"I alone have escaped to tell thee..."

As a teenager, I studied the Book of Job as part of an Advanced English class. The combination of Hebrew story and King James translation has made it one of the great books of all time, and ranks with The Epic of Gilgamesh as among the earliest investigations into the meaning of life, death and suffering. That same semester I was part of a High School acting troop that put on "J.B.", Archibald McLeash's 1950's update to that same biblical story. I loved studying the book and acting in the play.

I did not know at the time I was foreshadowing my own tragedy.

August 2001. I remember one last perfect day. We had taked the family down to SLO town for a beach weekend, rented a house with friends. I could only stay for a weekend, I already had taken too much time off from work. That Sunday I spent kayaking with a friend off of Avila beach while Marilyn and the girls played on the beach with the rest of our group. It was a beautiful day, sunny and warm. The water was calm and warm for Avila. We rode the surf, navigated the rocks, played with the seals. As we came in for the last time we both misjugded the breakers and wiped out beautifully. I tumbled in end over end, hanging on for dear life to the paddle, which was tied with a long line to the boat. I came up for air and started pulling the boat into shore, short my hat and sunglasses.

As I made it too the beach, Marilyn came walking up with the girls. She was as I love to remember her, smiling, hair golden in the sunlight. She was older, but still as beautiful to me as the day we met.

"What a wipe out, you really ate it." She said. We laughed. We all walked back to the house and as the sun slowly westerd, I felt that all was right with the world.

It was the last good day for a very, very long time.

That Monday morning, very early, I left to drive back to the Bay, leaving the kids and her on vacation while I went to work. As I had said, I was working at a startup, a very well funded and extensive operation, a joint venture by some of the major players in the financial services space. It had been a rocky ride the past months, and we had some concerns. I was expecting that we were going to have to do some restructuring and make some changes as it was clear the joint venture partners were not exactly happy with all the results.

So I was expecting change, maybe another round of layoffs, some hard things for me to do. That I was ready to handle.

What I got was a bit more. That Wednesday two members of the board of directors walked into our offices, sat down with the CEO and fired him on the spot. He was gone within an hour of their arrival. They then sat down with the Executive management team, appointed the head of marketing to the CEO job and told him that they had six weeks to find a buyer or be shut down.

I will not recount the story of my failed startup adventure here and now, it is an epic in it's own right and needs a proper telling if it is to be told at all. We were out of money, apparently, and the partners were out of patience, and we were going down right into the dot com collapse without a lifeboat or paddle. People all around me were out of work and it was looking like they would be for a long time. I was about to join them.

When major companies have layoffs, it sucks, but you do have some advantages. Typically you get severance, sometimes months of it. And you get to buy health insurance through the company for up to a year.

When a company closes its doors, all that goes away.

I had never been laid off before. I was sole breadwinner for the family. We had bills. We had some savings, but not a ton. More to the point, we had significant medical expenses for Marilyn and three of us with defined pre existing conditions. But more than anything else, I knew that I was alone.

Some of that was all about who Marilyn was. She dealt with economic difficulties by ignoring them or convincing herself that it would all work out somehow, never by changing behavior or reducing expectations or expenditures. Who was to blame her, all her life her family had bailed her out, till I came along. She had induced crisis before, many of them financial, and I had always pulled us out. So while she knew to mouth the right words, she just expected that I would somehow find a job quickly and rescue us. Till then, my concerns were just an inconvenience.

Some were my own issues. I was the oldest child in a classic alcoholic family, my self esteem trampled by an abusive drunk and my self worth defined by my success. I was about to fail, and in the world of alcoholics, you get "one chance" and then you "screw it up". It is a very private hell, and I was in it.

Two things happened for me. One, during up time I went into hyperdrive. I worked with the management team on a series of hopeful but ultimately doomed attempts to rescue the firm and our jobs and dreams. Heartbreaking does not even come close to describing what happened. As I learned much later, our efforts were always going to be to no avail. For their own reasons, the partners wanted the firm dead, our six weeks were an exercise in avoiding lawsuits.

I fired up my network and job search, spinning every opportunity I could, trying to manufacture something. I also positioned myself to extract as much out of the failing business as I could, arranging to stay on the shutdown team. I navigated the arcane world of health insurance.

The second thing, in my down time, was to become depressed and edgy. I spent so much time holding it together during the up periods I had nothing in the down, and black moods ruled much of that time.

One thing I did not do was pay close attention to home. Marilyn tried to reassure me, tried sex, tried food. She was in her mind, trying, and in her mind too, I was overreacting. She did not even want to consider looking for a job as well (" it would kill me" she said) and she wasn't too keen on other practical steps, except to comply where I insisted. What she was most concerned about was having a new furnace installed in the house with a complete reducting job. Winter was coming, and after we put in the hardwood floors, it was a colder place. She wanted it warmer.

Much later, it was my brother that pointed out that so long as she was creating disasters (and she created a few, the DUI type fiasco was an example of the kind of crisis that showed up in our lives every year or so) and I was the fixer, every thing was ok. She was the designated patient. What she could not stand was a reversal of those roles.

By mid October it was game, set, match with the startup, and I was out on the street with my last paycheck and health insurance paid up till the 31st. To say I was stressed and a bit manic is an understatement. But even in the worst of it, I am still good, and I was lucky. Before the month was out I had been offered a job. It was a pay cut, a step down, and a substantial one. It was enough, and it was benefits for the family. It was a life boat. Strangely, Marilyn did not want me to take it, she thought it was below me. But I knew that it was a gift, and I sucked it up and did what I had to for the family.

So I lost a job, and I found a job, in the nick of time. Felt a bit like Indiana Jones. I had been falling for weeks, now I was on stable ground, but still raw and battered.

The weekend before I started the new job, we took our daughter to a show. After, on the way home she said. "Now can I get the furnace installed?" She had been pushing for that damn furnace every week for six, each time with a different excuse. ( do it while we have the money, do it now, he said we can defer payment, it isn't that much anyway, do it now you have a job).

"I have not even started at the new job, can't we just give it a rest for a month till we stabilize?"

"Fine" Silence.

That night, after we went to bed, she got up and went to the family room and bombed herself stupid on red wine.

The next day I started my new job. I was a bit relieved, but not exactly thrilled, and I could not shake the feelings of failure. I was a bit sorry for myself, and still grieving the loss of the dream that was my dream job. She called me that day to tell me that she was feeling awful.

Halloween was that Wednesday, a beautiful, warm moonlit night. I was beginning to calm down some. Still raw, but getting a bit better.

Thursday, November 1, 2001. Five in the afternoon. I call home, telling her I am heading home. She tells me then.

"I am leaving tomorrow to go to a rehab facility" I am stunned, shocked, overwhelmed. Too much was happening, too fast. When I get home, she is there. Her brother and sister are there, the family once again gathering to rescue the girl. Turns out she had been working up to two bottles of wine and five pills a day over the past three months, her way of coping with life.

My son was totally impressed. He was completely behind her doing this. Arrangements had been made for my daughter. It was all set, her brother was to take her to the place. I was to keep plugging away a the new job.

"It will be a new life for us. I will do this and come back and it will be so much better for all of us." We talked. I was exhausted, but supportive, if a bit skeptical. We made love that night.

The next morning she left for rehab, kids for school, and me for work.

Two days later I got a letter from her. It was full of hope and love and promises, sealed with a big lipstick kiss. I would not be talking to her much, only one visitation day a week, on Sunday. There were Sessions for the family to learn about what the patients were going through.

The first week seemed to go well. Had a call on my Birthday. I checked out al-anon meetings. We visited that Sunday, she was subdued and detoxing, but things were going well.

The next week was strange, she seemed distant. I was to come up that Sunday, but oddly, she asked that I not come up that day. She wanted to hang out with her family and that we would have that Monday, since there was to be a group session with patient and spouse/support team. I insisted on coming up and she relented.

It was a good day, but she seemed distant.

That Monday I went up, brought her a sandwitch (the hospital was vegetarian) and flowers. She lighted up when she saw both and gave me a kiss. I had a separate meeting, then the group session was to be an hour later.

When she walked into that room and hour later, she was as cold and as distant as I had ever known. At the end of the session, we went outside.

"I may not be coming home".

I sat in silence. ( I alone escaped to tell thee...)

" what do you mean?"

"I cannot get healthy at home."

We talked, it made no sense. I went home that day and was a mess.

The third week was only getting worse. She asked me to talk to her therapist. I call her and was worked over by a very smart, bitter and confrontational woman. I left the conversation feeling like shit.

Thanksgiving was the third week. We had talked, we had been back and forth. She asked me to bring the kids up, I made reservations at a restaurant. It was tense, but we were a family, so it seemed. I had hope.

That Sunday I brought them up. We talked. We walked.

"I am leaving you. I do not love you, I have not loved you for a long time. Don't come up next week when I get out, I do not want you around."

( I, alone, escaped to tell thee...)

Disbelief.

I tried to hold it together on the long ride home, but I couldn't. I cried, so much I had to pull over twice to pull my self back together.

I called her that last week. She ducked me. I talked to her sister, she was supportive, and also telling me that what I had to do was to move out and get an apartment. We agreed that the daughter should spend more time at her house, it was more stable.

Marilyn called me that week and asked me to move out. I told her she could come home, but that I was not going to leave my home and my son under any circumstances.

My son told me to tell her to go to hell. She tried once after that to talk to him, he told her to fuck off. They have not spoken since.

That following Monday, she left rehab and moved in with her sister.

That Tuesday I went to see a lawyer to prepare.

That Friday she went to a lawyer and filed for divorce.

( I, alone, escaped to tell thee...)

Somewhere that week , I collapsed.