My Parents Divorce

My parents were married on September 12, 1959. They had a very large wedding with all their friends and family in attendance. As a child looking at the pictures, it seemed so magical, so wonderful. I always had a safe and secure feeling that my parents would be together for all time.
Well, that all changed in November of 1995. My mother decided to leave my father after 36 years. What's worse...she was leaving him for his brother Jack with whom she'd had an affair 34 years ago. I asked her why she didn't divorce my dad way back then...she never really answered. Instead, she chose to live more than half her life with a man she was now claiming never to have loved, and had known marrying was a mistake from day one.
So she left...while my father was at work, she just packed up and left. Oh, she was kind enough to leave my dad a note on the kitchen table..."Took vacation, went to Debbie's. Call you later" Well, she came to my apartment all right...only to meet Jack at the airport here so they could drive back to Florida together. I think she spent all of twenty minutes here in town before they were on their merry little way.
Of course, she didn't call my father that night. He called me at midnight, asking to talk with her. It was left to me to tell him where and with whom she was. Listening to my father's sharp intake of breath...the stammering...I will never forget that. I don't know that I will ever be able to forgive my mother this.
He and I were never close, and that's exactly how my mother wanted it. She was forever stepping in to make him seem the bad guy in my eyes...of course, I didn't realize this at the time. It's only been since she left that I've come to understand and accept my father.
In the months that followed, my father learned to live on his own. He'd been so dependant on my mother for almost everything, it was quite an adjustment for him to make. In the meantime, she was playing games with him..."Well, I'll come home if you do this..." He learned to manage his finances, buy groceries for two weeks at a time, and schedule appointments. (All things she had taken care of for him.) What he didn't learn was to let go.

I was in the midst of wedding plans when she left. I was supposed to have had the traditional church wedding with a reception to follow. But in listening to my father cry over missing my mother, I couldn't see going through with the wedding as planned. To me, it was all a farce...the bride and her parents in the happy little family pictures...the bride dancing with her daddy during the reception...the groom and his new mother-in-law having a little heart-to-heart beside the floral arrangement.
My father could hardly have a conversation about her, how could I expect to put him through his daughters wedding, which is supposed to be such a monumental event for the brides parents, while sitting there next to the woman who'd run out on him?

Instead, Jerry and I ended up having a small ceremony here in town. My father didn't attend, and my mother seemed too wrapped up in her new life to want to be there. Which at that point was fine with me. But in retrospect, I wish my parents would have seen my wedding. I wish my parents could have enjoyed their only child's wedding together like I always thought they would. I wish.....

The situation now?...My mother spent almost three years in Florida, then decided she wanted to move back to Indiana. She asked that my husband drive her car back here, she got herself a nice little apartment and her old job back. Her and my father finalized the divorce, divided their mutual possessions (which let me tell you was a mess...they fought over every last fork and pillowcase, and I am NOT kidding!) and she seemed happy again. Then a mere six months later I receive a call from my father telling me she'd moved BACK to Florida. I finally called her, asking what was going on...one of her reasons for returning to Florida? I never drove the three hours to see her.

This began a slow burn inside me. When she moved back to Indiana in the first place she told me part of the reason was to be closer to her grandson, that she wanted to be able to drive down to see him over a weekend if she felt like doing so. Yet in the six months she lived here, she never once made the drive. I was the one who was expected to pack myself AND him (along with all that a child of not yet two years old requires) and cram everything into my car and drive three hours with him screaming at the top of his very healthy lungs the entire drive. Wasn't it easier for her to come here to see him? "Well, I suppose it would be, but I had blah blah blah happening and just couldn't." All right then...forget who never came to see who...Mom, why didn't you tell me you were moving back to Florida? Her answer was..."Do I have to tell you EVERTYHING I do?"

That was the middle of March. The latest news is she's moving back...again...to Indiana. Of course, I didn't hear this from her. Once again, my father was the one to tell me. Seems the two of them talk more to each other than to me.
And if you want the truth, that's fine with me. I love both of my parents very much, but I'm tired of playing their games. My father rations what he says to me, thinking I'm running back to my mother and telling her. My mother is playing Little Miss Traveler and forgets to inform me of her new change of address. Do I have feelings of bitterness? You bet I do!

My mother says she never was in love with my father, that she loved him but didn't want to be married to him. But instead of ending her marriage years before, she chose to stay in it, adopt a child and raise that child with the belief that Mommy and Daddy are happy. Sure, they fight, but so does little Susie Thompson's parents. All my life I thought my parents were happy. I thought they loved each other and would be together always. We didn't have a large extended family...it was just the three of us on holidays, birthdays, and other special occasions, making our own memories. Now, I feel cheated. If only I'd known my mother was unhappy...there wasn't anything I could've done, but at least I would have known the truth instead of being allowed to believe a lie for twenty-six years. If she lied about this, what else did she lie to me about?
That's my feelings on my parents divorce. Some of them may seem like the rantings of a chid...and well, I guess they are. Don't get me wrong...I'm thankful that both my parents are alive and still with me, but my relationship with the both of them is so strained at this point, I hardly speak with either of them. And there's more to the story than I've said here, but it's things that I really don't care to get into, and really would serve no purpose. I'm just tired of being in the middle, I'm tired of sorting through the lies and deceit to find the truth. I'm just tired.

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