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I woke up this morning to the startling realization that my 93-year-old father and my 93-year-old stepmother are getting a divorce. Today.
A fight is not anticipated over custody of the children.
Frankly, I never expected to become a child of divorce after I was a grandfather.
Most stories I have related about my father have ended sunnily. Not this one. One afternoon last week, a mutual acquaintance of Pop’s and mine marched into the modest and cozy home they share and declared summarily that a lifestyle change was in order for him.
No dialogue. No rebuttal. It was roughly, “Get dressed. You are coming with me.”
It Should Not Happen to You
This is one of those bizarre stories that you only hear about happening to the vulnerable elderly.
The family debate that ensued after this ugly scene has been sizzling, and it is not likely to be settled until after Pop has breathed his last.
Pop is so placid and my stepmother so bombastic that they have seemed to be on a collision course ever since they married 17 years ago. They are 2500 miles away, and sometimes in the quiet of the night, I am sure I can hear her. When I telephoned this morning, as I do 6 mornings a week, my stepmother greeted me with an expletive that I trust your children never have heard you use.
Divorce is a handy, but not entirely accurate, description of how they apparently will live out their remaining years. Early this afternoon, Pop was moved into a nursing home, which I thought would irreversibly depress him. It not only didn’t, he seemed sounded excited. Easy-going and a world-class social animal, he expects to know the shoe size of every fellow resident by at least the dinner hour tonight.
The nastiest dimension of this story is that both families, meaning the sudden step-siblings, loathed each other from 1991 until this afternoon.
It Is a Monster-Sized Secret
Both Pop and my stepmother are suffering from dementia, a relatively early stage. Their stigmatized condition is only grudgingly acknowledged, but not by anyone on the scene.
And so, their marriage, which struck me as a motorcycle ride down Pike’s Peak with 2 flat tires and no brakes, is ripped apart.
Obtaining context and true details about what is happening at home is like reading The New York Times or the Los Angeles Times for an objective report about John McCain. So much bitterness rings through the telephone wires I need to don a heavy coat first and employ an interpreter.
The year my stepmother turned 90 years old, she swung at me, and the memory still makes my wife shudder.
When I asked my stepmother why she was not entering the nursing home with Pop, she felt that I needed a rudimentary lesson in vulgarity.
If someone told Pop he was moving to New York or Dallas or Phoenix tomorrow, he would smile and say, “Let’s go.” Surely he doesn’t comprehend the fullness of today’s move. He has lived in this neighborhood for most of the past 65 years.
So many questions I have had, for a week, and hardly any answers are forthcoming.
We should all live long lives, but not so many years that a person can swoop down, scoop us up and carry us away to any destination the grim person chooses. A sad day, it is.
