Losses
Ecclesiastes 3.1-2: For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven.
A time to be born and a time to die. “And damn, does it hurt when it’s your loved ones!”
The purpose of writing this is to record all that has happened to lead me to where I am currently—to my place of non-belief. Death is inevitable, and rarely, if ever, does anyone escape the pain of losing a loved one. I, however, have had well more than my share of losses, and those losses have in part led to my current status.
My parents were older when they married and had me; my mom was 36 and my dad 42 when I was born. Therefore, losses would be more likely, and they didn’t take long to rear their ugly heads. First up was my maternal grandfather—the person I most admired and looked up to. He had a heart attack while snow birding in Florida. I was 19. My maternal grandmother would follow suite shortly thereafter; she passed away when I was 22. The third loss would shake me to the core—when I was just 24 and she 59, my mother lost her seven-year battle to multiple myeloma. It was a nasty disease that would eventually rob her of the ability to walk or to even talk. By the time I was just 24, I had lost the three closest people to me. However, death was just getting warmed up, and I had only just begun to experience its losses and devastation in my life.
The grim reaper would avoid me for a little over a decade, until it reared its ugly head once again in 2006. That would be the first of two years with two major losses each year. That first year was 2006, and in it, my absolute best friend Steve died—on my 41st birthday. August 5, 2006. My wife and I had just come home from a birthday celebration dinner, to a message on the answering machine, informing us that Steve had died earlier that evening. Two months later, another very close friend died. As bad as all these were, it was to get worse—much worse! The second year with two losses was not far around the corner. 2008. My father, with whom I had become close, was the first of the two losses that year. He died May of 2008. Then, almost at the end of that same year—mid-December, while wrapping Christmas presents, I got the phone call no parent wants to receive. A phone call informing me that Ryan, my son and only child, had been killed in a car accident. He was just 22. My world was rocked and will never be the same. I’d like to say that Ryan’s death was the last of my losses of those close to me, but unfortunately, there would be one more. And while I was in treatment, nonetheless. A cousin that my family and my wife and I had spent many holidays with, and to whom I was very close died. She was just 67.
I have been married twice—the first time for five years, to Ryan’s mother. That was a disaster from the get-go. Had it not been for extremely low self-esteem and amazement that such a pretty girl would want anything to do with me, I would have run like Forrest Gump! Prior to Ryan being born, his mother made several appointments for an abortion—something I vehemently opposed in this case! I eventually talked her out of it, and the night before he was born, she and I were walking around the neighborhood. She looked up at me and gratefully and lovingly said, “You are the reason this baby is being born!” She, of course, was referring to my having talked her out of having an abortion.
One evening, when Ryan was between one and two, he and I were home alone. He came out of his room carrying a paper, saying, “Look, da-da.” Upon inspection, I discovered that it was a love letter—to my wife from some guy she had been seeing. She had been having him mail the letters to her best friend, who would then give them to her. Ryan had found one where she had been hiding them—in his toy chest. Cue mistrust.
During the first one to two years of Ryan’s life, his mom was not around. She would go out partying and doing god only knows what, leaving me virtually a single father—something I did gladly, something I prized. During this time, Ryan and I built a tight bond, which would continue until… (We’ll get to that in a bit.) He became a daddy’s boy, and those years were some of the best of my life; I LOVED being a dad!
His mother and I would stay married for a few more miserable years, mostly for Ryan’s sake. I didn’t want to be without him, but eventually, the desire to not be with his mom became greater than the desire to be with him. We filed for divorce when Ryan was five.
Meanwhile, I began dating the woman who would become my second wife. At first, Ryan’s mom decided that she wanted me back, and began to use Ryan to attempt to accomplish that goal. Per the courts, I had visitation every other weekend and one night each week. I cherished this time with him, and always looked forward to it. His mother often would tell me that I could come get Ryan whenever I wanted—the only condition being that I let her know a day or two in advance when I would be getting him outside of my regularly scheduled visitation times. I did so frequently, and the extra evenings spent with Ryan fishing, going to a movie, or whatever we decided to do were often the highlights of my week. This would continue until his mom realized that I wasn’t coming back, and that instead, I was getting married. Then, all hell broke loose, and her true nature emerged.
She began what would become a successful seven-year campaign to ensure that Ryan would not be in my life whatsoever. At first, it was the phone calls from her when I had him, followed by wrapped presents she would send him during my visitation time. He would talk with her or open his gifts and letters from her, and then come out of his room crying, saying that he wanted to go home. Eventually, she would up the ante, scheduling fun trips to Myrtle Beach, or equally enticing vacations, during the times that I was supposed to have him. All of this, coupled with the trash talk by his mom and her boyfriend about me and my wife, eventually had their intended affect—Ryan started to not want to come when it was my time to have him. At one point, she even took me to court to take away all my visitation rights. The judge saw right through her bullshit and increased my time with Ryan over the summer from two weeks to six weeks. Alas, this only heightened her resolve to succeed in keeping him from me. Shortly after the court date, I drove the normal two hours to pick Ryan up for my court appointed time with him. He was in the car and handed me a piece of paper in his handwriting stating when he would and would not come visit. Although it was in his handwriting, it was obvious that he had been coached as to what to write. Once he handed me the paper, his mom came out of the store where she had been hiding, got in the car, and she and her boyfriend drove off—with Ryan still in the car!
Eventually, Ryan quit answering my calls, and would go on to have nothing to do with me. He was 12 the last time I saw him, and as you read earlier, he died in an automobile accident 10 years later. His mom did not inform me of his death; it was a friend of the family who lived near her. She had heard it on the news, informed the pastor of the church my dad had attended, and he in turn informed me. I learned about his death too late to attend the funeral. In Ryan’s obituary, his mom listed her husband as Ryan’s father, and her husband’s parents as his paternal grandparents; neither I nor my family were mentioned in his obituary.
My second wife and I would be together for 20 years, during which time my alcohol use increased gradually, but steadily, until I would become a full-blown alcoholic. My wife left on two separate occasions and would leave for the final time in November of 2010. She had had it with my drinking and the insanity that ensued. While it was painful to split, splitting became the catalyst for my getting help and getting sober. While married, she would often complain about my drinking and behavior, but I would pay no heed, continuing to drink more and more.
Once she left, and I went to treatment, I began to realize how much alcoholism had affected both of us, and how it had prevented me from being the husband I should have been. I began to work on myself, attended recovery groups, individual and group therapy sessions, worked the twelve steps, and engaged in other activities designed to help me live sober, and to become a (much) better man. I began to develop an excitement for life—something I had totally lacked in the midst of my addiction and deep depression. I began to enjoy life, and to become hopeful that my wife would give me some credit for the hard work I was doing, and in doing so, would consider getting back together, giving our marriage another chance, this time with a sober me. Sadly, that would not be the case, and she informed me while I was still in treatment that she was going to file for divorce. Despite my best efforts to persuade her to hold off on the divorce, she filed shortly after I got out of treatment, and the divorce was final later that year. Just two days after the divorce was final, I received an email from her, which read, in part, “Well—it’s over. Our marriage was a mistake—I don’t love you and I never did.” Ouch—talk about hitting a guy when he was down! This sent me reeling and served only to add salt to an already deep wound.
Thirteen months after getting sober, I began dating a woman I had met at church. We hit it off, and sparks flew almost immediately. We got engaged, and I was looking forward to our getting married, as did her two girls. They both loved me, and I them, and they couldn’t wait for their mom and me to get married. But sadly, it wouldn’t be, and another heartbreaking loss would add itself to an already extensive list. She was unable to commit to marriage, mostly due to fear of commitment from an abusive 14 yearlong prior marriage. To put it in her words, “I know you’re good for me; I know you’re good for the girls. You’re a gift from god, but I cannot receive it.” We ended the relationship that day.
After six years of hard work and loyalty to the company I worked for, I was laid off due to budget cuts. In spite of the fact that I had more seniority than most of the 500 employees in the company, and did have the most seniority in my department, I was let go—and the only one let go in my department. ~continues in Part Six
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