In a post on Nov. 14, I apologized for having maintained radio silence for so long and suggested that at some point I’d explain why.

That point is now. As the headline indicates, my daughter (whose blog some of you follow) was recently divorced. When I wrote the Nov. 14 post, I’d been back in Anchorage for only three days. Prior to that I’d been in Phoenix – for nearly three months.

Those were pretty awful months. Abby’s trio of posts on the process will give you some idea of why:

I’m divorced

I’m divorced, part 2

I’m divorced, part 3 (and the end)

It will take a bit of time to scan these, but I hope you will – because I can’t do justice to her side of the story. One reason that it’s taken me so long to tell my own is that processing it took time. The other reason is that I couldn’t think of a way to explain what happened without making it all about me.

But the experience did take a toll, so I’ve decided to present some of my own recollections the way a book gets a preface or an afterword.

 

First and most obviously, it was so hard to watch a beloved child suffer. And she did suffer. (Read those posts!) Thing is, she’d also been suffering in the marriage for years and years. I’d seen it myself, and once or twice tried verrrrry carefully to talk to her about it.

However, Abby did the same thing I’d done when someone (be it relative or friend) attempted to sound me out on my own marriage: She explained it all away and made it quite clear that the subject was closed.

 

Divorce: Not an easy decision, but the right one

 

If it’s a bad idea to repeat your mother’s mistakes, then it’s nearly unforgivable to embroider on them. But she did, because that’s what she’d seen growing up: Men do what they want, women try to hold it all together.

The same thing I’d seen while growing up – and yep, I’d embroidered on my own mother’s mistakes, too.

Inherited marital dysfunction: The gift that keeps on taking.

I knew from personal experience that if I pushed too hard she might shut down altogether. Thus I had two options:

• Press the issue and risk alienating her (and making it harder for her to ask for help later), or
• Plant a seed, then step back hoping that she’d let me know when it was time.

When she told me she’d be asking for a divorce, I was willing to do whatever I could to help. What I didn’t realize was how difficult it was going to be for me as well as for her.

Obviously I missed my dearest partner like oxygen. Daily phone calls were essential, but they weren’t enough. A much bigger issue – and one I foolishly hadn’t considered – was the impact of the day-to-day trauma that accompanies any breakup.

The pain on both their faces (although I had to care more about hers than his). The tension in the house, so thick I could hardly breathe, and there was no way to escape it.

The not-knowing that permeated every move any of us made: Is today the day that things get fixed, or become irreparably broken? Because yes, he tried to change and no, the damage ultimately couldn’t be undone. (You’ll have to read her account to understand why.)

 

Divorce-related damage

 

Every day was a series of PTSD triggers. Unexpected sounds made me jump out of my skin. Instances of overheard anger, pleading or weeping made it hard for me to breathe. Suppose he became violent? During my own divorce process I’d been warned that previously non-aggressive men can suddenly – and sometimes fatally – lash out when they realize what they’re about to lose.

This did not happen. But the fear that it would was always on the edge of my consciousness. One of the joys of post-traumatic stress disorder is hypervigilance; in my case, that manifests as constantly running potential scenarios. The bad ones always win.

The anxiety gave me insomnia. When I did sleep, nightmares frequently ruined my rest. Some days I suffered through panic attacks: in the spare room, with the door closed and me face-down in a pillow to muffle the shallow gasps for air, or while out on my daily walk, where it was okay to Lamaze-breathe and even whimper like a frightened dog if necessary. I never met another soul on those walks, on the frontage road alongside the freeway; if I had, that person might have run in another direction.

Even when I was calm, I was often a millisecond away from breaking down and crying. Everywhere I looked were reminders of the days leading up to the end of my own broken and abusive marriage. But this isn’t about YOU, I kept telling myself. Concentrate on helping your daughter.

In that, it wasn’t unlike the months I’d spent watching her suffer during her long-term hospitalization for Guillain-Barre Syndrome. She was in pain and on life support, and the best I could do was say, “Shall I read to you?” or “I can massage your shoulders if you like.” This time around, all I could do was wring my hands, or ask “Is there anything, anything I can do that will make your life even a little bit easier?” All the while knowing the answer would be “no, but thanks anyway.”

Most days it felt that I wasn’t doing much good at all. However, toward the end Abby thanked me for derailing my own life in order to be there: “You’re keeping me resolute.” And in one of those posts referenced above, Abby noted that she might not have been able to keep it together if she’d had to go through this alone.

After all, it was three (Tim and his parents) against one, and Abby had been gaslighted so relentlessly for so long that sometimes she simply couldn’t stand up for herself – which explains things like the pool table. (Seriously: Read her posts.)

As the process picked up speed, though, Abby started making some pretty crisp decisions. That doesn’t mean they were easy. Just necessary.

 

Divorce: End of days

 

In late October and early November there were specific, physical things I could do to help: go out with her to look for boxes and then help pack up his belongings, sort through the garage (much of the stuff was junkable and to be carted to the dumpster), load boxes into the car (and occasionally help unload them at the apartment Tim and his parents rented).

One way I know that I made a difference was helping to rehab the “guest house,” the small one-bedroom wing of the home where his parents had lived for eight years. To be fair, health issues have them both pretty stove-up so I didn’t expect the place to be spit-shined. However, nothing could have prepared me for what lay ahead.

Once the moving van pulled away I did a quick inventory. That is, I spent 20 minutes in the guest house, cussing a blue streak and cataloguing how much needed to be done in the four days before I left. We’re talking years’ worth of kitchen grease, spilled food and drink, pet urine (they had two small dogs), multiple holes in the walls (her mother-in-law never met a piece of art she couldn’t tack up somewhere), broken vertical blinds and a dust-laden blanket they’d nailed to the bedroom window frame to block the sun. Scattered on the filthy floors were things like candy wrappers, water bottle caps, takeout menus, junk mail, food scraps and veritable snowdrifts of dog hair.

The inside of the fridge was sticky and grimy; its exterior was so coated in dust and cooking grease that Abby seriously considered buying a new one. It took hours of scrubbing with a mixture of white vinegar and Dawn dish soap, then rinsing with numerous buckets of clean water, but it turned out looking almost new.

And oh, the bathroom. While scrubbing the floor and walls around the toilet I wore a dust mask daubed with Vicks Vapo-Rub, the way medical examiners do with particularly ripe corpses. “Remember this when you’re picking out my nursing home,” I told her afterward.

Abby and I washed down the walls with vinegar and water before painting them, and I used countless buckets on the appalling floors. We roundly cursed the invention of drywall anchors, which made the removal of the blinds and a couple of bathroom grab-bars a lot harder than it should have been. We did a few minor repairs (Teflon tape is your friend! Spackle is, too!) and even installed track lighting in a series of sitcom-worthy snafus.

Anyone who thinks I’m exaggerating can have a look at the before-and-after photos Abby posted on her website. And I, too, wish that she had gotten a close-up of the fridge. It really was that nasty.

I’m certain that she could not have found any company to do the level of cleaning needed. As fellow Phoenix blogger Funny About Money noted, “Cleaning services around here tend to just push the dirt around.” But now it’s rentable. Despite its quirks, it’s even attractive.

 

Divorce: The aftermath

 

When I got home I was pretty flattened. The first week I mostly slept (no more nightmares!), went through the piled-up mail, did LLC paperwork, and reveled in love and care (and home-cooked meals) from my sweetheart. We took care of his grandkids for parts of days (always fun, always tiring), set up my tiny Christmas tree, and made peanut brittle and sea-salt caramels.

The nice big earthquake, continuing aftershocks (good times!), and snow and cold helped me remember I wasn’t in Phoenix anymore. I got to wrap and mail gifts (including those candies), and on Christmas morning I went over to watch my great-nephews open presents; even though they’re now 12 and 17, it’s a treat to see them exclaim over their fairly modest gifts, and to enjoy orange rolls and bacon afterward.

All the while I was playing mad catch-up, trying to make up for all the work I didn’t do while in Phoenix. It wasn’t that I didn’t write a single word for three months, but constant stress and anxiety are not conducive to the generation of exciting freelance pitches. Thus the last quarter of 2018 was one for the record books, as in “the lousiest quarter since I started my small business.” (Luckily, 2019 began with a bang.)

Was it worth it? Good heavens, yes. For years I’d despaired quietly as I watched her make the same mistakes I’d made. Despite her own health issues, she worked full-time (with one weekend of overtime every month) and put out other people’s fires so relentlessly that I was afraid the stress would kill her. Yet no matter what she did, it was never enough.

I feel blessed to have been able to be there, even on days when the most help I could give was to peel a cucumber and serve it to her with some hummus. Once again, I’m so grateful to be a freelancer who can order her own days, i.e., slack off on work for a bit. There will be other years to earn money. This was my one chance to help my daughter save her own life.

Since I’ve been home, I’ve barely left the house. DF and I spend hours just sitting quietly and reading, or cooking together, or cuddling. It’s as though we can’t get close enough to make up for having been so far apart.

“It’s like living in a bubble,” he said the other day. “Are other people this happy?”

I don’t think most people are, but I wish all people were. And now my daughter has the chance to build a life that includes happiness.

 

Related reading:

 

• The life I once led
• Afraid of becoming our mothers
• Life: Is there a do-over?
• Negotiating the Crappy Things Spectrum