Thoughts about MOM

 

 

Everyone agreed she wasn't easy to get to know. It was only at her funeral I realized I never knew her. Two eulogies from her siblings and all they could remember was her constant crocheting. From age 10 until her arthritis had frozen those knuckles up in her 60s. Nothing about her gardening, the 15 years she'd spent fixing 2 cycle engine, the decades she'd hidden her cigarettes, the years of drinking. She was a good woman they said. She changed doctors if they mentioned depression, autism, Oppositional defiance disorder. She wasn't the problem and that was none of their business.

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She had been unhappily married for 23 years. Dad had not been a treat either. Mom didn't like us to say he showed signs of autism because she thought it made is sound like he didn't know what he'd done was wrong. He knew. He had failed every line of he prince charming code. When they first got married he was so strongly religious that he beat her for doing laundry on Sunday. She had been out of cloth diapers and they had two little babies but she should have done the math to make sure there were enough done on Saturday to get through the weekend. He saw it as his job as patriarch of the family to punish her like a child when she made mistakes like that. When they were close and the feeling was intimate if he needed her to know she'd done wrong he would pinch and twist her breast. Years later after the divorce she would lose that breast to cancer. She always wondered if it was from how bad he hurt it.

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Dad volunteered us to help my best friend move over the summer between my kindergarten and first grade and suddenly she wasn't allowed to take my calls or anything. I was crushed. I didn't hear until I was in college that my father had backed her mother against a wall during the move and tried to seduce her mom said seduce I always thought his style looked more like attempted RAPE.

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He also tried that with several of the women who came by to visit mom from church over the years. The only one that shocked me was walking into the livingroom to find my best friend in 8th grade sitting on his lap french kissing with him. I still don't understand that one. Mom asked her dad about taking us kids and moving home when I was 3 and he'd brought home gonorrhea from a prostitute but wouldn't give grandpa any information about what was going on. I really believe if he'd known that Mom, Kari and I were being abused and Mom feared for her life that grandpa would have let us come but mom didn't want to give out any of that precious information so he told her to go back and work on her marriage.

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Supposedly dad told mom not to try that again. He had 2 daughter and he was keeping them. If she took us away he would just have to kidnap the daughters from either of her 2 brothers and disappear into the rocky mountains with them. Dad thought he was kind of the survivalist type. He would talk about which men at church were wimpy and who he could kill to increase his harem if society collapsed. Chosen not only for their looks but for being good with kids or good cooks or whatever skill he was looking to strengthen.Kind of a sick fantasy football game he played in his head. According to mom this fantasy team was what made up his mind to tell my sister that she was to kill me.

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According to mom he was concerned about my health problems. Thought I'd hold back the pack. So mom said it was Kari's job since she was a minor and would be the least liable to the courts, I was either to be killed or the more palatable solution was to be beaten until I broke and ran away from home never to be seen again. That set the tone for the next 11 years of my life.

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We rode bikes, regularly almost religiously. Weekend rides south into LA or North into Santa Barbara or Solvang. For The summer vacation between my 3rd and 4th grade year of school we drove up to San Francisco and rode 10 speeds home. We drove up with dad's brother, Roger. Roger drove our truck back to our home and we rode our 10 speeds. The first day out we were riding around San Francisco before heading out and we got separated. Kari and dad were racing and went through a light that changed to red before mom and I got to it. Mom had all the credit cards, dad had the cash. Mom and I stayed in a 2-3 star hotel that night. Mom did her best to comfort me while fighting back the fer that dad had planned this as a way to take off with Kari, his favorite child. Dad told Kari to quit crying, either we were ok or we'd already been hauled off to be sold as white slaves in the middle east and her crying wasn't going to help either way. They were in a nasty 1 star roach infested hotel only a few blocks from us.

 

Mom and I got up and started out on the road around 4 am because we knew we were the slower group and would have to catch up. Every highway sign we passed mom left a small piece of paper taped to it, a note incase dad was behind us saying we were okay and what time we had passed this marker. I was 8, I was tired and the road was uphill. We walked our bikes when the road got to hard but tried not to stop. Mom knew the camp ground we were supposed to spend the next night in and kept telling me we'd meet Kari there if not before. Things had been so organized that we all had matching outfits and it was coordinated in the pack by day. That seems a weird fact to share but it ended up being important. It was around 10am. We had attached a bungee cord connecting the back of moms bike to the front of mine as we walked up yet another hill. We were dirty and tired and hadn't passed anywhere to have breakfast or use the restroom since leaving the hotel. A car full of young men, maybe college age, pulled up next to mom and stopped.

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"Where's your man?" the driver asked my mom. She looked at me and new I couldn't run away if something was going to happen.

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"He's ahead of us just around the bend there" she bluffed.

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"No, he's not. Where's your man?"

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Mom began to panic but the man realized he'd scared her and backtracked.

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"You're wearing matching outfits. I asked him for directions to LA. He has a little girl just like that one with him" he said pointing at me. "He said if we saw you t tell you he's 2 hours behind you. Stop and have a rest."

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He handed mom a 6 pack of Pepsi. As he drove away mom cried in relief and we downed to sodas out of need. Kari and I dropped out bikes in the rode and hugged like long lost lovers when she finally came around the corner.

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It was one of the years when the California coastline burns. Many of the camp grounds we were scheduled to stay in were closed except to firefighting teams. We pulled our bikes in off the road and slept off the shoulder. Sometimes we would ride 30 miles before breakfast. We made it as far as San Simeon. We had scheduled to stay a week and take some of the Hearst Castle tours there anyway but the tip took a turn.

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In preparation for the trip we had the all four bikes completely serviced. This included new tires and new spokes. the spokes that went on Mom's bike turned out to be a hair to short so every time the wheel turned they pulled and compressed. We made it to San Simeon and checked in to the hotel. Kari and I stayed there to bath and take a nap while mom and dad took all the laundry to the laundry mat. On the way back from the laundry mat the spokes on the rear tire crystallized and shattered.

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We still enjoyed the tours, it was nice to take a few days off from peddling but we had a problem. Dad talked to the hotel manager and the nearest bicycle repair show was in Santa Maria. The plan came forward to have dad ride to the bike shop with mom's tire strapped to his back. We only had one credit card so dad asked the manager to extend credit to us for a few days while he was gone and he would pay our bills for both the hotel and the restaurant when he got back. The manager shocked us all by offering dad use of his brand new El Camino - still had dealer plates on it. Dad asked one further. If the manager was comfortable with dad driving to Santa Maria to fix the bike tire how would he feel about letting the 4 of us drive it to Oxnard where Roger had parked our truck and then mom would drive our truck and dad would drive the El Camino and we would pick up our stuff and settle our bill. Much to our shock he said ok. The manager's girlfriend told him he was a fool as we drove away. She said there was no way we would return for 4 bikes when we had a new El Camino instead. He must have sweated the next several hours pretty hard.

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Life took another turn when mom was the first to the front door back in Oxnard. There was a shoe box on the front step. A shoe box that would change all our lives. socks and underwear dad had left at her house. Love letters he'd left at her desk where they both worked. A letter to dad telling him she'd decided to tell her husband and try to fix her marriage and suggesting he try to fix his marriage as well.

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Mom was never the same. We returned the El Camino. We never really rode our bikes again. Everything kind of stopped. Dad's girlfriend was the reason he'd gotten into vitamins and organics and exercise.

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Mom had dealt with hookers and venereal disease and dad's being a peeping tom but this was somehow worse. Love letters. Not an indiscriminate physical thing but an actual emotional betrayal.

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Mom mowed lawns all day and took enough Valium to knock herself out as soon as she got home every night. Kari and I did the cooking nd the cleaning, the dishes, the laundry. I was in 4th grade and becoming a housewife already.

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When I was about to start my freshman year of high school Kari and I were getting ready for camp when I stepped on a sewing needle. Doesn't sound like a big deal? Mom couldn't find it. She didn't have any pain pills so she'd give me a bunch of her valium and make me lay on my stomach on the floor and she would take another needle and start tearing away the skin little by little starting where you could see the needle entrance. She wouldn't take me to a doctor but continued this routine a couple of times a week for 3 months. I started getting in trouble because my foot hurt to much at school and started coming home. She threw the ultimatum `If you leave school one more time I'm taking you to the doctor' and I started to cry and beg her to take me to the doctor.I'd asked a dozen times. She took my the next day and the X Ray showed the needle really deep but the doctor only took one x ray and couldn't find it even though he'd dug almost to the bone. He stitched it closed and we walked to the Orthopedic surgeon next door who reopened in and searched around. He scheduled my for an in hospital surgery but this was Friday so the soonest we could do it was Monday. I was ordered to bed for the weekend,not so much as a shower. The doctor didn't know that wasn't how things worked around our home. The next morning my father woke me up and told me to suit up for work.I was to be lifting palm fronds into the back of his trailer all day. One of the messiest jobs we got as gardeners. Kari was faking cramps to catch something on Oprah and that meant I had to suit up. I heard mom tearfully thanking him for not making Kari work because menstrual cramps can be horrible. I worked 10 hours straight. The dust from the palm fronds was loaded with powdered animal feces and remains. It goes through your clothes - most importantly socks in this case. My hospital visit was to be a quick outpatient thing, no big deal. When I got to the hospital I could barely walk. My foot was huge, it was hot to the touch and it was discolored.

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They got me on an antibiotic IV mix immediately and then explained that I would have to be in for at least over night, longer if it took to long to drain. The surgery took 6 hours and the doctor was actually about to give up when he to re his glove on the eye of the needle sticking out of the third metatarsal.I was to stay home from school for the next 3 months which sounds good at first but my parents worked this was three months of sitting in the same chair all day and sleeping in it at night. No visitors, No movie rentals or video games. I started using my crutches to go to the video arcade or go to the end of school, anything to get out. Mom would blow up but just to get out for a little while would be worth it.

 

My teachers wouldn't give my homework to my sister, my mother would not go by the school and get it. I entered that year in Honors Algebra and Honors English but got dropped down to a regular college prep English and a math class that haven't even covered multiplications of fractions. The teacher worked with the JV football team which is to say he sold pot to them out of his desk in my math class. The idiots behind me tried to superglue me to my chair but I figured they were up to something and excused myself to the office before it had completely dried. It was hell. 

 

They had owned a gardening business together and she'd fought for years to keep it running. She thought they were going to lose everything the year one of the clients caught him hiding in the bushes watching her shower when he was supposed to be mowing the lawn. Word had gotten out among clients and we'd lost a lot of business on that one. When she handed him the divorce papers in 1986 she owned her business outright and 51% of his. All of the vehicles were registered to her even his 9 ton dump truck. He would lose everything if he didn't do what she wanted. His business went under within 6 months of her refusing to do his bookkeeping any longer. Where as her shop went on to be recognized by Briggs and Stratton as the most improved lawnmower repair shop in a 5 state region.

 

Now, my sister and I had opened our bank accounts when I was 7 and all those summers pulling weeds and trimming shrubs and working til we would drop. All the money went into those accounts so we wouldn't have to work through college, so I could serve a mission and so that I could pay for my own wedding. Mom told me dad cleaned out my account the day before I turned 18. That it was a civil case not to call the cops, if I wanted to pursue it but she pressured me heavily just to let it go. She had actually emptied the account and gave the thick stack of cash to dad if he would sign away his rights to the house. She admitted it to me over 20 years later. For more than 20 years she let me picture him in that bank screwing me over.

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I was a few weeks into my first year of college when they ended that sham of a marriage. He'd been picked up twice as a peeping tom. He'd brought home syphilis twice, gonorrhea twice and hepatitis had been the last straw. If she'd given him any more chances it could be AIDS. 
If she'd asked I'd have volunteered my account. I was always raised to be a team player. The problem was it was never just money she budgeted and withheld. Our home was about information trafficking and it was important to know that nothing was any of your business. I was having trouble with the divorce but wasn't allowed to attend counseling when the bishop offered it because having a therapist meant giving information away freely and to someone mom did not give permission to know about her life, the fact that my life was withering did not mean as much as her privacy. She had lived in her fathers home and in Jays home but now she was in her own home and if I hadn't been there too that would have been perfect. She began drinking. And do I mean drinking. She didn't want me to know so she would pour peppermint Schnapps in he Pepsi - like that's normal or even appealing. She never got so drunk that she missed work but she owned the company and only employed her drinking buddies so going to work was a joy for her. When she was drunk she would yell and berate me. I had my fathers eyes and she hated me for looking at her through them. She hated me for going to church and trying to make it at school and mocking her pain. She would keep me by her bed for hours telling me about dad raping her or about the 7 pregnancies she lost because of him hitting her. When she was sober she would bring up that she had a tilted cervix and had a tendency to miscarry but I still believe these stories she told me while she was drunk. Something in the passion, something in her eyes. She seldom looked you in the eye when she was sober. Looking in her eyes might give you information and that wasn't your right. 
I couldn't have anyone over to study at my place so I tried studying at friends houses for a while. I became more and more distracted and having chosen a major that was challenging for me. I was a music major. I played clarinet, Oboe and Alto Sax. I had a really good voice and could sing from tenor into second soprano. I was trying to learn piano but couldn't read base clef. I was falling further behind. Just as I was keeping my head above water trying to make it at school she announced that I would get a job with my sister as my supervisor out at one of the harbor restaurants. I couldn't make it through finals no matter what I tried. 

I was an ok cashier and really tried. I stayed at that job for a while until like an idiot I mentioned to one of the managers, Mark, that the cashiers closet could be reworked to hold 2-3 computer stations and the servers could print there own checks there. My post was really a relec from a by gone era. He took the idea and presented it as his own and my entire department was gone in less than 6 months. Oh well. I was part time at school and out of work and mom was still an unhappy drunk.

I got a job for a while doing page paste up for the local penny saver. It was fun and Friday night was like a 12-15 hour shift. I liked driving home as the sun came up. I had transferred into journalism at school so it seemed a good match. I kept that job until I left school but mom hated it, maybe because I loved it and would forever be a theme that if something was important to me she had to tear it down.

 I had met a weird little guy in journalism whose mother was a recovered alcoholic and he loved spouting 12 step wisdom at me like my personal guru. Mom hated him and that made me like him more but truth said he was a jerk but he helped me see that my mom was very sick and very delicate. I tried to apply to a school in Idaho to get some miles between mom and I but she wouldn't have it. I knew that now that I had listened to him Alan would never leave me alone if I stayed at the same college. I tried asking my brothers for help. They not only refused but told her I had said she was smoking and drinking. They apparently believed her when she said she wasn't and that it was all the time I was spending with Alan, he was turning me against her. She told me she had said that I was close to ending up in a mental hospital and that she had gotten `the doctors' involved whatever that is supposed to mean. The only doctor she wanted to me to see was the MD she used who believed a man should have as many women as it took to make him happy who wanted me to weigh in weakly. My weight was no small issue to her. 

Mom arranged job interviews for me that would have made some of her drinking buddies my direct supervisors. I told mom absolutely not but she wouldn't listen so I had a friend go with me to do my job applications and I messed up really good a drunk red faced tirade was waiting for me but it felt good. She gave me the ultimatum though that I had to quit college. Truth was I couldn't get anything done anyway so I only cried a little as I dropped out and found a full time job at a pet store. She ran to the family crying about me leaving school and how she'd done all she could to stop me..I lived in her house but bought all my own food and supplies trying to ask as little as possible. I worked at that pet store for about a year and then as a veterinary assistant for about a year. I wasn't getting the hours I needed there so I worked retail at a health food store for 5-6 months before leaving on my mission.

 

Mom said she would support me on my mission.We had started my savings account for it when I was 7 and my Uncle Roger left on his mission. I took pride in preparing over the years. I didn't get paychecks from all those years of working for the family landscaping company. As the time to turn in my mission papers approached my mother cleaned out my account as I have previously mentioned, she used the money to buy my father's signatures on the divorce forms agreeing that the house was completely hers. I didn't have the money for college or a mission at that point.  I know there are those that felt my mother having to support me showed a lack of character on my part but I feel much the opposite. She complained every month of it and although I served in North Dakota I was not allowed to buy a winter coat and bought 2 outfits in the 18 months I was gone. One from a thrift store for Easter and one from a Walmart for Christmas. The Walmart expense upset her enough that mom called my mission president and made me turn in my check book.

 

Another thing I feel I need to journal about now is that damned truck. I guess you have to know the only financial benefit I got from all those years of savings was that when my sister decided to sell her first car mom took the money out of my account to buy Kari's car without talking to me first and gave the money to Kari so she and her husband could use it to by a new car that was automatic transmission because they liked holding hands while driving. They were and are so completely cute completely in love. I didn't want my car to be Kari's hand me down but mom said to take it or go without a car. 

While I was on my mission my mom sold the car without asking and didn't even take my tools out of the trunk - my tools and jack cost more to replace than the $200 she got for the car and in the letter she informed me about the sale and promised to replace it with a car of my choice. Almost a year after I got home from my mission I brought her the paperwork on a used Toyota Celica and informed her about my impending move to Utah. It was less than a week later she bought that nightmare of a used truck. I was told take it or leave it - she was not willing to buy something else and wouldn't allow me to sell it or use it in trade in. It would have been a fine truck if I only needed it to go around town but as I've already said I was moving to Utah and engaged to someone from Los Angeles. I needed a warranty, I needed a safe running vehicle. The boyfriend in L.A. was Gabe and I felt moving to Salt Lake for 6 months would help me clear my head - he had proposed already but I wasn't sure. 6 months that far apart I'd either decide I couldn't live without him or be far enough away to break it off clean and start a new life. I wanted to be sure I wasn't making a huge mistake. The truck broke down in Las Vegas,NV and again in Centerville, UT. The head gasket had a hairline fracture. This meant I could not independently look for a job like I'd hoped. My roommates got their boss to take me on so I worked as a receptionist for a photography studio.  day. Gabe gave a copy of my resume to his boss and I got a call - the boss was willing to pay for my flight home if I would start Monday.  I was enjoying being in Utah but didn't feel I could do it without a car and this guy was offering more than twice what I was making at the studio so I came back to California. Now here's the wound that never healed; it starts with forcing that truck on me which ruined the plan but it gets worse. See Gabe was worried and made me agree to take a gun to Utah with me in case you knoetc.w just in case. We used to go shooting together. When I came home on the plane I left most of my belongings behind including said gun which Gabe had borrowed from a friend. 

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Gabe and I planned to drive his car up to get my truck, pick up my belongings but mom got the call when the truck was ready and drove up with one of her friends so they could weekend in Vegas. When she saw the gun she called home and screamed at me. She and her entire family up there decided it was an unregistered weapon and that I was going to make her transport it across state lines therefore She would end up in a Federal Lockup for something. The shells and the weapon were not in the same box and they would have been in the back shell of the truck which is not "Concealed Weapon." She never forgave me for having the gun, she never forgave Gabe for getting it for me, 

I want to say I loved my mom and that I still love her but that feeling is Tempered by a lack of respect, a feeling of betrayal. She was mentally ill and quirky enough I am actually not sure who she will be when I meet her in the afterlife.

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Thoughts about DADDY

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At least mom's death brought out some emotion.My relationship with my father was one of fear and hatred. My mom says dad told Kari to kill be when I was 7. I don't know if its true or not but to be real the atmosphere was bad enough for me to believe it. I remember the bathroom of the master bedroom so covered with porn and suck that it was nauseating to have to go in there. I remember him offering to sell her to her now husband for $5, he tried to sell me to my very first boyfriend for the same amount. He believed Kari's best carrier would be as an assassin. He didn't think I could handle that kind of pressure, he thought I needed to accept my fate and resign myself to being a prostitute. I was 10 or 12 when he told me that. He also used to threaten to castrate male friends of mine and make lewd jokes about nailing my female friends. Often I was later to find out he actually made advances to the mothers of my friends from Kindergarten on through high school. In 7th grade I had a friend over to spend the night. She sat on his lap in the living room recliner and they made out in the living room in front of mom, Kari and I.

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He gave me a black eye for jumping on the bed when I was 7, he strangled me against the washing machine when I was 16 for arguing with my mother. He was busted as a peeping tom by the cops twice. He hired one of his favorite hookers for the gardening business when she needed to prove to the judge she had a legitimate job. It was disturbing to me when she recognized me from the old family picture by the bed in his room - like - eeewwwwww.

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Dad was foul on levels almost cartoon in level. While Kari and I were cooking diner he and mom would relax in the recliners. Mom fell asleep almost immediately but dad... Dad would sit there with one hand over the side of the chair and jack off moms little dog Tiger. We'd bring out dinner. Dad would finish Tiger off and wipe his hand on his pant leg and eat his dinner. He wouldn't let mom get Bud and Tiger neutered. When he moved out he would still come over to mom's lawnmower repair shop everyday to see the dogs until he came by one day and found that they'd both been fixed, then he didn't visit anymore. Mom and dad considered having a custody battle over Tiger but once Mom had Tiger fixed dad dropped the demand.

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I sent my dad a letter when I turned in my mission papers. It said that until now I have been dating for fun but always knowing that I wanted my mission. Because of this I needed to make some serious decisions. I told him I loved him and if he was interested in having a relationship he was going to have to make some changes. I said he didn't have to return to my faith or even to any church but I asked him to decide what he considered important in a moral and decent life. I needed a father I could respect. I told him that the 18 months of my mission would give us time to develop ourselves but if who he was right there right now was someone he was happy with to please lose my number and not contact me once I got home because once I become a mother it would be very much part of my job to protect my children from people like him and abuses like he relished handing out.

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My dad said he was trying to make Kari and I strong. He did it by trying to destroy everything about us. Kari and I fought for our testimonies, we examined our hearts to figure out who we wanted to be and in the long run both decided the lives we wanted didn't include dad. A few years before he died he suffered a heart attack and there was discussion of him moving in down at Kari's and us forgiving him and taking care of him. Neither of us could do it. I thought about it and sitting down to talk it all out might feel good but if he didn't die right away that opened the door for him to meet and hurt my children and it wasn't worth that risk. Part of me wanted to go to the funeral and Christopher said he would make it work if I wanted to go but I really didn't feel anything when dad died. He had been dead to me since I got home from my mission so its been about 5-6 years since his death as I am righting this and I've never felt a need to cry for his death because I cried all my tears for him out before I hit 20.

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My First Husband Gabriel

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Ok what can I say, he wasn't a mistake and as I state that I hear the combined surprised inhaling of everyone who knew us. Exhale please you have sucked all the air from the room and I'm gonna lose consciousness. His mother and step father have looked out for me and been part of my family for over 25 years. Gabriel and I were married 6 years on paper - 5 in fact.

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We met within a month of me getting home from my mission,  I got home Nov 28, 1991. We had a quick romance and were married the day after Thanksgiving the following year which would be Nov 27, 1992. We honeymooned at the Disneyland Hotel. Of course he never bothered to get a map or directions so the actual wedding night was at the Princess Inn in little Korea down in LA and we managed to find Disneyland the next day.

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By the end of the first year we both wanted divorce. I had a pad of paper under my side of my mattress that I used breaking down our assets and debts to put fairly dissolve our marriage but hadn't figured out how to tell him yet when I found out I was pregnant with our son Kirk. Unbeknownst to me Gabe was trying to figure out how to approach me either, he told a common friend that he was afraid I would kill myself if he left.. Great communication between us I know. Not long before I got pregnant Gabe and his best friend Mike wanted to join a racquetball club together. I couldn't get the finances to work. Gabe took over the budgeting and to afford the racquetball club he had us eating ramen for 3 months straight and he refused to allow me the $10 per month I needed for the Co-Pay on birth control. When we found out I was pregnant he asked me what I was gonna do about it. He told all his friends that I got pregnant on purpose to keep him from leaving me.Kirk was born Feb 9, 1994

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I didn't leave once I found out I was pregnant because I had watched my mother help my sister raise her oldest child. My mom hadn't listened to Kari's parenting decisions at all and always assumed that Kari, who is a registered nurse, was just a dumb kid. If I ran home now I would never be allowed to parent my own child and would never get free of her again.I made the goal of making things work with Gabe at least until Kirk was old enough to start pre-school. As it was I told my mom not to give Kirk any dairy because Gable's brother was Lactose intolerant and she snuck him hot fudge sundaes before he even had rice cereal.

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With no education daycare would cost more than I could make but if I stayed home and took care of Kirk I could do the cooking so we wouldn't waste money on fast food and we made due with only one car for most of our marriage. One day a week I would drive Gabe to work so I could have the car and clean houses for friends to make a little extra money for us, like $40 a pop. I tried to always return the car with a full gas tank and all the trash cleaned out - truth with a baby is one nasty milk bottle rolling under the seat can make all that work smell like you didn't even try but that's parenthood for you.

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Gabe would often go to Mike's or his friend Kimberlee's house after work. Sometimes he wouldn't come home all weekend or answer the phone. He disappeared on paydays leaving me with no car to leave the house and no money for milk or diapers until he resurfaced.Shortly after Kirk started pre-school Gabe admitted to being in love with Kimberlee. She was married and not in love with him. Mike had been arested for molesting young boys. Gabe pressured me trying to move Mike into our house when he got out of jail. When I wouldn't agree, that was the breaking point for him. I had met with my clergy for counsel and had started working on my resume to start the break up on my end so when he showed up with divorce papers we were both ready. 

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Gabe moved out April 16, 1998. He was very hit and miss with the agreed child support and took the car leaving me with transportation problems. Within 3 weeks of him moving out I started working at GTE. In January he still hadn't turned in the divorce papers we signed the day he moved out. I had him investigated over the holidays. I hired a divorce lawyer on Jan 4, 1999 and went to court that April. By then Gabe had lost the car - repossessed by the bank.In July he still wasn't paying the child support so I started a case for the District Attorneys office to collect the payments. Gabe assumed I would keep his car insurance in my name and make the payments even though he wasn't paying child support.

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He started working under the table To date he owes $102,000.00 back child support and hates me for it he has been forced to make regular payments since 2/2012 but previous to that it was very hit and miss.I did my best to not speak evil of Gabe in front of Kirk until after Kirk turned 18. When Kirk was young we collected the full set of the Batman animated series on VHS so when I needed to talk to an adult about Gabe's behavior I would put in Batman and the adults in the room would talk about Batman villains. Gabe's code name was Two-face. Even with going to court in April our divorce was not final until Dec 1999. I was actually engaged to Chris and called the court house to find out what date my divorce had been final and they let me know I was still married. My lawyer never got Gabe's signature on the final page. I already had the wedding invitations on my desk to send out for Chris and I but first I had to have me ex come-over and sign final documents and drop them off at my lawyers office so he could walk them into court the next day.

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I really wanted to keep what is best for Kirk at the front of that but Gabe's finances and my finances and me getting disabled all fought to keep us on less than friendly terms. I hate being the "Bad guy" so I set up a case for Child Support with the DA = I know it doesn't sound friendly but it meant I left finances to the court and never, never said he couldn't see his son without money or harass him when he picked Kirk up about finances. I didn't want to be that bitch even if he decided to be a deadbeat and I stand by that decision. 

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My husband and soulmate, Christopher

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What can I say about this man? He was my everything. I met him a few months after splitting with Gabe. We had been dating 2-3 weeks before he said I was the perfect one for him. He proposed the same week I had to meet Gabe in court for custody and I told him I was not ready to wrap my brain around that. I asked him to wait and if he was still sure bring it back up in 6 months. 6 months later to the day we got engaged. He was loving, caring, supportive and sensitive. He was also a tortured soul. His parents obviously never read any books about child psychology or limits to discipline. He felt he had been a terrible big brother to his sisters and neither of them wanted anything to do with us except where necessary while his mother was living with us. His mother thought I was Satan himself I think. I was in my elevator accident like less than a year before she moved in with us. I was still having epidural injections and MRI's and juggling trying to find meds I could work with. I needed o sleep when Kirk was at school. I would give her rides anywhere she mentioned needing to go but she liked to walk to her local appt so I took crap from my sister-in-law because Dee-Dee wouldn't tell me she had an appointment and would leave to walk over after I took my meds and laid back down. She was an adult who didn't want to be relying on me. She didn't think I was good enough for her son, she resented that Kirk was not Chris' genetic son. When, over the coarse of out years together it came out that both Chris and Kirk are on the autistic spectrum I was accused of lying because the diagnoses has heavy genetic links but Chris and Kirk are not genetically linked so how could they both have it. Like I was trying to somehow manipulate the genetics. Hey, members of my family had it and I found a guy with it because I identified. with him. If they had both had diabetes or had the same color eyes that wouldn't have been suspect. Actually Chris and I had almost exactly the same Hazel Green eyes and so do Kirk, Christine and Emily. Jennifer has Honey Brown eyes. Chris was 6'3", he was 300lbs, he was a sex GOD. He was attentive and generous. He was the best kisser I've ever met.As the years rolled on and the pressures of parenting and caring for my disabilities, the haunting depression and anxiety he had faced his whole life disabled him like nothing I could have imagined.

 

Sometimes I had to be his knight in shining armor, sometimes hold him until he cried. Twice I saw him cry like his soul had shattered, once when we had to put his dog Maya down. She had been the best antidepressant he could have hoped for. She was Lab/Great Dane/Pit-bull and Chow. We had her for 13 years. She had a cyst that burst on the side of her abdomen spraying puss and blood all over the living room. The other time was while we were homeless. Jennifer was having the worst time of it. Jennifer was crying and saying she wished she had never been born, wished she could die. Chris rolled towards me in the bed to hide his tears from the kids who were almost asleep and he sobbed. He cried so hard you could see that it caused him physical pain to be that vulnerable. He said that he would never be able to forgive my mother for what Jennifer was going through. Mom didn't listen and lied to us. When I said I had decided we needed to move out of The house at Nectarine Street she told me it would ruin her financially if I did, begged me to stay, told me she'd give me the house if I stayed. Strange thing was one of the apartments I applied for came through the very week mom died.

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Chris's weaknesses in the marriage are exactly his disability diagnoses. The anxiety, depression and such. He tried to be supportive. He was happy with the family despite his depression for the most part. The hard part for me was realizing that at his most depressed he resented me and the kids because he was in such emotional pain and wanted to die but would never kill himself because of what it would do to me and the kids. When he thought of ending it all we were the chain that held him back. We rarely fought although we often had different opinions. We communicated well.

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Dealing with being single again after Chris's death

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I am trying my best but there is deep pain and a loneliness after the kids are asleep. Its painful to have a strong outlet of love disappear - yes I will always love him but its like there is a dam inside holding the love that should be flowing to him. The only thing keeping me from exploding is the amount that is allowed to flow out to the kids and Bailey. There's often a feeling that he is away for a weekend or something and will be home soon. I can't get rid of his books or belongings because he'll need them when he gets back. He died while I was in the hospital so I never saw the body. We made cremation arrangements and I received the ashes but I talked to him about an hour before his death and he sounded fine. A world where he no longer exists is inconceivable on some level.I am meeting new people and flirting. I actually don't feel guilty about it because believe it or not we often discussed things like remarrying after one of us died and we agreed for the remaining spouse to live on. I have his permission. 

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