Letting Go

In a phone conversation with my son Matt a few weeks ago, I learned that my ex-husband had just died. I had known that he had been very ill. My daughter Kim had flown to TN to see him for what she believed was the last time. She called me from the Philly airport where she was to meet her husband, his brother and wife for a flight to Spain. She had just landed from the TN flight and was audibly stressed out. I knew something was wrong. My heart went out to her, and I forgot my decades-long anger at her father for a few minutes as I tried to reassure her and comfort her. I said, "Kim, I'm so sorry you are losing your Dad, honey." She answered, wistfully, "Mom...I lost him many years ago." That sentence has remained in my mind since our conversation.

Ever since my first husband abruptly abandoned me and his two children forty years ago, I have held a strong sense of rancor toward him. Over the years I often fantasized about the worst possible punishment I could think of for him and wished fervently that I was not a law-abiding, conscience-ridden citizen so I could carry it out.

I would imagine him stripped naked, staked out in the broiling sun of the western desert of the USA in only his cowboy boots (he was an anachronism; he ate, slept and dreamed of being a cowboy in the Wild West...1800's style), a rusty saw taken to certain parts of his body, honey poured over the wounds, and a bucket of fire ants dumped on top.

Don't worry...it never happened. But even though I later married again... to a genuine family-loving homebody of a man, hurt and anger would rise in me at the thought of my ex-husband.

He remarried almost immediately after the divorce; he had been seeing his prospective wife for some time during our marriage...without my knowledge, of course. His new wife resented our two children because their father had to pay child support for them. She treated the two kids like alienated outsiders. My son was only a toddler when his father left the family, so he never got a chance to get to know his Dad. His step-mother made things so unpleasant for both the kids that my son would be delivered back home from one of his visits to his father and as the door closed he would burst into tears and beg not to have to visit there again, but those were the court arrangements, and the kids and I had no choice.

When the two kids became teenagers and Matt went away to private school and Kim was busy caring for her horse and taking part in 4-H activities, the visits to their Dad fell off. Finally he stopped asking to see them at all. Some years went by and Kim got married. Her Dad (who was invited without his wife) attended the wedding, but did not take Kim down the aisle; instead, my second husband, Kim's step-father, was by her side.

About 20 years passed and Matt yearned to locate his Dad and "connect" with him. My ex-husband had left our area and no one knew where he could be located. Through some intricate detective and telephone work, Matt found him in Tennessee. He called and asked if his father lived there. The step-mother answered the phone and said absolutely nothing to him...merely transferred the phone to Matt's Dad.

Kim had long ago torn up any of her father's telephone numbers or addresses out of pain and disgust and a sense of abandonment by him. But she, too became curious after Matt told her of relocating him. So each of them made some visits to TN over the last five or six years, thinking they could reestablish a relationship with their father. Matt later told me that his father started drinking beer at 10:00 AM each morning, continuing at a steady pace until 3:00 PM in the afternoon when he would suggest a switch to bourbon, and that drinking binge would continue until about 3:00 AM the next day. There was never any deep, intuitive connection between them...Matt said his father would converse only about superficial things or regale visitors with his large storehouse of jokes. He chain-smoked, having been a smoker since his teen years, and continued this habit even after he had had heart attacks and quadruple by-pass surgery. He had been cautioned to stop drinking, too, but telling this man not to do something he wanted to do was like yelling at a wall...I've since done a personality profile on him and he completely fits that of a narcissist. It was no surprise to anyone when he finally found out he was in the late stages of lung cancer.

I have had an eerie reaction to thoughts of my ex-husband's death. There is now not so much anger as there is frustration and disappointment. One day I sat down and looked inward to identify why I am exhibiting such feelings. It suddenly struck me that what I was experiencing was disappointment that my ex-husband could no longer choose to come to me to apologize for the terrible emotional hurt he had caused me and his children when he left us. I was frustrated because it was too late for any explanations from him because he was........yes......he was dead.

Talk about a lack of reality on my part. This guy was the last guy on earth who ever gave out apologies of any kind for any reason. The world owed him everything and when he wanted something, he took it and was without remorse. As long as he could see himself mirrored in your eyes, you were his friend/lover/wife/child, etc. The minute your glance moved to some other interest, he tossed you aside. Only those who worshipped him steadily and unerringly were worthy of his friendship/paternal care/marriage/love.

All these years I had been waiting for some damned apology from him, or acts that simulated an apology. What a waste of time and effort and brain power. The last laugh had been on me.

So, after 40 odd years of being emotionally bound to this guy, I'm going on notice that I am now finally letting go.

It's about time.