My Decade, Plus a Year

It’s 3 am Tuesday night and I’m up again after falling asleep at 9pm and dragging up to bed confused and cross-eyed. Woke up thinking about the future and slid into thinking about the past… So I thought I’d walk through it and see if I can put it into perspective. This is an enervating and mind boggling outline of what has happened to me these last eleven years. Feel free to skip reading it if you are faint of heart, not in the mood, or just plain sick of hearing about it all!

My Decade (Plus a Year)

An Ending

• February 1999: Dumped and humiliated by my husband after 14 years (4 of living together and almost 10 of marriage,) right in the midst of securing a Chinese adoption of a baby girl, I take to my bed and wonder what could possibly lay in my future that could be of any value.
  • Searching for a way to feel better, I end up burning some of my husband’s band’s newly recorded CD’s on my gas stove, fashioning them into a beautiful sculpture on his music stand and make a mean call to his partner in crime and feel MUCH better.
  • I decided to try therapy with ex, since fourteen years is a long time and I’m not much of a quitter.
• July 1999. George begins to dream that I am experiencing marital difficulty (!) and suddenly calls out of the blue.
  • I tell him I want to try to work my marriage out and I’ll let him know if I get to the point where I change my mind, but with his call, things are looking up!
  • Therapy is a total bust with the therapist telling me she feels funny taking my money since the marriage is irreparably ruined. Things are looking bad.
  • I give up on the marriage and call George for a date. Things are looking much better.

We Begin

• August 1999. In love with George. Happy. Thrilled.
  • Get back on track with my business.
  • Divorce is granted. Glad to be out of it. Devastated by failure. Wondering about the future. Having a ball with George.

• August 1999-August 2000: First year with George. Easy and hard. Its interesting trying to achieve intimacy with a lifelong bachelor. We both learn a lot about each other and ourselves.
  • Getting along great except when we’re not. Trying to figure out how to share with someone who has never had to.
  • Realizing I can’t push him around. Him realizing he can’t push me. Start to get into a rhythm of happiness and peace.
  • After six years of hard work my business starts to stabilize. Things are going okay there and we land our biggest job ever and feel more secure financially than I have in a long time.

A Wonderful Time

George and I have an idyllic period of joyous happiness. We have a lot of fun in Atlanta. We buy Buster and I am getting along great with my beloved stepdaughter, Sara, after a few years of strife. We travel with my parents to Mexico for two weeks, take the whole family including his mom to New York for a theater jaunt, visit his home and mine, are both happy in work as his job is going smoothly and mine is too.

• June 2001: Don’t know it, but I’m pregnant.
  • We decide to get married.
• September 11, 2001: Terrorists attack US. Aviation industry is thrown into turmoil, making jobs almost impossible to find. George feels lucky to have stable job at Quest.

• Marry in Vegas October 22, 2001. Have a wonderful honeymoon that includes Picassos, The Bellagio, The Venitian, Paris Paris, Blue Man Group, Cirque de Soliel, Rick Springfield, and TOM JONES!
  • Get back to Atlanta and start trying to figure out a marriage between two stubborn know-it-alls. I realize he has a bad temper. He realizes I am high maintenance.
• March 4, 2002. Lily is born 18 days before I turn 44. George is 46. We are so, so happy… High point of life and marriage for both of us. We are self absorbed, beyond happy. Can’t believe we created such an amazing child.
  • Allan and I decide to close Defining Image. The economy is rough, the industry is maturing and changing, job budgets are shrinking, We’re tired of working so very, very hard to keep it going, I have worked since I was 16 practically without a break through high school, college and first marriage, and I want to spend time with Lily and George.
  • I become, gulp, a stay at home mom, losing my identity and my income and begin a six year odyssey of trying to figure out how to make money from home while dealing with:
    • A child who never once, in her life, takes a nap unless sick.
    • Stays up until 4am every night and gets back up at 8am pretty much every day.

An Unexpected Turn of Events

• January, 2003. George is downsized from his job at Quest Diagnostics after 9 years of excellent job reviews and being promoted to Chief Pilot in Atlanta. It comes as a total shock. To save money, the company decides to manage the department from Reading, PA, removing all management in Atlanta.
  • He’s worried but thankful as the job was getting very stressful.
  • I’m not working, so we are scared about money.
• I sit on the living room floor and cry, start calling old freelance clients, try to figure out if I still fit in my business suits so soon after childbirth.
• George starts to look for another job in aviation. The outlook is bleak.

• Three weeks later he is offered a job in Reading, PA with Quest.
  • I know he is going to have to take it even before he says it.
  • I sit on the living room floor and cry.
  • He leaves almost immediately for Reading.
  • I stay in Atlanta for six months trying to sell the house and get ready to move.

• George lives in hellhole motel in Reading so foul I’m afraid to let Lily crawl on the floor during our infrequent visits. We miss each other terribly. It is the longest six months of my life.

• July 2003: I move to Reading and we move into a rented double with a one year lease. We figure we’ll only keep this job one year and then move back to Atlanta once we figure out a new job for George. Don’t want to buy a house when we are hoping to move back south.

• June 2004: We move to our current house. Things are a little rough with the move and the realization that we are pretty much stuck in Reading where the job is much more difficult and demanding for George.

Phase : Stress Overload

• August 2005: Hurricane Katrina roars into New Orleans.
  • Lily gets on the phone with my parents and begs them to come North rather than ride out the storm in hotel. They and my sister sit in traffic for two days and then spend a week in Florida before meeting Lily, George and me in Asheville at my mother in law’s house.
  • We stay with Shirley for a week and then bring them to our house for three months.
  • During this time we find out that Nancy’s VA hospital is flooded and will not reopen.
  • Nancy’s condo building is looted (located directly across from the Convention Center in downtown NOLA.)
  • My sister Laura, who is stuck in Memphis for two months, has eight feet of water in her house.
  • My parent’s home is heavily damaged by wind and water, with many trees down on their property and some protruding into the house.

• November 2005: We get Nancy a job at the VA in Lebanon, PA and my parents return to NO while Nancy spends the next nine months with us, me driving her thirty miles every Monday morning to work and then picking her up on Friday evening so she can stay with us over the weekends.
  • I find a house for Nancy to buy in Lebanon and begin supervising major renovations.
  • I help my parents locate an over 55 neighborhood in Reading and supervise the building of a new home for them there.
  • I go to New Orleans to help my mom organize the selling of  Nancy’s condo.
  • We move Nancy and my parents to Reading, help them set up their house, find doctors, learn their way around, etc. It’s a bit of a shock to every one’s system (my parents lived in New Orleans for 40 years,) but we are glad to be close to each other as physical ailments are multiplying for my mom and dad, and for my sister Nancy, who has Epilepsy and several other physical problems.

Multiplying Problems

• In the next couple of years, our little family has the following challenges:
  • Lily is diagnosed with ADHD and given medicine so she can sleep through the night and calm down during school hours.
  • Nancy first breaks her foot, and then has to have spinal surgery after we discover she has advanced scoliosis and disc degeneration.
  • My mom suffers a catastrophic fall in the snow while walking into a building and sustains injuries she never fully recovers from.
  • My entire family, except for George, comes down with a mysterious bacterial infection that lands mom and dad in the hospital for weeks.
    • During the week the doctor tells my mom she is having a heart attack, she calls me to come immediately to the hospital, Lily and I rush there only to find she actually has clots in her legs that cause blood tests to suggest a heart attack. She stays in the hospital for a couple of weeks being treated with blood thinners.
    • My dad, who is not a good patient, (as many doctors aren’t,) causes such a ruckus at the hospital that I have to intervene. He was placed in isolation because of the infection and wasn’t allowed to see mom mom during the faux heart attack so he freaked. He is finally released from the hospital after ten days.
    • I get the infection and stay in bed throwing up for eight days. Lily refuses to stay away from me and gets it. We get Nancy out of work to help the family and she gets it within six hours of arriving. George is somehow spared, but spends most of the time working and is at one point in Florida for training.

• • March 22, 2006: While dining in a tiny, low ceiling-ed Italian restaurant for my birthday, George suddenly tells me it appears my mom is whispering, “Help me!” I look and realize her lips are blue. She has a piece of steak stuck in her throat. I and then George try to Heimlich her. She ends up on the floor with the chef from the restaurant trying to perform mouth to mouth on her.
    • We happen to be three blocks from the hospital and she survives the incident, but only after being deprived of oxygen for an extended period of time.
    • She is in the hospital for weeks being tested. She comes out of the hospital with impaired memory that slowly improves but takes months to completely disappear.
    • In the meantime I try to help my dad and Nancy deal with the fallout.
  • Shortly after this, my mom and I come home to find my dad totally confused and not reacting appropriately to our requests.
    • He is taken to the hospital where they think he has dementia. He is in the hospital for weeks, strapped to the bed, agitated, angry and confused. They tell us to look for a nursing home. They tell us he will never be the same. Then they tell us he has had a drug interaction and will recover completely. We take him home, relieved.
  • My mom has her knee replaced.
  • My mom’s doctor tells her she should also have her other knee and both shoulders replaced as she has a joint degeneration disorder.
  • My mom’s hip goes out and doctor says she needs a replacement. She will soon be the Bionic Mom.

My Turn

• I have an ablation, and then three weeks later a total hysterectomy due to suspected ovarian cancer during which I sustain internal bleeding and almost die of blood loss.
  • Though I turn out not to have cancer, I lay on the couch for months trying to recover, and then get up only to have suspected thyroid cancer and surgery to remove half my thyroid.
  • Then I have, in quick succession, four more surgeries for various lesser ailments.
  • During this time my house starts to look like one of those “Can this mess be cleaned up?” shows on Oprah, since one of Lily’s ADHD things is moving things from one place to another and no one is stopping her.
    • George is constantly working with longer and longer hours and more and more legs every night, so he can’t really do much to help. Things start sliding slowly toward the edge of the cliff, at least it seems that way.
    • My dad’s general health starts to deteriorate.
    • My mom’s health continues to deteriorate.
    • My sister finds out that in addition to disc degeneration and worsening scoliosis she is losing her eyesight, with virtually no peripheral vision remaining and very little color recognition. She begins the process of applying for disability retirement from the VA.

The Worst Happens

• August 21, 2009: George gets into the airplane accident.
  • September 4, 2009: After two weeks of fighting, George dies due to his injuries, leaving Lily and me devastated and heartbroken.
  • We honor him in three memorials in three different places in the country.
  • We begin plans to move to Asheville enmasse.
    • Interview and hire an architect.
    • Find a builder.
    • Investigate schools.
    • Return to Reading to prepare three homes for sale and three households for the move.

Merry Christmas!

• Christmas 2009

Despite all the stress producing things that have happened in our lives over the last eleven or so years, I have to say I feel pretty lucky. I’m glad to be alive and here for Lily at a time when she really, really needs me.

George dying has been awful. There’s no denying it and no way to see it any other way.

Mothering Lily in the aftermath of his death is scary and challenging, but I feel so priveleged to help her through this. Yes, I’d like it to be different, but its not and we’re learning new things about each other every day.

Life is really real right now if you know what I mean.

Reading back over all of this, I see how it could be construed as an awful experience, but it has been quite the contrary. We all loved each other a whole lot during all of it. George hung in there during all the trials with my family’s health, and we got closer as a result of all of it. We had a good marriage even during all the strife, and we managed to laugh a lot and find plenty of joy in our lives together. I’m pretty proud of that.

Now, go out and have a Merry Christmas! Happy, happy! Joy, joy! That’s what I’m feeling today, or maybe its the beginnings of an impending nervous breakdown.

Stay tuned for further developments…

Related posts:

1. The Building Begins
2. Numb Dee Dum Dum
3. Gone Daddy Gone
4. What Happened?
5. Down and Dirty

Tagged as: Asheville, burned in crash, christmas, family illnesses, george maddox, lily maddox, lisa maddox, marriage, SARA BYRD, single parent, widow