This one will be difficult to write and perhaps just as difficult for you to read, as I intend to deal with issues which are usually considered too personal or private to discuss in public – our divorce and our relationship in these ensuing years.
A few days ago, I learned that my ex-wife has been diagnosed as having Alzheimer’s Disease. The news for me was a shock of unexpected force. We have been divorced for a very long time -- thirty six years, and she has been remarried for thirty five of those years. Ours was a happy marriage until it finally became impossible to stay together. We had much in common. We were close with each other’s family and they liked each other. We also closely shared each other’s spiritual journeys; we jointly shared leadership positions in our local congregation and for a couple of years directed and promoted the summer camp owned and sponsored by our District of our denomination. We had many close friends among the clergy and our mutual involvement in church life was one of most significant joys of our relationship.
But circumstances, of which we were aware, but which we initially chose to ignore and hope for the best, finally overwhelmed us and we reached a mutual agreement to separate with great sadness on both sides. There is probably a good argument for saying that this is a marriage that never should have been, except for the fact that it produced three wonderful sons, one of whom did not quite make it to adulthood but left us all too soon at the age of eighteen in a catastrophic auto crash.
One of the most difficult tasks for me was learning to be an ex-husband. I missed my family terribly but over the years, as is to be expected, feelings diminished and our paths only crossed through the lives of our sons. Then suddenly I received this news and old memories and feelings came flooding back with surprising intensity. The frustrating part is that there is so little I can offer in support and caring now. I am an ex-husband living thousands of miles away and it is neither possible nor appropriate for me to insinuate myself into this situation. There is nothing I can do but pray, and attempt to silently direct the energy of the affection I still feel toward her and my sons.
Alzheimer’s is an enormously frustrating and heart-breaking disease. I observed my father as his personality slowly seem to fade into nothingness and he became another person entirely, with only brief flashes of recognition of the people around him. And those of us who cared deeply for him but could only stand helplessly by and observe, wondered what was going on in his mind. Was there enough awareness of his loss to cause him emotional pain, or had he just slipped into a state of half-aware oblivion?
Previously in this space I have written of both the issue of personal circumstances around dying and the issue of trust. It seems that now I am once more to be confronted with these issues on a very personal and real basis. I have recently been doing some intense study and reflection on my own perceptions of who or what God is, or if it is reasonable to believe that God does exist and is a force that enters into our individual personal existence in a meaningful and caring way. When all discussion, arguments, hypotheses and other musings are considered, it is still a matter of trust that the core of our existence emerges from a basic Good, that for reasons we can never understand, enfolds all our experiences, both good and bad, in loving arms, and so, in that firm belief I must step back and entrust her, and all around her, and the process itself, to that Goodness.
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