My brother Loyd and I were somewhat used to my parents' frequent vocal battles over the past few years. We often wondered if they felt anything for each other anymore. We almost never saw them be affectionate or even enjoy each other's company. The concept that they would divorce was always in the back of our minds, but we never really wanted it to come to that.
The main fear was that we would have to choose between our parents. This would have been a tough decision. On one hand, I was emotionally closer to my Mom, but she could easily get upset and start doling out restrictive punishments for almost no reason. On the other hand, Dad stopped physically punishing me after I finished fifth grade, but I always felt like he was let down that I was not on any path to become the man that he was.
One Sunday morning, Mom and Dad got into a really intense argument. I can't remember what it was about, but Loyd and I went upstairs to our rooms so that they could hash it out. This was a normal procedure. After a couple of minutes, they stopped yelling at each other and it got really quiet. A few minutes later, Loyd came into my room. He said he heard Mom and Dad talking about getting lawyers. I didn't know what to think.
Mom then took us to church. She said Dad had some work to do at the apartments and wasn't going to be coming. We went to church and came back home and ate. Afterward, Mom said she had some errands to run, so she left the house. I don't remember what Loyd and I did that afternoon. We probably watched TV or something. Mom and Dad later returned home separately. Aside from the discussion Loyd had overheard, we couldn't tell that anything was wrong.
Several years later after I had graduated from college and moved to Denver, Dad left Mom and filed for a divorce. Mom called me up one day and told me that they had separated. She told me not to worry, that this was only a temporary situation. She expected Dad to come back to her. I told her that, of course, I was going to worry.
A couple of weeks later, Dad came to visit me. He was in town to see about going into a business venture with Mom's brother Ord, who also lived in Denver. When he came to the house, he asked me if I knew that he had left Mom. I told him that she told me, but she expected things to go back to normal. He told me that was not going to happen.
He said that he had tried to leave once before. He said he didn't think I would remember, but one Sunday, after she had taken Loyd and me to church, he got in the camper and parked it at the apartments. He was intending to live there while the divorce went through. He said that Mom came and found him after church and promished things would get better if he came back. However, things never really got better after that and he decided to leave her for good this time.
I didn't tell him that I remembered the day in question nor about the divorce conversation Loyd had overheard. It really didn't matter.
Even though we were adults and had moved out of the house when they divorced, it still had a significant impact on us. However, that will be the subject of another post when I get around to that phase of my life. Maybe I'll get around to it sometime next year. (Ugh, I was not expecting to take a full year leading to my graduation from high school.)
No comments:
Post a Comment