November Bridge

November is a very difficult month for me, perhaps the most difficult. November 28th was my wedding anniversary. I married the woman of my dreams on that day back in 1981. She had just turned 19. I was just past 22. As I stood at the front of the church and watched her walk down the aisle, I thought I was the luckiest man alive. I was in love with a woman who made my heart skip a beat each time she stood next to me. She was simply, the most beautiful woman I ever saw.



Throughout our marriage, through good and bad, loneliness, heartache, and joy, she always took my breath away. She grew more beautiful to me each day. She blessed me with two healthy, outgoing, intelligent sons. I thought God had blessed me with a perfect life. I had my health, education, personality and a picture perfect life.


For a number of reasons that I’ve documented in the therapy sessions known more simply as my writings, my life was completely out of control. I loved my spouse more than life itself, yet her detachment, her coldness, her lack of expressing love for me hurt me more than I could even admit to myself. I embarked on a self-destructive course that led to the loss of the three people I loved more than anything.


A minister I deeply respect spoke recently about adversity creating in people of faith either an insurmountable burden or a bridge to a closer relationship with God. I’ve thought a great deal about what he said and have reflected on his words in the light of a few recent conversations I’ve had with inmates.


“It’s all about attitude. If you believe He loves you and is faithful, you will trust Him to never give you more than you can handle and never abandon you.”


There’s an inmate named Jeff in here whose wife wrote and said she was leaving him and moving in with another man. He had been to the psychologist and gotten meds to help with depression. He briefly had suicidal thoughts. A couple of guys told him to speak with me. “Larry’ll understand.”


I listened intently as this man broke down, suffering and in pain. I told him I understood. I told him there was nothing he could do to stop what she was doing. He had to remain strong and see this through.


The minister had said through adversity, through suffering, we learn how to truly comfort. Too often, we say “I understand”, when in truth, we don’t. Through my struggles, my loss, I have become a better listener than I ever was. I was quick to tell my wife exactly how to handle any problem, quick to tell her to “get over it” when she’d get upset.


Having gone through this, I can now understand another’s pain. Nothing has hurt me; nothing has caused me such pain and heartache, as the loss of my wife and sons. There are no words that can adequately describe the sadness I felt and continue to feel when she wrote and said “I don’t love you anymore. I haven’t loved you for a long time.”


Each night I pray that someday she and our sons make contact with me and say they did in fact love me. Yet, the likelihood of that looks more remote with each day.


That pain I feel has given me new insight into the frailty of people; it’s given me compassion. I wish I could have learned that lesson without the suffering, without the loss of those three. I feel blessed by the changes I’ve experience.


“At your lowest you are at your closest to God.”


I lost my wife and sons. Friends betrayed and abandoned me. The people I worked with were so angry they sought 100 years of confinement for me. I was written about in the papers, talked about, attacked, slandered, cast off. Everything I had was taken from me: money, property, reputation, freedom, and love. Nothing, no vow, or commitment, or promise was kept.


I remember sitting in my cell at the jail crying uncontrollably, not being sure I could survive another day. I thought my death was the only option left. I couldn’t go through with it. At that precise moment I knew everyone else may abandon me, but God was with me.


We tend to think we are blessed when things are good, when all in our life is going right. The truth is, we are never so blessed as when we are at our lowest, when everyone we loved and trusted has let us down. At that precise moment we learn we really do matter, we really are loved.


November is a very difficult month, perhaps the most difficult month, for me. In this month, more than any other, thoughts of the loss of my wife, separation from my sons and the loss of our family run through my mind.


I have changed as a person through this experience. I may be sadder and the sadness may never heal, but I am also more patient, compassionate and caring.


I have paid a terrible price for my behavior, yet I have been blessed. If I could go back and redo everything I would. But things will get better. I know they will. November is difficult, but it’s not impossible. And, that really is a blessing.