The Disenfranchised

Stories of Life and Grief When an Ex-Spouse Dies

Peggy Sapphire, Shirley Scott

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780895038210
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351864350
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The Disenfranchised: Stories of Life and Grief When an Ex-Spouse Dies offers an unprecedented anthology of never-before-published, first-person life histories by ex-spouses whose grief has endured as disenfranchised: socially unacknowledged, untold, and unrecognised. Each story of disenfranchised grief is fiercely honest and courageously made public. This anthology has no parallels in current texts, academic literature or mainstream publications. Contributors present personal histories, revealing that the dimensions of disenfranchised grief are as individual as the writers who have endured this neglected aspect of grief and bereavement. In many narratives, the healing power of their creative processes through art and poetry is further revealed. The anthology is compiled and edited by Peggy Sapphire, MS (Guidance and Counseling), a writer living in Vermont. Over the span of five years, through phone conversations and written communications, Ms. Sapphire established trusting relationships with the contributors, who, though choosing to submit their work, often struggled with reluctance, even dread, at revisiting previously private events in their lives and finally committing their stories to paper, and ultimately to publication. Each narrative is accompanied by a clinical commentary, written by Shirley Scott, MS, certified Thanatologist, which provides readers, whether academic, practitioner, student, or lay, with reflections on the issues and patterns of disenfranchised grief, as reflected by each narrative. Included in each commentary are bibliographic references for further and advanced study. The contributors represent an extraordinary range of professional achievements and academic credentials--well-published writers, poets, working artists, educators, academics, mental health practitioners, and health professionals.

SECTION 1

Moving Toward Forgiveness

CHAPTER 1
Harold

Rosemary Wyman

Preface: I had been with our adult children for two days as they trooped in and out of the Asheville ICU where their father, my ex-husband Harold, was unconscious and on life support.

During the next couple of days I was not there. I requested an emergency appointment with my L. Ac. (licensed acupuncturist) for some acupuncture. At the beginning of the session I was asked just a few questions about what was going on with me. Then I was told, in effect, “You need to look around your psychic house and see what needs to be returned to Harold. It is important for his journey that he has everything that is his.”

During my treatment, I realized I had been keeping Harold’s shadow hidden; all the wayward things about him I had not revealed. The poem “Peter Pan Ending” resulted from my meditation during the hour of acupuncture. It portrays the psychic ceremony of intention by which I returned the shadow to Harold respectfully, and with love.

I was back in Asheville when his kids requested staff turn off Harold’s life support. He didn’t stop breathing right away, and we transferred him to a little hospice residence.

I rested in a recliner alone beside him for about an hour while his sons did the paperwork and orientation involved. Blessedly, he no longer had any tubes or tape on him. Nothing was blinking or beeping, and he looked a lot like his old self, fast asleep.

When he was alone at last, he lifted off for Neverland. A few weeks later, a member of my writer’s circle handed me a copy Peggy’s call for writing on the subject.

In July of 2007 the man with whom I began an illicit affair in 1971, whom I married in 1975 and divorced in 1983, died.

The last week of his life was spent in ICU on life support, and then in a palliative care center in Asheville, North Carolina, surrounded by his three children and me.

When I’d first met this man, 6 years my senior, he was my boss. I was not yet out of high school.

To me, his incredible intellect, outspokenness, physical allure, and daring were like drugs I was unable to resist. I’d just turned 18 and the full court press was on.

Our affair and subsequent marriage was full of passion, anger, drama, and heartbreak. I escaped with my self-esteem in tatters and our two beautiful children. At the time of our parting I cursed him.

I have moved on to a new life as part of a blended family and managed, with the unconditional love of my new mate, to grow and change and become a better person.

My ex was not so fortunate. He struggled with mental illness, homelessness, diabetes, and heart disease. For the most part, depression kept him isolated from his children. Sometimes there were months at a time when no one heard from him or knew where he was. He was stuck in a universe of his own making, where he could not grow up, could not father appropriately, could not partner with anyone.

In the last 10 years or so I’ve been able to see how my negativity toward him was hurting me, keeping me from growing. I started to work on softening my heart without smudging my boundaries. At first I worked hard to find forgiveness.

Eventually forgiveness for him came with ease, and I believed it was genuine. From that point on I made an effort to stay connected through infrequent letters that he never answered. I heard he enjoyed them.

In the winter of 2005–2006, as a result of being unable to afford to keep up his numerous, expensive prescription medications, he had fallen in his little apartment and gone undiscovered for a few days.

From that point on he never really walked again. His mind still worked, but was not as sharp, and his depression was like a tangible wall most of the time.

The last 18 months of his life were spent either hospitalized or in a nursing home not far from his son (from his first marriage), who lived and worked nearby as a physician’s assistant.

In early July 2007 he contracted a severe infection. My stepson took him to the emergency room and left only after it was determined that they would admit him some time during the night.

He “coded” within the hour. Staff worked to revive him for 17 minutes before getting a pulse. From that point on he was neurologically unresponsive except for one freak moment, when our son audibly expressed his love and forgiveness.

At that moment, there was distinct movement in his hand.

His three grown children and I worked as a loving team, supported by hospital and hospice personnel, to gradually and gently release him.

I wrote the following poem after a vivid visualization, while trying to process my role in that energetic release.

Peter Pan Ending

Wendy must

Open the drawer in her chest

The Neverland Compartment

Of her heart

She scans its musty interior

For the folded secret hidden

His silent shadow

That must now be returned

Peter lies unresponsive in a hospital bed

But a certain Pan-ness prowls

The frigid ICU room

Hunting what is his

Time here is kept

Not by the tick-tock of the Clock

But by the whoo-SHHH

Whoo-SHHH of the ventilator

Twenty-first century Tinker Bells live

Trapped inside IV drip machines

Blinking mechanically dispassionately

Uncharacteristically resigned to their fate

Wendy must

Carefully consciously

Sew Peter’s shadow back on

Wendys are bound by nature to do so

Her precise stitches

Bind his slippery shadow

To left foot to left side to left arm

That is hot with clot

At his head she pauses for

Dramatically dark lashes

Hair she once kept neatly cut

Hers has grayed but his will not

His lips are no longer visible

Tape is stretched like a long loud scar

Across his jowls and mouth

To hold the ventilator tube

Beneath which his broad chest

Rises repeatedly falls predictably

Hypnosis hook dragging her

Into a fog of her memories

Wendy must

Resume shadow needlework

Push herself now

Round the crown of his skull

Now past his right ear

Lobe adorned with red

Flashing pulse ox-clip

Now trace the sleeve

Of that awful green gown

Not Peter Pan green

All down that bruised arm

Past the IV lines

His right hand lies engorged

Rests swollen discolored

On a pillow all its own

A surreal hand sculpture

Wendy hums an unknown song

Tinder for her rhythmic chore

Her stitched descent to marble toes

Her ending where she’d first begun

Peter Pan will want to do

What boys who won’t grow up will ever do

Fly off to Neverland

Bringing Wendy to mother all the lost boys

Wendy must

Open the hospital window

She crosses the room loving the layers

Of blue mountain vista beyond

A sudden temptation plays her

To stand at the risky rim again

Beside a crowing Peter Pan

But she’ll not fly with him this time

Wendy must

Strip off all her artificial skin

Protective gloves protective gown

Slip out into the hall alone and leave him to it.

EPILOGUE

Harold died on July 13, 2007, his eldest son’s 37th birthday, and one day before his daughter’s 30th birthday. She was just 2 weeks away from taking the Bar Exam and slightly less than 1 month away from her wedding.

I felt fiercely angry about the timing of his death. I’d witnessed him slowly self-destruct for almost 30 years and he had to climax on his children’s birthdays? Right when his daughter was trying to finish studying for the Bar? Just before she married? Jeez! That anger hovered just above my hurt.

But, for me, relief was there as well. Finally there would be no more havoc wreaked by this man. There would be aftermath, yes, but nothing freshly complicating coming at us. As children and young adults, his kids had been through every kind of emotional turmoil at his hand: promises and abandonment, mania and depression, times when he projected responsibility for his well-being onto them, blatant favoritism, cutting put-downs, unpredictable, scary, sometimes violent behavior.

After his death, I just kept telling myself, “Thank God it’s over.” My dear friends and family could sense both of these powerful emotions and offered me the chance to speak about both. No one seemed to think I should feel any way except how I was feeling at any given moment.

There is a persistent sadness in me that Harold’s life was so difficult. A lot of it wasn’t his fault. I knew the patterns of self-destruction were seeded in his post-WWII Jewish childhood. His family circle included many Holocaust survivors whose mission was to reunite other such families and support them in healing.

But I think his parents and grandparents were severely traumatized by what had occurred in their world, by their undeniable vulnerability, their personal and cultural loss.

His parents taught him that he had a superior brain, which would make the world a safe place for him and ensure him a life of success.

I think he knew from the outset that their premise was not necessarily true. Sadly, his great intelligence and subsequent mental illness isolated him. He knew who he was supposed to be, but simply could not achieve his parents’ expectations.

All the way home from Asheville, where I’d left him at the hospice, mere hours from death, I played Dave Matthews’ song, “You Never Know.” It resonated with me in a deep place; it’s a song about the fleeting nature of life, the perils of not tuning in to what’s really happening, and the ultimate spiritual twist of leaving our bodies. Those lyrics howled my frustrations, s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Contributors’ Acknowledgments and Dedications
• Foreword
• Editor’s Preface
• Preface to Commentaries
• Introduction
• Section 1 Moving Toward Forgiveness
• Section 2 “He’s Dead and I’m Not”
• Section 3 “… A Change of Worlds …”
• Section 4 As the Dust Settles
• Afterword
• Appendix Grief Reactons to the Death of a Divorced Spouse
• Further Readings
• Contributors
• Biographies
• Index