Bad Ideas and Poor Choices

The Little Girl

I can see the mark from his glasses, this must have been right before bed. We were still sleeping with her; I think I kept her with us until I was done nursing. This man’s world changed when that little girl was born. It was like he was split open and all the protected stuff just poured out on the floor. Later, when she was older and we were no longer married he started putting it back but she had him, or he had her until the moment he died. I’m pretty sure he knew she had his hand because periodically he squeezed it. That’s my story, and hers too, and we’re sticking to it.

The truth is, his saline had dropped so low the swelling in his brain that shut him down would have turned off everything. However, he was still breathing right up until he wasn’t.

We got married because we wanted to have a baby together. I don’t know that we’d necessarily have gone through with the actual marriage if it hadn’t been for his parents. His mother would have had heart failure and I’m not sure WHAT his father would have done. Patrick was first generation Irish American and his parents didn’t arrive until they were in their early thirties. Religion is bedrock in that country. That’s also the reason she was finally baptized and this man LIED to a priest.

We didn’t get married in the church because that would have required an impossible annulment from my first husband (I think after ten years the church might raise an eyebrow at that sort of request). That was strike one. Strike two was that I’m not Catholic. I’m not actually anything. Culturally I suppose I’m a Midwestern Methodist and Northeast Dutch Reform (which is now called The Reformed Church in America – RCA) combination. I said, to Patrick, New Dutch Reform because that’s how I heard it in my head so that’s what he took with him into that meeting.

The Church

There were seven Catholic churches in the city/town we lived in. He’d worked his way from one to the next until he got to the seventh. Some priests wouldn’t even see him. Some just gave him the requirements (annulment, conversion (me), marriage in the church) and sent him on his way. The seventh was a cranky old man who struggled with Vatican requirements and the need to save souls.

He asked my husband if I had been baptized.

Lie number 1: Yes.

In which church was your wife baptized?

Lie number 2: New Dutch Reform.

He should have been thrown out right there. Instead, I was summoned. By myself. Alone. Shit.

We talked for awhile and I refused to lie until I ran into the wall of Patrick’s lies.

The priest asked, in which church were you baptized?

Lie number 1: New Dutch Reform.

When were you baptised?

Panic: oh shit oh shit oh shit do they do it at birth or do you have to be eight or something?

Vague half lie: I have no idea. I have no memory of this. My father was at Hope College Seminary so maybe it was then?

Boom! Magic words. My father was at Hope College Seminary but then he decided God didn’t exist and spent a few years in the military while he worked his shit out. THEN he went back to Hope College and got a degree or two in History. He did meet my mother at Hope College. All these things are true except the baptism part.

I’m not sure if he ever did the math… father at the seminary, daughter knows absolutely nothing about any of this… including the name of the church…

Here’s the kicker. The kid was eleven months old. It took that long to work this out. Next kicker: the godparents had to be Catholics in good standing.

Um. Do you know any? No. Not me. My parents for sure. They can’t be the godparents. True.

In the end, because nobody stateside could get a letter from an actual priest stating ‘good standing’, two relatives from Ireland were conscripted with two bad standing Catholics at the altar. She didn’t set foot in a church again until the first summer she spent a week with her grandparents and her grandmother took her to church four times in that week.

The End of the Marriage

We made it three years and that was all either of us could take except I think he would have kept going and just been super bitter for the rest of his life. I know we were both super lonely. Everything the original friendship was gone. The original love affair was gone. In my mind he had failed as a stay at home father, caring for the children from my first marriage and the baby girl from ours. He just wasn’t good at it and to be honest, I had tried it years ago for a single summer and was told, by my four year old son, to go the hell back to work.

In his mind, as I climbed the corporate ladder, I was turning into someone he didn’t like. He didn’t understand or agree with some of the choices I made. To be fair, I got off the corporate ladder for exactly those reasons but it’s hard to live with someone who holds you in disregard. He pulled into his shell, I worked more hours, and we both lost the things that were so precious prior to the marriage.

Good thing we got them back. Co-parenting was as easy as I think it can be. Or, it was so much better and easier than the co-parenting going on with the first two that I couldn’t have been happier. He was, and remained until I moved waayyyy out of state, my person. My in case of emergency number.

When I got sick, he picked me up. When I needed care, he gave it. When his girlfriends were making him twitchy I either talked him off the ledge or agreed that he should run like hell.

He was with us at Thanksgiving and Christmas and often at the beach in his own house. He was, my dad will tell you, the one WE kept. The best part? Our daughter grew up in an environment where she never, to the best of my knowledge, had to choose between one parent or another.

The Beginning of the End

Patrick decided to drive five hours to see my dad before he died. We don’t know when my dad will die. In the past it has looked like he was circling the drain and then he’d rally. Patrick didn’t want to take any chances. So he drove up, spent the weekend, and drove home. He needed to say good-bye, just in case.

Several days later Patrick ended up in the ED because something was wrong. He blamed it on the burrito from Trader Joe’s. Our girl called me in hysterics and I said, sweetie, we don’t know anything yet.

His diagnosis came a week later. Biliary cancer. One tiny growth blocking a bile duct. Hadn’t gone anywhere yet and he had a 54% chance of making it to the five year mark.

And then it got hard. Really hard.