DIVORCE

How to get the best from something downright sad.

I had to divorce my husband in 1982. It was horrible. I had left the family home with our son, two cats and a car full of potted plants, towing a trailer loaded with the rest of our effects on the 4th of July 1981. I had headed south from Aberdeenshire until I hit the south east coast where I had spent most of my happier days.

My husband had become a binging alcoholic and I had not seen him sober for at least a year. There were consequences to that which he never remembered and I have chosen to forget.

The first thing he did when he realised we were gone was to follow us, find us and beg forgiveness but this was the second time I had resorted to leaving him and he had only gotten worse and worse over time.

He found an old girlfriend, who had been a drinking buddy in his chequered past and he shacked up with her. Within a few months he was on my doorstep, drunk out of his mind and asking me to divorce him.

“Why?” I asked and he looked surprised that I had asked.

“I want to marry Lorraine!” He exclaimed as if it should have been obvious.

I had not considered divorce. I was married in a Catholic Church and, even though I am not a Catholic, I meant what I said. I had married for life. I just could not live with an alcoholic who could not keep his hands off other women. I did not have any intention of marrying again.

Friends told me that Tony was seldom sober and was only trying to hurt me. I think I had figured that out during the first nano-second. Tony did not love Lorraine. He did not even love himself. He loved Guinness and Drambuie.

I visited a local bored and tired looking solicitor who asked me on what grounds I would be suing for divorce. I looked at him blankly. I said, “Which is the quickest and easiest?” He seemed a little taken aback so I continued, “You name it, he has done it!” and it was agreed that we would go for ‘irretrievable breakdown of marriage’ for which I would only need his consent and we would fly through the formalities.

Oh, it would have been so great if it had been so simple. I am sure you all know what divorce is like. It is a roller coaster of emotional turmoil and pain.

The law is a ponderous beast and when kids are involved there is the matter of child support to be settled. When the judge decided that my husband should provide for his son he immediately punched his boss on the nose and got himself sacked from his job. As a consequence, he never paid a penny in child support. He preferred to claim benefits and work on the side for his beer money.

It would be great if I could say that this was the final end of my divorce story. It was only the beginning!

As the years went by we saw very little of my husband, he didn’t really show much interest in us. We had a great social life and when my son reached his 16th birthday we held a party. My now ex-husband arrived, drunk and staggering. He announced to a roomful of 16 year olds that he was gay. Nobody took any notice because, by then this was old news. We all knew. It was one of the reasons we had left him six years earlier! We were a bit surprised that he didn’t seem to know that we knew about his bisexuality. Once again, he probably didn’t remember…..

After that we would see my ex-husband many times a week. He would hang out with us and our friends. He came to all our parties and he behaved himself better than he had ever done before. His 2nd marriage had failed within a year and he told me that he couldn’t remember much about it all because, once again, his sketchy alcohol dulled memory failed him. I used to think that being a piss-head was a convenient way to bury guilt.

When I sold up and took to the travelling lifestyle he was miffed. He no longer had his ‘anchor’ and would phone me from time to time to make sure I was okay. Sweet really.

When I had been living in Spain for about 4 years he phoned to tell me that my son had been involved in a street fight and had been stabbed in the back. He said that I should return to the UK because my son had undergone a ‘personality change’ and he was worried.

As it happened, I had to make a change anyway, so I sold my fruit farm in Spain and returned to the UK reluctantly. My son and I began to realise that my ex-husband was very ill. We watched him go through endless wrong diagnoses and progressively getting thinner and greyer. We knew he had cancer long before he did.

Six months before he died he arranged to spend his last Christmas with us and our little grandchildren. We were smoking outside in the cold when he suddenly asked me why I had left him!

“Don’t you remember?” I asked, even though I knew he no longer drank, he was full to the brim with mind numbing morphine. I struggled to minimise my response to a single anecdote, which to be honest, was only one of my reasons to end our marriage. There had been a litany of events and embarrassments which I was not prepared to revisit let alone discuss. Eventually he stated that he was dying and we agreed that I should avoid his funeral which was to be arranged by his 2nd wife. I found a way to change the subject and keep our conversation positive and amusing.

When he announced that he was going to a Hospice to die, my son stayed with him until that happened. I was happy that he was finally at rest after years of pain. In a way, I had never felt truly divorced until that day. I had kept my vow ‘til death us do part’ in spite of everything that had transpired and all the years we had lived separately.

I came across my divorce papers when we were moving house a couple of years ago and I laughed. “I should frame this!” I stated to my son, “It was always the most useless piece of paper I have ever had to pay for!”