So, now you know. Jim and I had a torrid affair. I have used that description for years. Torrid: Hot, sweltering, boiling burning. Yup, that pretty much sums it up.
So, there I stood in my bedroom reading the note with the parting comment. I was numb. I knew that I didn’t want to stop seeing Jim, but I had to. I felt nauseous. For one short moment I thought of ending the break-up and calling him to say I was a fool. Then, the Judi we all love so much shook it off and tucked the pain away, as I do with most bruises to my heart, self-inflicted or otherwise.
It was apparent at the office that we were not dating. I didn’t want to discuss it with my office mates, because it would have been idle gossip and truly no one needed to know the details. Plus, talking about it really just made it hurt more. I had a good friend named Mona who I worked with at my part-time job. She was the only person I could talk to about Jim.
Mona had her own dating problems, so I suppose we were in some crazy way kindred souls. But, I could cry and tell her about Jim and she would always listen and offer her typical girlfriend words of comfort. Her comforting remarks usually started with, “ eff him…he was married!” Loved me some Mona. She was keeping it real!
So, time passed: Jim and I passed in the halls: now and then we’d speak and it was all I could do, not to offer to date him again. Eventually, I started dating someone else. And holy hell…he worked at Wonder Bread as well. I must have been out of my mind. So, still shitting and eating at work…
I was a very stupid 20 something year old…but, the relationship was blooming and eventually I moved in with Frank and rented out my condo. Frank was a cutie and played on a competitive ice hockey team. So, suddenly I liked ice hockey. His teammates were fun and I enjoyed visiting with the wives and girlfriends as we sat in small venues, on cement bleachers, and froze our tails off.
From the start, living with Frank was a roller coaster. We fought all the time about stupid things. My family liked him, my friends liked him and we liked each other, but fought continually. While we were living together I finalized my divorce. In hindsight, I think Frank thought I wanted a proposal for marriage. I didn’t. We enjoyed most of our relationship, but did I mention we fought all the time? Frank had a boat and we spent countless hours on the waters of Annapolis and traveled for hockey games to Canada as well as to his folk’s summer place in Lake George. But, lord we did fight.
And then, I invited trouble into my house. Jim caught up to me at work one day and asked me to have a drink because he wanted to talk to me. It was probably one of the days I was angry with Frank, so I went out for the “grudge” drink. Which led to a “grudge”, you get the point.
God Bless Mona’s “in a pinch apartment.”
So, as I’ve said all along; don’t judge me as I write this blog. I knew when I began the 2500 word experience that some ugly shit would come to light. This is some shit, but I know that plenty of folks have the same shit too. So, zip it!
What a friggin’ mess. Frank was practicing and playing hockey and I was meeting Jim at Mona’s. We had keys to Mona’s and she was either working part-time or spending time with her boyfriend, so we had a pretty free run of the place. Jim was jealous of Frank; I didn’t care about Peggy, never asked. I was just glad to be spending time with Jim, even though it was a slippery slope.
Jim and I got so brazen that he would at times pick me up at Franks house while Frank was hockeying. One bitterly cold night, we had been to Mona’s and Jim brought me home. I jumped from the car because I wanted to get inside before Frank got home. Jim drove off (and remember this is well before cell phones) and I realized my keys were locked in the house. Yup, just punishment for my infidelity!
Frank was usually home by 11 and it was almost 11 so, I thought I’d sit it out on the stoop. It was six degrees outside. Let me tell you, that temperature ate through me like acid. I think I put up with it until about midnight and then went and knocked on our neighbor’s door. They were an elderly couple and were probably not to keen to see me on their stoop. I’m sure they had heard enough of the fights in Frank’s house.
But, angels they were. They let me in, made me tea and gave me a blanket to warm up with. Frank got home well past 1 am. As luck would have it, it was the rare night that the team had decided to go out for drinks after the game. I told Frank, I’d been out with Mona and forgot my key. He didn’t push for more explanation than that.
During this maelstrom, my dad was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. So, I’m in two screwed up relationships, my dad is diagnosed with incurable cancer and receives a death prediction from his neurologist. So, I continued to fight with Frank and tried to find comfort in Jim’s arms. Frank sat through my dad’s painfully long surgery, with the family, that June and he and I argued through the summer.
With the entire family crisis, I found less time to see Jim, because mom needed some assistance with “dad sitting”. Jim was slowly ebbing from my life because his marriage was flaring up into a heated mess headed for a nasty divorce. As much as I wanted to see him, I could no longer juggle the crap I had going on…we drifted apart in a haphazard sort of way.
Things with Frank had become so ugly that it was decided I’d move back home with my mom and dad. Not a bad decision all in all, because dad’s health declined rapidly and mom needed some assistance with his care. Not only his care, but help with my grandmother, “Granny”, mom’s mom who had moved in with us many years earlier. Granny suffered from Alzheimer’s, but in the 70’s she was classified as a dementia patient. Looking back and comparing her decline to mom’s current Alzheimer’s affliction is like looking in a mirror.
So, there I was, a 23 year old divorcee, living with a mother who I never got along with, a father who I had a better, but not best relationship with, and a Granny that couldn’t communicate other than to play solitaire and tell us constantly she wanted to go home. What a blur. My father’s 15-month spiral to his ultimate death was an interesting journey. Only now that I’ve been through that same spiral with Jim can I understand what my mom was going through. Believe me, I was pretty self-absorbed then. Ok, I may still be self-absorbed.
The story of dad is an entire blog of it’s own and I’ll table that for a much later time.
So, there we were in the house in Lanham, Mom struggling to comprehend dad’s illness and the care he would need from chemotherapy visits at the Adventist Hospital in Tacoma Park, Maryland to the drugs she had to juggle down his throat daily to combat the swelling in his brain.
We tried to maintain a semblance of normalcy during that period. We attempted to work out calendars so that the siblings could provide respite for mom. My brothers would help with yard work and everyone pitched in as much as they could. Decisions about Daddy’s care became family meetings and we made decisions based on consensus.
Frank and I did keep in touch and he even helped the family by staying with dad on occasions. Much like Jim, dad liked Frank. The whirlwind that became the care for dad kept us busy. I was still at Wonder Bread, as was Jim, but his home life was crumbling and I was too focused on the crumbling of the Cooksey family to really pay much attention to him. Jim stopped by the house on Saffron Drive once in awhile, but it was social in nature and truly to see dad now and then more so than me. At least that was what I thought.
Our relationship had moved into a comfortable friendship. I still loved Jim, but the love was of a close friend and confidant. I did not regard him as my boyfriend/lover any longer. I felt that the relationship had run its course. I’d made such a mess of Judi during my relationship with Jim and Frank that I just needed to say, “STOP”.
Jim’s marriage was more than on the rocks. He was starting a business away from Wonder Bread and had started to see another woman. We kept in touch now and then, usually Jim calling to see how things were with Dad, but in hindsight, really checking on me. Sadly, dad passed away in September 1978, which is about the time Jim moved to Charlottesville, Virginia.
So dear readers, those of you who I have met more recently, and you have heard the story of my marriage to Jim, are probably shaking your collective heads and thinking WTF? WTF indeed. I couldn’t make this shit up. BTW, SHIT stands for Ship Higher In Transit…about shipping manure…
I’ll leave you for now to digest this story. Again: no judgments please. It was well over 30 years ago and I am not the immature girl I was then. The “then” however has pushed me through the chute of life to become the woman I am and the crazy Widow Fike.
Next….the Charlottesville Years.
Regards,
the Widow Fike
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