I was reminiscing this week about a very important person in my life. I was thinking about Mary. When I was about 26 years old, (around 1990) I made the realization that things with my first marriage were not about to get any better. I started accepting the fact that it was falling apart. David and I had separated a couple of times and by this point I knew all about his long time mistress (to whom he is still married). Faced with the possibility of being out on my own and independent for the first time in my life, I knew I needed help, but I wasn't sure where to turn. My friend Old Beth told me there was a great young counselor at her church named Scott. I made an appointment. I've mentioned Scott before in this journal, and one day I'll write more about him, but today I want to talk about someone Scott introduced me to....Mary.
My very first session with Scott was tragic. I was barely able to hold it together to tell him about my cheating husband and my impending divorce. Scott told me his church had a support group for separated and newly divorced people and that one of his other patients attended. He said he felt like I should meet this woman. He also said the meeting was about to start and asked if he could walk me over to the activities building right then. I really, really didn't want to do it, but I did.
Mary was walking in to the meeting with her son, Chuck. Scott introduced us all and they invited me to stay for the meeting. I did. Afterward, Mary and I started talking. I immediately picked up on her accent and questioned where she came from. Turns out she was from the same area as my parents. We talked more, and quickly realized she was the same age as my mother. A little more, and we realized she had grown up in the same schools and actually knew my mother and her family.
As the weeks went on I learned a lot about Mary. We quickly realized how parrallel our lives were. She was attracted to her husband because he was wild and exciting. They married young, and things went okay for a few years. Then the lying and cheating started, and his drinking became obsessive. Mary didn't leave. She had her young son Chuck to care for. She put up with her lying, cheating, alcoholic husband for 30 years. Then one day, out of the blue, her husband hit her. This quickly became a pattern and the hitting turned into beatings. By this point, Chuck was grown and had a family of his own, so there was no reason to stay. Finally, Mary had enough. One day she got in her car and left. And when I say that, I mean it. Mary left with just the clothes on her back. She left behind every possession she had in the world. She left with absolutely nothing.
Mary had worked for the same company for many years and had a decent paying job. She was living in hiding, always aware her ex-husband could find her. Of course he knew better than to show up at her work. Mary was very loved and very protected there. Someone always walked her to her car. But every day she had to watch her rear view mirror to make sure she wasn't being followed. Mary had a cute apartment that she'd fixed up and built from scratch. No family heirlooms, no knick-knacks she'd collected over the years, no pictures of her son as a child. All that stuff had to be left behind. But guess what? Mary was happy. And she showed me that I could be happy too. Given the fact that David had recently been sitting up in bed in the dark, pointing a shot gun at me, I realized he too, could become violent
(My Ex-Husband, dated February 28, 2009). I saw myself in Mary, thirty years in to the future. This would surely be my fate if I didn't get out now. Thank God, I did.
After my divorce, Mary became a second mother to me. I talked to her on the phone quite often and went by to visit her whenever I could. A couple of years later, her ex-husband died and she was able to move back in to the house she had to flee a few years before.
Sometime around 1994, Mary's son Chuck got cancer. He died a few months later. Chuck was the minister at a small church at the time, but before that he had been a youth minister at a decent sized church here in town and was very well loved. That was probably one of the saddest funerals I've ever attended. His two children were crying so hard, I just couldn't take it. And poor Mary. After all she'd lived through, to watch her only child die of cancer. It was a sad, sad day.
Mary was settling in to the old, familiar house where she had lived with her husband. The man who had lived next door and been friends with them for 40 years had lost his wife. He and Mary began spending a lot of time together. They eventually got married, but he never moved in! He would come over to Mary's after she got home from work and they would eat supper together. Then they would watch the news, and Jeopardy! and he would go back home. He was good to Mary and made sure her house was in order, and kept her company. The kind of man Mary deserved all along.
Mary was crazy about my kids. When my son was born in 1997, Mary started being known as Grandma Mary around here. I'll never forget the day we brought my son home from the hospital. Mary came to our house and cooked hamburgers for us. She was always buying my son nice things, and adored spending time with him. It was double joy when my daughter came along a couple of years later. Mary was very good to my children.
Mary had a lot of health problems. She had a very delicate digestive system and the doctors were always a little baffled about what was wrong. In January, 2004 Mary got very sick and died. I took my children with me to see her one last time, but the casket was closed and all I could see was her photograph sitting on top. Her new husband said that's how she had wanted it. Said she'd gotten so thin at the end that she didn't want anyone to see her like that. But I really would have liked to have seen her one more time.
I miss Mary. But I know she died happy. I also know God sent her to me for a reason. Scott saw that we were the same person, a generation apart, and I'll always be grateful to him for bringing us together.
