Larry and I were together from 1987 to 1995. We were married in 1989 at Plymouth Congregational Church in Minneapolis by Larry’s best friend, a Methodist minister, and my associate pastor at Plymouth, Lauren, a young woman I admired. When the wedding floral arrangements hadn’t arrived at the church at the appointed time of the wedding, Lauren asked me if I still wanted to get married. She meant to be funny, to lighten up my angry stance, to let me know that they were only flowers. I said I’d get married but I would stay angry. A preview of what was to come?
We stayed married for six years. One of his sons, who was 13 at the time, cried at our reception. He didn’t want a stepmother. I didn’t want to be his stepmother. When Larry had proposed, I said just that. I don’t want to be a stepmother. He said he understood but thought it would all work out. It didn’t. Stepmothering did us in.
I moved to Michigan in 1995 to take a job as Director of Organization Development, my dream job, and one I knew would be the last of my corporate jobs. I was 52. I moved away from Larry, our house on the Mississippi River, and all my/our friends. I cried as I drove the 8 hours to Detroit.
We were officially divorced six months later when Larry was fined by the court judge for not responding to any of the interrogatories my lawyer had posed to him. His way of dealing with difficulty always was to hide his head in the sand.
I worked. I met Murray. We bought a house together. I went to a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator conference in Toronto. The presenters were all people I knew as Larry and I had presented together at these conferences. Larry was to be the keynote speaker. At the appointed time, the President of the organization announced that Larry would not be presenting as he had just been diagnosed with lung cancer and had a prognosis of 12 months to live.
I managed to get more information from the conference organizers since I knew most of them. I called Larry. I told him how sorry I was that this had happened and that I would support him in any way that I could. We talked.
I called him, perhaps every two weeks for about six months just to talk. Finally, he said he couldn’t continue speaking with me. It was too painful. He died eight months later.
I still loved him, but. The ways I couldn’t be with him were so evident and obvious. They’d been there from the beginning. I had not wanted to see them and could only see them clearly when I was no longer with him.
