September 2017
Kerr residence

While I was staying with my parents, I would visit home and have meals with Alex and Wayne.  I wanted to keep touch with my family, but also do what I could to help them.  After all, I wasn’t working and had time on my hands to help around the house.  As the primary caretaker of the house and grounds, little cleaning had been done in my absence.  So, each time I visited, I did some amount of work, be it laundry, dish washing, mopping, cleaning bathrooms or mowing the lawn.  It looked like Wayne and Alex were roommates in a dorm room. Their housekeeping standards were much lower than we’d normally maintain.

Like any married couple, Wayne and I had worked out the split of responsibilities long ago.  They did change over time depending on situations, but generally, I took charge of the household.  At one point Wayne had been the primary chef but when I started working from home, I picked up that task.

Wayne always wanted a neat house, and he had high standards, but he didn’t get involved in the actual work of it.  I wasn’t the “little woman” or doormat of the family.  I liked to be busy and keep things organized. I passed that on to our children. They were taught to clean and do yard work at an early age.  I did get frustrated at times, feeling the burden of running the household, managing finances, and keeping the family schedule organized, but I sucked it up because I knew Wayne didn’t enjoy those things and I wanted him to be happy. To feel loved.

Wayne is a charming, intelligent, articulate man.  He is very capable, but he relied a lot on me.  I could never envision him getting by on his own.  It was more than him not wanting to be alone, he needed someone by his side to give him moral support.  I’d even go so far as to say that he needed a strong woman by his side to feed his ego and make it appear that he was in charge. That any decisions made were his own idea.   It was my job to maintain his perception.

Wayne didn’t just need someone to help stroke his ego regularly, he also needed to maintain a certain image.  He wanted people to see his happy life, his great kids, and his attractive wife. He took pride in these things.  He also needed to maintain the perception of his part in the family.  He was always careful to say “we” when it was really me.  When decisions were made or things were done, he didn’t so much as take the credit, but he allowed others to think he was responsible in part.  Wayne liked to use the royal “we”.  For instance, he wanted people to think that “we” did the yard work or painted the house, when it was really me. We were a team after all, so I didn’t object.  I don’t know how he rationalized it, but for me, being physically busy, and taking pride in my home is who I am, and who I wanted my children to see. I was always conscious of setting a standard for my children.  Wayne set standards, just in a different way. I was more concerned with character than image.

As I was visiting home throughout August and September, I was surprised by changes Wayne was making at home.  I couldn’t figure out why the sudden need to make them, and what they meant.  I noticed the first change on my first night back home, when I saw Wayne had removed my laptop, desk, work and personal files, and locked everything in Ben’s room.   I could tell that Wayne had switched locks between the bedroom and the bathroom.  The bathroom locks had no key, but rather a pin kind of opener.  We kept them at the top of the door frames, but I noted that they were missing now.  This was especially noteworthy because Wayne wasn’t into home improvement projects.  Or I should say that Wayne wasn’t a DIY kind of guy. Changing the locks was a major effort for Wayne.

I did get the courage to ask Wayne about the locked door one day.  He replied that he was concerned that I would start working and taking on more responsibilities when what I needed to do was relax, recover and work with the doctors.  He told me he didn’t want me to worry about things.  I didn’t press the issue because I didn’t want to cause any waves. I was still trying to redeem myself after the ‘long weekend’.  I was touched by his concern and appreciated that he was looking out for me.

Often I would make dinner or have meals with Alex and Wayne.  Alex seemed pleased at a hot meal and spending time with me. As much as any teenager does.  Alex was almost an adult now and acted like I was invading her privacy when I cleaned or did her laundry.  Wayne was another matter.  He wouldn’t always eat with us. He would slam down his food as fast as possible and leave. He didn’t usually talk much. At times, Wayne seemed angry. He would leave the room when I entered it. He was short when he did talk to me. He seemed more inclined to ignore me. I thought this was him being angry that I was invading his space. It seemed that we were uncomfortable with each other.  Maybe he thought I was falling into the old patterns of caring for everyone else, instead of myself. He was probably feeling guilty that I was doing so much instead of him. He probably wanted to be the one to take charge of taking care of me. Instead, I took charge. Maybe he was angry that I wasn’t able to maintain his perception of our family.

On one visit I noticed the appearance of three new 8×11 inch framed pictures on the wall.   They were dark frames with white mats. Two were portrait orientation and one landscape, with color photos of the family.  There was a picture of each of the kids when they were young, around 8 years old.  And there was a picture of Wayne and me, with Alex.  I thought it odd to choose pictures of the kids when they were so young, now they were adults.  I didn’t put photos on the wall, even framed.  So it was odd that he had.  He would have had to search for the photos and buy the frames.  It was odd that he had hung them prominently in the dining area.  Wayne was not one to decorate, so I was impressed with his efforts as surprising as they were. I attributed the pictures to Wayne being sentimental about the kids now that they were grown.  Of course, it was odd to find a framed image of the two of us and only one child. Any good parent would see the inequality in the images and have pictures of parents with each child.

Looking at the pictures on the wall, I thought back to our romantic weekend.  Only one month ago, yet so much had changed.

Friday and Saturday, mid-August 2017
Wayne’s Alma mater

In mid-August, Wayne and I went to a college football game at his alma mater.  It happened to be a travel game for Ben’s football team.  As always, we made the effort to attend his game, even though it was pre-season.  The game was on Sunday, but we traveled on Friday.  We drove several hours on Friday.  Wayne always took the opportunity during our car trips to talk about the good in our life.  Regardless of the reason for the drive (romantic spots, Ben and Alex’s events, family vacations) our family spent the time talking.  Wayne would get all mushy about how lucky we were as a couple, as parents, and proud of what we accomplished, even if we hadn’t kept up with the Jones’s.

We were alone for a change, so we planned this weekend to be a romantic getaway. Normally we would have Alex and my parents with us but my parents had spent the weekend with Scarlett and they were coming on Sunday.  Alex wanted to take advantage of her parents being gone and decided to stay home.

Wayne always made a big deal about wanting time alone.  We planned a sexy, lingerie-filled, no-holds-barred weekend. We took the opportunity to up-level our accommodations and found a very nice luxury hotel on the beach.  On Saturday, Wayne surprised me with a picnic on the beach.  He had gone to a local winery and purchased wine and food for a picnic basket.  He also presented me with a gift. It was a watch.  The watch was meant to show that our love was timeless, it was everlasting.  It was a gift that Wayne had given me many times over the years. I had a very large collection of watches after more than 20 years together.

I found Wayne’s symbolic gifts touching, but also amusing.  Some women might take the watch as a slight toward them not being timely, but I didn’t.  Wayne was always running late and the last one ready to go out.  So I would smile a little as I thought about that Carly Simon song, “You’re So Vain”.

That evening, we had dinner at the hotel restaurant with a beautiful view overlooking the ocean. Brunch was on the balcony, in our robes. This weekend was sentimental for us as it reminded us of the time while Wayne was in college.  We visited some of the same romantic spots, like our secret spots at the beach.  We recalled memories everywhere we went that weekend.  It was a beautiful trip down memory lane.  I couldn’t know it would be our last.

September 2017
Kerr residence

Looking at those photos, it was hard to believe that was only a month ago.  It felt like another lifetime.  As I looked at the photos, I felt a wave of sadness come over me.  I wanted to get back to the closeness and intimacy we’d had just a short time ago.   I wanted to feel like us again.  This distance between us wasn’t normal. We’d never had this space.  We’d always leaned into each other during times of need.  I didn’t know how to handle this new Wayne that was determined to keep me distant.  This picture was a reminder of what I was fighting to regain.

One day in September I stopped by the house to visit, and saw the recycle bin was out before garbage day, and it was so full the lid wasn’t flush.  I asked Alex why it was so full. Alex said dad was cleaning shit out.  But Wayne wasn’t really into cleaning, so I looked in the recycle bin.   It was full of photos, magazines, financial papers, receipts, and the kids’ artwork.  They looked like things that were in my document storage or in my keeper box. My things. Wayne was famous for throwing my stuff away.  Whether it was the magazines I saved, or papers for reference, he would just decide some days to purge my stuff.  Wayne would say that I was OCD (probably psychologists too), but I liked to have everything I might need.  It was all organized and tucked away, not stacked around the house.

Sometimes I was able to retrieve a few items from the recycle bin, but other times it wasn’t clean enough to save.  When I found my things “recycled”, I spent time tearing off the address labels to avoid identity theft.  (I shredded papers too, but I preferred to actually burn private papers in the barbeque).

I could have been overly sensitive, but I found my family looking for ways that my behavior wasn’t normal. Wayne told my family that I was ‘digging through the garbage’, but that was disingenuous on his part. He made it sound weird, like I was a transient dumpster diver.  Wayne complained to Agatha about my cooking, cleaning and gardening while he and Alex were at work/school. These activities were painted to look like I was stalking the family and spying on them.

Wayne had never been responsible for our finances.  From the time we first moved in together, I had always managed our money.  Maybe because I had been the one that put myself through college by working and saving.  He had never needed to do that, his tuition and expenses were covered by his parents.  I had been taught early on by my father how to manage money.  He had a detailed process for managing money, and particularly bookkeeping.  As my dad got older and more ill, I was taking on more responsibility for his bookkeeping as well.  I was now working with him on a monthly basis to help him with his bill paying and any other financial matters that arose.  I was also the executor of his will.  Casper and I were the only children that lived locally, and he wasn’t that close to my parents, so I was the logical choice to help them on a daily basis.

Once I entered the hospital, Wayne took over our finances.  He decided to take charge since I was not home and thought my prognosis was not good.  Once I returned home, he continued to manage our finances and I didn’t want to press him on the matter.  The only thing he really needed to look after were the bills that came to the house.  I had seen bills showing up in the mail, and opened by Wayne, so I assumed he had it under control.

Wayne messed up my book keeping when he threw away my paperwork.  I wasn’t a hoarder. Rather I was following the financial bookkeeping practices my father taught me.  It wasn’t my fault, I was raised to keep papers. So, it was extremely disappointing to find Wayne had gone through my files and decided what should or shouldn’t be purged.  He had the idea that we only needed 7 years, at most, of any paperwork, so recycled the rest.  He hadn’t bothered to shred or anonymize any of our financial papers when he recycled them.

At first, it didn’t dawn on me which months he had taken, and what he was doing.  When I realized which papers were gone, I went into the safe where we store important documents.  Gone were things like my parents’ will and estate paperwork, birth certificates, tax documents, and title deeds.  I had told him not to touch my parents’ paperwork, but I found that he had removed it and given it to Agatha.

I was confused at the time why he was so intent on cleaning out that paperwork when he couldn’t be bothered to keep the rest of the house neat and uncluttered.  I was irked, as usual, at his lack of respect for my personal things, whether he liked them or not.  I had to think that he was just trying to lighten my load, make my life easier, and less stressful.  By giving my parents’ paperwork to Agatha, he probably thought Agatha would take over my responsibilities.

I was trying to show my love by being tolerant. Tolerant isn’t the right word, maybe accepting.  Almost like accepting. I was telling myself that he deserves to do what he wants to do, like clean out paperwork or spend money. And maybe he was taking away my responsibilities to lower my stress level and allow me to rest.

I couldn’t understand why Wayne had gone through my keeper box of stuff and thrown away artwork by the kids.  And pictures of the whole family.  Like those on the wall.  Why would he throw out pictures and art that I had, yet put some on the wall?  Did he think the kids or I wouldn’t want their childhood artwork?  Was he thinking that I had saved too much?   What did all this mean?  I couldn’t raise the issue with Wayne and risk getting him mad because he might not let me back home. I couldn’t rock the boat any further than I had with being in the hospital.  I needed to keep everything on an even keel to get the family back together again.

September 2017
Nikita’s Parents’ residence

I didn’t want to leave the issue of the loan unsettled. I needed to speak with Wayne immediately.  Since it was late afternoon, I knew Wayne would likely be home and walked to our house to speak with Wayne.  He was home from work and alone, so it was a good time.

“Wayne, I was just helping my dad with his finances and saw that you borrowed $5K from him. What is going on?”

“I didn’t want to talk about this until you were better, but you should have told me that we were broke. We could have talked about it. I know how stressed you were before you went to the hospital, I just didn’t know it was about money.  I had to protect our family financially. We need your income. That’s why I had your company put you on disability.” Wayne said this in a pissed tone of voice.

He carried on in a more resigned tone of voice, “We didn’t have enough in our checking account to pay the bills.  I had to borrow the money.  I didn’t want to ask your parents, but you know I can’t ask my family. Your parents are always willing to help with finances, so I asked your dad. We’ll pay him back as soon as we can.”

In my own WTF tone of voice I replied, “Wayne, I’m not disabled and we aren’t broke. We have plenty of money in our savings account.”

“What savings account?  I thought we just had a checking account.”

“We have both. I have a system of putting some money to the side as part of my budgeting.”

Ironically, the savings account was the account that I had Wayne try to access on the way to the hospital when I was showing him that I wasn’t mentally impaired. He never put those two pieces of information together.  We had a savings account, but I didn’t have it set up in the same way as the checking. Because I didn’t want Wayne to have easy access to the balance. If he knew how much was there, he’d be more likely to start buying more things and he’d likely bypass me in asking for approval to spend our money.  Even though he thought we were broke, he seemed to be spending our money more freely than usual.

In an exasperated tone Wayne said, “How would I know how you manage our money?  You need to show me this stuff so I can pay the bills and take care of the finances.”

“Fine Wayne, I will show you. But first I need a check to pay my parents back. Then we’ll move money from the savings to the checking account and you’ll be able to pay the bills.  I can walk you through everything on the weekend.”

“You had a serious medical incident.  You are still recovering. You need to stay home longer on disability.  I won’t allow you to go back to work until I’m confident that you’ve recovered. More time home would allow you to avoid the financial worry, and we’d still have some cash flow. You need to do this for our family.”

“Wayne, I love that you want to protect me and that you’re looking out for me.  I love that you love me.  And I am thinking about our family.  I do want to ensure we have my income and that things get back to normal.  I know I’m ready to go back.  You know if I wait too long, I might not have a job to go back to.  I might get shuffled out of a position during the reorganization.  I have discussed this with my doctors and my manager.  I have no medical reason to be on disability. It’s fraud.  I need to return to work, for me. Please accept it.”

“I don’t accept it. You still aren’t hearing that we need to do this my way. I told the hospital that I would be responsible for you, so you could come home.  We had an agreement.”

I interrupted him before he got any further, “Wayne, I don’t want to talk about this anymore. It’s done. I’m going to work. You’ll see, that everything will work out fine.”  And I left.

I would wonder later about our disability conversation. I was clearly functioning on a daily basis just fine, and in fact taking care of everyone, as well as myself. My doctors thought I was fine.  Why was he so persistent about the disability even now he knew we had money?  I had plenty of vacation time and sick leave to maintain my income, and he knew that.  Why was he the only person continuing to highlight that I wasn’t well?  That I needed to recover?  Why didn’t he see that disability would be a fraud?

Photo by Brian Yurasits on Unsplash

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