Buried my first wife (ex-wife) yesterday.

I write as many of you helped me through the journey of a spouse with extreme alcoholism.

We buried her on Saturday back in her hometown.

Four years ago, we divorced. I finally left her after years of drinking and, well, emotional, verbal and physical abuse to me and, worse, our children.

Our lives had radically changed in the time sense. I had full custody of the children (one now in college). What followed for her: misspending herself from the house to selling it and moving into a tiny apartment. Two arrests for OWI, totaling a car in the process. Four ER trips for excessive drinking. Showing up constantly intoxicated to our kids’ events and a series of one-night stands with men who clearly didn’t care about her.

She never got the help we desperately wanted her to obtain.

She had become Sharon Stone in Casino, dazed and walking through that dark apartment hallway in her final moments.

Eight days ago, none of us had heard from her for 36 hours. I went over to her place. Heard nothing. I later got a message from a hospital. Apparently she went on a bender of her prescription meds and about two bottles of wine.

She floated in and out of a coma for two days. Then her vital started crashing. The smoking and drinking had destroyed her liver and lungs. She slipped away mid-week.

I was there, feeling her squeeze and wondering what happened to the woman I fell in love with 26 years before.

My daughter and I were the only ones who came to see her. Two days before all this, she was drunk and called our son at college to tell him was a failure and a burden. He’s so the opposite. He chose not to come back.

Her drinking alienated everyone in our families. None of them came. Most didn’t even check in or call. She had, while drunk, called them so many times - once claiming she had a brain tumor when she didn’t (a mess I had to clean up after the divorce) - that, when she actually needed support, she had burned through all of their goodwill.

Yesterday, no one got up to speak at her service. So I did. For 20 minutes. In a setting where I was not welcome. Her narrative “back home” was that I was this asshole TV anchor whose job drove her to drink.

So I talked about how wonderful of a mother and wife she was... from the good ol’ days.

The evil side of me wanted to tell them how she hit our children, once hit me in the face with a beer bottle and I told work I had fallen while jogging to cover for her as I couldn’t be on the air for a week. I wanted to tell them how she threatened to ruin my career. How she played very dirty a year after the divorce. How she blamed me for having a convicted child molester as a biological father.

But I didn’t. I played nice and the three of us drove back home today.

What’s especially jarring. Her divorce attorney reached out to me last night. Said he had a letter she wanted me to have “if anything ever happened”.

I read it this morning. She apologized for everything. About her failures. About her wish to just be done with life. Wrote it about a month ago.

I’m relieved that she wasn’t, technically, alone when she took her last breath.

I’m thankful for all of you here for listening (and helping) all these years. For all of the crude (?) cracks about the Laz-E-Boy, I must say the girlfriend has been incredible through this. (No, she stayed back in our city and watched our dog. We don’t live together.). She has shown such kindness to a woman who, well, harassed her endlessly for a year and really made our lives difficult.

I call the mother of our children a “first wife” and not an “ex”. She’ll always be the first wife even as I don’t think I’ll ever get married again.

Onward. Lots of reflection ahead.

 

Oh, how awful. You did everything you could and should, man. And much more.

 

She was never coming back.

But I'm still sorry for your loss and the loss of your kids.

 

You may have been the person who told me that in 2017. Once I got that in my head, my life became instantly better.

It’s funny. She had threatened to divorce me 26 times (by text or email — yes, I documented this). But we took radically difference paths afterwards. In the overall, I’ve never been happier.

 

So awful. Sorry for your pain

 

The odds of her coming back were staggering and, based on what you had told us through the years, slipping by the moment.

Alcoholism just destroys. No other way to put it. Destroys the person consuming in excess, many - if not all - of the people surrounding said person, relationships and finds its way into the obscure cracks of life.

You did what you could ... probably did a lot more than that. Understand that you have done what you could. Be there for your children and process this as best you can with those people in your life now. And let those around you know that while you're there if they need you, that if they need to discuss this with someone else, that's good, too.

Let us know if we can help. Take care ...

 

If you had stayed, it still would have come to this and you would have gone down in the undertow.

Prayers for you and your family. Make sure your kids feel like they can talk through all their emotions, even if they don’t feel like they can do it with you.

 

You're a good person for speaking at her funeral and remembering the better times. And I'm sorry you had to go through all this.

 

I'm sorry, ex. You've shown great class throughout this time.

 

Life is filled with so many forks in the road, and sadly it sounds like this path was chosen by her and/or the bottle and/or by the disease years ago.

Condolences for the loss that you and your kids are experiencing.

In some respects, it’s probably a loss that all of you have been experiencing daily for years.

May you and your family now have peace and closure.

And I concur with sentiments above - you have handled this amazingly.

Thank you for sharing your stories. I hope you continue to find this place helpful.

VB

 

My condolences for all your pain and losses in your relationship with her. She made her choices and afflicted everyone around her with the results of them. You did what you had to do to preserve your health, sanity, and the well-being of your children. I don't think I could have handled things as well as you did.

Be at peace.

 

I'll echo this.

It sounds like you were able to pay tribute to the woman you married 26 years ago, despite everything alcohol had done to poison her and the people around her.

Sorry to hear what happened.