May 1955

They were both young, very young by our standards. He was just shy of his 22^nd birthday, tall – 6’2”, and reed thin, barely 165, with wavy brown hair. She was petite, 5’2” or 3”, maybe 105 lbs. with auburn hair worn the way girls her age – just 20 – wore it then. It was their wedding day and he wore a white tuxedo jacket; she had on a white lace wedding dress. And the sun shone with them standing in front of the grayish-white stone church and the photographer snapped the photo, and they looked like they really weren’t sure what they were doing. That’s just the way it was back then.

            The church had more history than they did. The church was there before the country declared its independence from England. George Washington and his bedraggled group more commonly known as the Continental army had stayed on the church grounds during the 1776 New Jersey campaign. Author James Fenimore Cooper had visited the church cemetery to see the final resting place of the last Mohican who is buried there. None of that mattered on that sunny May Saturday in 1955. It was there, on that day that they took vows to each other. It was there their lives were inalterably entwined.

            I see their picture in my mind’s eye everyday. That young couple is my parents. This year, in a few short weeks, they’ll celebrate 59 years of marriage. They have buried parents and one of their sons. They sat silently in court while their other son was sentenced to prison. They have known joys, like holding their grandchildren for the first time, and disappointment and heartache I can only now begin to appreciate. Through it all there was always the two of them; no matter what, no matter how difficult or discouraging, just the two of them.

            A woman who recently came across my musing on the blog asked me if it was difficult being so candid with what I wrote most weeks. It causes me trouble sometimes I told her. Like when the gang leader’s sister came across the blog and visited him and asked why he was still “in the life.” Honesty is a funny thing. We all say we want honesty, but we really don’t. One of the most profound things I ever read was this:

            “Acknowledging the fragmentation of my life is the single most painful and difficult admission I’ve ever made. It’s also the most freeing and hopeful thing I’ve ever spoken about myself.”

            Like the writer of those words, I had to accept the reality of my broken, flawed life to start living new. It was in honestly assessing myself that I knew I didn’t have to be perfect. It was at that point that I understood what the Psalmist meant when he said, “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” I’ve thought about that a lot as I have thought about her and her remarriage and my failure as a husband, and our failure as a couple.

            In my youthful arrogance I thought my mother and father knew nothing of love, and emotion, and intimacy. I was a fool. I knew nothing of the responsibility real love entailed.

            I remember the exact moment I met her, what she wore, how she smiled at me, how my heart skipped a beat. I knew that night I wanted to be with her. I said “forever.” Looking back, I know I didn’t mean it. I wasn’t willing to surrender I for we … and neither was she.

            I read a piece by an older minister. He wrote, “In the end, marriage is a crucifixion, and you’re not meant to survive it. Rather, this life you’ve been given with another human is meant to transform you – to raise you to new life as you die to self and ego. No, it isn’t easy. It’s messy, and difficult, and at times unpredictable. But then again, what isn’t?

            All those years together and never once did we say, what is best for us? It was her dreams and her career and my acquiescence and then my subterfuge to make up for my disappointment. It was always he and she and never we. It was a pattern, a roadmap that led to our ending. And those vows we shared, no one “really” means them, do they?

            Then there are my parents, a couple I laughed at for idiosyncrasies and bickering and annoying way they’d kiss before they would head in different directions. And I hear my mother tell me, “our life hasn’t been easy, but we stuck it out. We did this together.” She says that and I am both awestruck and ashamed because I failed so miserably.

            59 years. They’re sailing the Mediterranean this fall. And she is remarrying a “nice” man; saying the same words she said to me all those years ago, the same words my parents said in ’55. Do you ever get over the heartbreak and the failure? The Psalmist says you do. I’ll take him at his word. It’s May 1955, and I see that picture in my mind’s eye and I wish she knew the pain and loss I feel; and I wish I knew what my parents know.

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.