It took several weeks for the news to reach my family that DF had asked to reconcile our marriage and had moved back in with me. Not that I was concealing anything, it's just that we'd lapsed into a minimal contact mode to spare further controversy. The "out-of-left-field" petition for divorce had shocked everyone in the family, and there was also much anger over the venom that had been spewed from the dynamic duo in public and infront of my sister. I continued to drop in on each household, once every few weeks, but kept visits short enough to evade any discussion that could enter the "no go zone".
One Sunday in mid- February 2003, I made a similar trek out on the peninsula to say hello. The reception was less than hospitable, in fact, the welcome I received was equivalent to the sting of a whip cracked across my face. In no uncertain terms I was told to make the choice between having a family or a husband. Dumbfounded, I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I am, by nature, a pacifist and like to smooth out disagreements, rather than to inflame them. I shared that it was an impossible position to be placed in, and how could anyone expect me to be able to make such a choice.
I believe that is the first time I saw my ordinarily-genteel and highly sophisticated father lose his temper to the point where he escorted me from their house, and told me never to "grace the doorstep in the company of DF". I remember standing on the very same threshold that I'd crossed on my father's arm the day of my wedding, filled with sorrow and begging him not to place a wedge between me and them like that.
For the past countless years my parents were the picture of health ~ always very vital for their age. Unlike most people of their years, they spent their retirement taking on one architectural or landscape project after the next in their spacious home; blessed with the physical prowess of people decades younger (I guess I acquired that genetic trait too), much of the construction they handled themselves. It was not uncommon to find my Dad building foundations and concrete-block walls on any given day of the week. In recent months, both had rapidly become more feeble, tired and the onset paralleled the time when I learned that I was to be divorced. At first we all thought it was the impact of worry and concern for me, while on the emotional divorce roller coaster, that caused their health to deteriorate so suddenly.
However, I would later learn (at the end of 2003), that my family had information ~ a lot of crucial information ~ that was so painful for them to share with me as they knew it would break my heart to find out. They thought it best to keep from me. Perhaps carrying this secret as they did, to spare me pain, caused them not only ill health but also to react this way. (It would not be until December of that year that someone outside the family would come forward to share the crushing truth with me).
And this is the reason I've not let anyone in my family know how my life is today. To spare the only people that have ever cared for me, the way they had spared me.
One Sunday in mid- February 2003, I made a similar trek out on the peninsula to say hello. The reception was less than hospitable, in fact, the welcome I received was equivalent to the sting of a whip cracked across my face. In no uncertain terms I was told to make the choice between having a family or a husband. Dumbfounded, I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I am, by nature, a pacifist and like to smooth out disagreements, rather than to inflame them. I shared that it was an impossible position to be placed in, and how could anyone expect me to be able to make such a choice.
I believe that is the first time I saw my ordinarily-genteel and highly sophisticated father lose his temper to the point where he escorted me from their house, and told me never to "grace the doorstep in the company of DF". I remember standing on the very same threshold that I'd crossed on my father's arm the day of my wedding, filled with sorrow and begging him not to place a wedge between me and them like that.
For the past countless years my parents were the picture of health ~ always very vital for their age. Unlike most people of their years, they spent their retirement taking on one architectural or landscape project after the next in their spacious home; blessed with the physical prowess of people decades younger (I guess I acquired that genetic trait too), much of the construction they handled themselves. It was not uncommon to find my Dad building foundations and concrete-block walls on any given day of the week. In recent months, both had rapidly become more feeble, tired and the onset paralleled the time when I learned that I was to be divorced. At first we all thought it was the impact of worry and concern for me, while on the emotional divorce roller coaster, that caused their health to deteriorate so suddenly.
However, I would later learn (at the end of 2003), that my family had information ~ a lot of crucial information ~ that was so painful for them to share with me as they knew it would break my heart to find out. They thought it best to keep from me. Perhaps carrying this secret as they did, to spare me pain, caused them not only ill health but also to react this way. (It would not be until December of that year that someone outside the family would come forward to share the crushing truth with me).
And this is the reason I've not let anyone in my family know how my life is today. To spare the only people that have ever cared for me, the way they had spared me.
FRAGILE ~ Sting
If blood will flow when flesh and steel are one
If blood will flow when flesh and steel are one
Drying in the colour of the evening sun
Tomorrow's rain will wash the stains away
But something in our minds will always stay
Perhaps this final act was meant
To clinch a lifetime's argument
That nothing comes from violence and nothing ever could
For all those born beneath an angry star
Lest we forget how fragile we are
On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are how fragile we are
On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are how fragile we are
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