I am a cryer.
I have always been a cryer.
My emotions spill out of me in the form of tears.
Lots and lots of tears.
If I’m sad, I cry
If I’m happy, I cry.
If I’m anything, I cry.
If crying was a job that you could be paid for, I would be a very wealthy woman.
When I called my oldest son that day and asked him and his brothers to come to the
house I was crying in ways I had never cried before.
Fear and shock were coming out of me in sounds not familiar to me up to this point.
I’ve shed lots of tears-but none with those emotions.
To be honest, my boys are so used to my crying that they must now believe I am
bilingual-speaking both English and Crying.
I paced back and forth in a haze of sobbing and waiting for them to arrive at the house
so we could have a big family conversation about what was going on.
Surely we could set things right.
I wasn’t naive to think that we didn’t have a lot of problems within our many years, but I
knew all families did.
I had always held out that our family unit trumped everything else and our family was
forever.
I even entertained thoughts that maybe this was just what our family needed to set
things on a better course and it had been a long time coming.
I was ready for a big family conversation about everything.
I continued to plead with my husband to really think about what he was doing to our
family and how upset our boys would be when they got to the house and found out
what he was doing.
He continued to simply say ok in a monotone voice with no emotion whatsoever.
There aren’t good enough words to explain the feelings within your heart when a
human being you loved, made babies with and built your entire adult life with sounds
so distant and cold.
When my children arrived at the house my husband was in the garage and I walked
out to the garage as well and met my children as they all got out of their car.
I choked and gasped as I told them that their Dad had just told me he was going to
divorce me.
My oldest son walked up to me and I threw my arms around him and sobbed.
It took some time to regain what composure I could muster, and my son looked at me
and told me that he knew.
I didn’t quite grasp what was happening as I looked at all of their faces.
He knew?
They knew?
How could this be?
I realized that nobody looked shocked.
All of a sudden, a wave of realization hit me.
At that moment I realized why my husband had no emotions about us having to tell
our boys what he had decided to do.
Their Dad had already spoken to them about what he was going to be doing.
This was why he was so confident.
He had made sure to clear the path and had nothing to fear about dealing with any
emotions from our sons.
This was why my youngest son had been asked to go to his brothers and hang out
with them.
The sting of realization set in.
One of my boys would later tell me how mad he was that his Dad had put them in this
position and did things the way he did in telling them before even speaking to me
about the divorce.
He felt terrible about the position his Dad had put them in.
Oh my heart broke for my boys.
I couldn’t imagine how sad they must have been knowing that while they had gathered
together at their home, they knew that their Dad was hitting their Mom with a life
shattering announcement and life would be changing forever for all of us.
My heart could not help but feel like my husband had been a coward to do things this
way.
He selfishly chose what would make things easier for himself.
This was only the beginning of the many things I was to learn…