Escape

Today is a special guest post from my friend, Dee.  Dee recently started a great blog called City Homemade and you can head over there for all kinds of tips on canning, gardening, and even homemade cleansers!  But there is a side to Dee that will make you love her even more.  She is a strong survivor and below is just a slice of her story.  

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The year 2002 was tumultuous for my girls and me.  I had been trying for almost two years to obtain a divorce from a very abusive man whom I had been married to for almost two decades.  Not quite two years earlier, he’d told me he wouldn’t allow me to divorce him.  I, in turn, told him that he didn’t have a choice in that.  To which he replied he’d bankrupt me in attorney and court fees before he’d allow me to divorce him.  He was working very hard to make that happen.

***

In March of 2002, the doctors at IU Medical Center had requested I come up to be with dad when they gave the update on Mom’s condition.  She had battled Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma twice now.  Requesting that I be there for the doctor’s update wasn’t unusual because my father is functionally illiterate and the doctors preferred to give these updates with me there.  I was there every day anyway.  As I was standing in the intensive care room on the bone marrow unit, Mom’s tall, young doctor came in the room.  Mom was awake.  The doctor went into a long discussion about how the cancer had metastasized, that it had taken a serious toll on Mom’s body.  He gave wonderful news in that the chemo-therapy had, indeed, been successful.  The cancer was gone again, but…  I truly hated when a doctor would say “but”.  “But” was never good.  Never.  This was no exception.  He explained to us that the chemo had done some serious damage to Mom.  She was in congestive heart failure.  It was not reversible.  Mom had less than six months to live.  We needed to move her to a hospice.  We needed to go over her end-of-life documents.  We needed to notify family.  I remember hearing all of this but after he said she had less than six months to live, everything sounded like I was hearing it under water.  I quickly snapped out of it when my father exploded.  He was screaming at the doctor to get out.  He screamed that the doctor was a quack and that we’d be getting another opinion.  I did what I could to calm Dad down.  We needed to discuss this out of the hospital. 

***

Memorial Day was here again.  This was the second one since I had formulated my escape from him.  And I still wasn’t divorced.  I was still not legally free.  That week, the judge threatened him with contempt of court if he continued to defy the court’s requests and orders.  This infuriated him.  He showed up at my little, white house in the middle of nowhere.  I was alone; the girls were at his parents’ farm.  I ran and locked myself inside and he began beating on the door and windows.  He was screaming at me and eventually kicked in the door with such force that it broke the structural wall header on the house.  He was inside.  He was screaming at me that I was embarrassing him by having the judge threaten him with contempt.  I honestly told him I had no idea that he’d received that notice from the judge.  There was no reasoning with him.  His threats and taunts never changed.  This was my fault.  Had I not filed for divorce, a stranger - the judge - wouldn’t be meddling into his business.   All of this wouldn’t be in the little local newspaper.  He said “People are questioning why I can’t keep my woman in line”.  Sheer luck would have it that someone I knew happened to be driving by as he was going crazy inside and recognized his truck.  He was always so very intent on protecting his reputation because of his job so when he heard the car coming down the lane; he quickly left as if nothing happened, even saying hello to my visitor as he left.  In his mind if he acted normal, everyone would think I was the crazy one.

***

I made the fifty mile drive to Terre Haute to meet with my brothers.  Neither of them did much while Mom was sick.  My twin, Chuck, went to whatever hospital Mom was at and had lunch with her once a week.  Chuck’s wife and girls would come once or twice a month.  When Mom had the first stroke, my younger brother said “My Mom is gone and therefore, I won’t be visiting her much if at all.”  I hated that my father had put me in this position to tell the boys but here I was.  I met them at Chuck’s; his wife and kids were out.  Mat was late, as usual.  I told them “The doctor said Mom has less than six months to live.”  Chuck was quiet.  Mat wanted another doctor to be called in.  I told them “The best doctors at IU have evaluated her; there is no one else to bring in.”  I went on to explain to them that the doctors wanted us to move her to hospice.  I said “Dad wants us to all go with him to evaluate hospices to put her in the best one.”  Mat, of course, said he was not going to help pick where she dies and then he left.  Chuck, also very adept at avoiding things like this, said “You’ll help dad pick what is best for her, I don’t need to be there.” 

***

The email I received that June day from my not-quite ex husband was menacing.  In it, he said, “Get over this mid-life crisis and drop this divorce nonsense or I am going to take the girls and we will disappear, you will never see them again”.  I knew the courts couldn’t help; they hadn’t helped to this point.  The only option I felt I had left was his father.  I took the email to his parents.  His mother called me many names, jezebel being the nicest.  She insisted I “had a boyfriend” and more.  My father-in-law was quiet for a while, and then he stopped his wife.  He said “You know, he’s a son-of-a-bitch but he’s our son-of-a-bitch.  What he’s done to you isn’t right, he wasn’t raised like that.”  My mother-in-law tried to interject and he silenced her with a look.  He went on to say “You’re a good mother to my granddaughters, you continue to do that and we’ll handle him”.  I thanked him for his help.  Later that evening, I got a call from my husband screaming again.  “How dare you turn my parents against me!”  He went on with “Dad said if I don’t leave the girls with you and let you have your damned divorce that he’ll cut me off.”  His family money and influence that he had been using against me was now working in my favor.  Thank God.

***

Although our lives were on hold because of the divorce, my girls and I had fallen into a pretty regular routine, each day was relatively the same.  The early morning consisted of doing laundry and starting supper, getting ready for school and work.  I spent my days in the office; one girl was at school and the other with a dear friend who babysat for me.  Each day after work, I would rush to pick up Katie at the babysitter just to rush home to Misty who had ridden the bus home from school.  We would have a quick dinner of whatever I had in the crock pot that day and then as we did every other day of the week, we’d fix a plate and a chocolate milkshake for Mom and head to the hospice center.  My dear Mother had been quite the cook before the lymphoma and chemo-therapy wreaked havoc on her body.  Therefore, she detested what she called “institutional food” and wouldn’t eat it.  So every day, we made a deal with my very stubborn Mother that if she’d eat breakfast and lunch, we’d bring her a home cooked meal every day she was there.  And so far, we had done so for almost five months. 

***

Late summer brought my softball; I played every summer after the girls were done with their season.  It was my outlet.  On the field, it was about the game, not the divorce, nor my Mother’s impending death.  It was just about the game - until this year.  My soon-to-be ex-husband joined the team.  The man had never played an inning of softball in his life.  I wasn’t about to let him run me off of my team.  I simply told him “There is nothing we have to discuss, stay away from me”.  I knew he wouldn’t listen but I said it anyway.  Sure enough, long about the third game, he showed his ass.  Someone made some random comment about why he was there; he didn’t seem interested in the game.  He went off and began screaming at the other player resulting in the referee not only ejecting him from the game but from the ballpark as well.  He began heading in my direction yelling, “They can’t talk to me that way, come on we’re getting out of here.  Fuck them!”  As the male members of my team begin heading towards my position on first base, I calmly told him, “I’m not going anywhere with you”.  I’m not entirely sure that what would have happened had the male members of my team not been rallying around me.  I’m really glad I didn’t have to find out.

***

Labor Day weekend, the girls were spending the weekend with their dad and grandparents at their grandparents’ farm.  My Mom was much worse than before and time was getting short.  The doctors said that she had another stroke, and as a result, she was all but gone.  She was moved to the hospital’s ICU.  I tried to spend as much time as I could with her.  Dad, unbeknownst to me, had called the boys and told them she was getting better, I guess in an effort to get the boys there.   Chuck and his family came to the hospital.  Mat was there too but only because he needed to borrow money and I refused to write him a check on our parents account unless and until dad told me to.  Chuck’s wife was upset that Mom wasn’t better but was, in fact, much worse than dad had said, so they left to take their young girls home.  Mat got the check to save his house from foreclosure and he, too, left.  Barely fifteen minutes later, the nurse came running for dad and me to go to Mom.  We went into the room and less than ten minutes later, she passed.  What truly rattled me to the core was that the strokes had left her unable to speak for the prior month or so and yet just before she died, my Mother opened her eyes that were as clear and as lucid as they’d been before she got sick and she looked at Dad and said “I love you”.  And then she just closed her eyes and drifted away.

***

There were only two weeks left until Christmas.   Mom had been gone for just over three months and I still wasn’t divorced.  The only silver lining I could see was that according to the courts, it was my year to have the girls for Christmas.  I was in my office at work when my direct line rang.  Very few people had that number.  I answered it and a chorus of people was on the other end singing “We wish you a Merry Christmas”.  They sang the entire refrain and I still didn’t know who it was.  I said a meek “Ho! Ho! Ho!” at which time my lawyer identified herself and told me that on that day, Friday, December 13, 2002, the judge had signed my divorce.  The entire office heard me cry out in sheer joy.  After two and a half years, it was over.  It was over.

The divorce was final and the court cases closed but he wasn’t done.  I don’t think he would ever have stopped.  Of course, in “good ole boy” country, the local law enforcement wouldn’t help me.  I needed to go somewhere where I could be protected.  I had to leave.  I was allowed to move fifty miles without having to fight him in court.  So, I gave notice that I wouldn’t be renewing my lease on my home, I gave a month’s notice at work and I started packing.  I was leaving and no one could stop me. 

***

I now look at 2002 as the year that changed everything.  My dear Mother escaped the pain and suffering that the cancer had wreaked on her body for the prior seven years.  She beat it twice.  The cure ended up being the death of her.  She wanted nothing more than to die cancer-free.  She did that.  She escaped the cancer and the suffering that went with it.  As her closest cousin, Billy said “She’s gone home with her Momma and Daddy”. 

Ironically, I also completed my escape in 2002.  I escaped from an abusive marriage.  I survived.  Mom didn’t live to see it happen but I know she is proud of me.  I left the small town where we had lived and I left my job.  I’d packed up my life and my children and we were heading to the “City” to start over. 

***

My new beginning started as 2002 ended.  The world as I knew it was gone.  A new uncharted path lay before me, a new adventure for all of us.  Indianapolis was just as big and scary to me as it was to the girls but there was no time for fear, we were moving onward and upward!