall near our home, so at noon we headed out. Upon arriving, we sat down in a booth by a window and ordered our meal. The café was filled with families seemingly happy and care-free, the way I wanted our family to be. With Larry gone, the kids and I were just learning to participate in activities that seemed normal—even mundane—to other families, like eating out together. I wanted a semblance of normalcy for my children, but as a result of years of deprivation due to Larry’s prohibition to what he claimed was reckless spending, I felt ill-equipped. I didn’t know how to relax and have fun with my kids. Sitting together, tensely trying to find something pleasant to talk about, it was just as our waiter was serving our plates that something unexpected began happening.
“What are you doing, Brian?” I remember feeling annoyed as he started leaning slowly to his right, listing sideways into the isle. I thought, at now eighteen, he was too old to be goofing-off in public. But when he didn’t answer me, and started falling out of his seat, my ten year experience working in a special education classroom alerted me to the fact that something was terribly wrong.
“He’s having a seizure!” I said to Daniel, who was sitting across from me in the booth. “Help me get him to the floor!”
Daniel, although younger than Brian, was larger and stronger. He had shown an affectionate protectiveness toward Brian since they had been little boys in elementary school; without hesitating, he jumped up to help his older brother. I remember feeling panicked and my heart pounding in my chest; Brian had never had a seizure before. A crowd of concerned restaurant staff quickly gathered. Their faces swarmed around us and the normal restaurant clatter seemed to exacerbate the chaos surrounding our table—the sounds rattled hollow in my head, echoing loudly in my ears.
Somewhere in the restaurant a child screeched in playful banter drawing me back to the perdition of a hellish, but more predictable day when my sons were little. The noise resonated in my heart as I peered over the seat at my Brian quivering on the floor.
Though it seemed like an eternity, within a moment or two the tremors subsided and, embarrassed, Brian stood up. Except for the white pallor of his face, he seemed perfectly fine.
“What’s all the fuss about? There’s nothing wrong with me!” Asking the curious bystanders to leave, he struggled back into his seat and insisted on finishing his hamburger. Horrified, I resisted the urge to force him into the car and off to the hospital emergency room. I was alarmed by the situation—but, at the same time, accustomed to managing students who had regular seizures--so I tried to be calm. After Brian finished eating, we drove to my parent’s home since they lived near the hospital and when we arrived at their house, I sent Brian to their guest room to lie down. Immediately, I called the health clinic.
Later that evening, in the doctor’s office, I stood with my arms folded tightly around my waist trying to refrain from falling apart while the doctor examined Brian’s eyes. Because Brian’s cerebral palsy was a result of a pre-birth brain hemorrhage, the doctor explained that--in cases such as this—sudden seizure activity wasn’t uncommon and was often triggered by stress.
“I’m fine, Mom…” Brian insisted after the examination. He was more interested in getting home to his favorite TV program than he was about the long-term medical ramifications. As his mother, I worried about his future--would he be able to leave for college in two months as he had planned?
“We’ll put Brian on Limictel and he’ll be as good as new. This med has the least negative effects of all seizure medications--it won’t slow him down a bit….you’ll see!” The doctor’s cavalier approach made it seem Brian’s seizure was no more serious than a sneeze.
“Well, in a sense that’s just what it is,” he explained, when I vocalized my concern. “Most of the time seizures are the way the body clears excess electricity from the brain. It’s as simple as that.”
“How long will Brian need to take the medication?” I asked.
Tearing off the first of many prescriptions I would be handed over the next few years, the doctor answered, “For the rest of his life.” My heart sank.