Forty-Four and Two-Thirds Years to Be Exact

I met him at 6 a.m. seminary in October of 1975. I was 15 and he was just about to turn 18. He came with his best friend, Tom, who I had become friends with too. The seminary teacher, Brother Price, had written his name on the chalkboard: MIKE FITZGERALD.

He lived 70 miles away from my parent's Lake Oswego home, in Monmouth, Oregon, on a 700 acre cattle ranch that he'd persuaded his father to buy. His father, a lifelong Catholic, had threatened him that if he joined the "Mormon church," he would be taken out of the will, and any Mormon that came onto the property would be shot. Those threats did not stop him from doing what his heart was telling him to do; he was baptized on November 14th, 1975, his 18th birthday. Before leaving the baptism that evening, I gave him a hug.

We started writing letters, because back in 1975, long distance phone calls were absurdly expensive. We wrote letters at least weekly for the next 3+ years. Two of those years were while he was away on a mission to Cleveland, Ohio, and when he returned, I was away at Ricks College in southeastern Idaho. We continued to write, pretty much until we were married in August of 1979. We had never lived near one another the entire time we'd known each other. It was always a long distance romance.

One year for Christmas, he took all of our letters, organized them chronologically, and filled binders with them. We had a lot to tell each other while we were still growing up. They serve as a history of our lives during those years.

Following our wedding, we packed up our little brown Volkswagen Rabbit, hooked a tiny U-Haul trailer to it, and headed east, chugging our way over the mountains to Rexburg, Idaho, where we'd make our first home. We had a furnished, two bedroom apartment, amazingly close to campus. Previously, it had been a girls' apartment but had recently been converted to married student housing. It had a tub but no shower. I'd always wonder how four girls managed with only a tub!

We took too many classes that first semester. It was hard to be under so much pressure from school while trying to adapt to married life. We both dropped a couple of classes in order to pick up some sanity. We were in a married student ward, we made many friends, and we were living the newlywed life!

Eventually, we moved briefly to Tooele, Utah (summer sales, please don't remind him of it!), back to Rexburg, then on to Orem, Utah, while he attended BYU. Then to Tualatin, Oregon, where we lived in an apartment, then rental home when he got his first grown-up job. Back to Orem when he thought he'd get a master's degree. And once more to Oregon, this time to West Linn, Lake Oswego’s neighbor, where we made two more moves within the city, and lived there for 16 years. We moved to Mapleton, Utah, living in two different homes, then to downtown Salt Lake City, living in an apartment and then a condo, and finally purchasing a townhome in Draper where we fully intended for our next move to be the final one, the one into eternity.

Fifteen times we boxed up our things and went together to the next adventure. We also collected three daughters along the way, five grandsons, a few equines, numerous felines, and several canines too. We loved hard and we prayed hard. We survived some VERY challenging times and had created a full and rich life together.

Then, with a stroke of Judge Kelly's pen, it all ended on June 16th, 2020.

We were two-months-minus-one-day shy of celebrating our 41st anniversary. There has been serious upset in the family, and in some ways, our family is no longer the way it once was. There are wounds galore that have not healed. In the end, we could not find common ground when the family discord and wounds caused even small, old issues to become monumental. Consequently, the house came tumbling down.

The wreckage is by far the most painful thing I have endured in my life.

I had a doctor make a small error in surgery that landed me in the hospital for three weeks and nearly claimed my life. I later had a major surgery that caused my body to nearly call it quits. He has endured an autoimmune disease (gout) for several decades, and now fights illness constantly due to the damage done to his body from medications used to treat that disease. None of this though compares in any way with what it is like to watch your family come unglued and your marriage crumble.

They have their reasons. He has his reasons. I have my reasons.

I have watched longtime friends fall off their chairs when they heard this news. 

"It knocked the wind out of me," 

"I never ever saw this coming," 

"You were the last people I would have ever expected this from," 

"I am shocked beyond belief," 

"I don't know what to say; I have no words right now." 

Me too. ME TOO!

I am a Grief Support Specialist. I sit with people who have lost their beloved, and I listen as they tell their story of loss, sorrow and pain. I cry with them because my heart hurts too when someone else's hurts. I encourage them to "get it out," to not hold their emotions inside where they can erode both health and heart. "Tell me about your wife/husband/mother/father/companion/friend; I want to know them the way you know them." I listen as they confess that they feel they didn't do enough, or did something thoughtless that they feel may have hastened the passing, or they tell me they did not treat their beloved as good as they wish they had. My heart listens when they cannot speak because their emotions have hijacked their vocal cords. I sometimes read to them the words of scripture or the quote from an old man who compares grief to waves in an ocean. And I encourage them to feel all of their feelings.

What though do you do when your loss is not due to death? When your eternal dreams are shattered right before your very eyes? When you do not want to disparage anyone in your family but you are hurt so deeply that no words exist to describe your feelings? Or the stream of divorcees who quickly proclaim, "You will feel so much better,” or “This too will pass,” as if it is a gallstone that is hung up on its way out. Or when you refuse to tell, or let anyone else tell, your father because this was his first "son," and you cannot handle his broken heart on top of your own?

A song, a memory, a place, a word, a movie . . .  they all can trigger my tears. Sometimes they trigger anger, but most often it is sadness. The deepest sadness I have ever known. There is stress, as I have shared before. Employment struggles due to the pandemic, loan challenges due to the employment struggles, additional health insurance costs, and on it goes. In the end though, it is still the disbelief and the sadness that permeate everything else.

Sorrow has won the day.

I do know, deep within my soul, that healing is found through the atonement of Jesus Christ. He is the only one that knows "my" sadness, my unique recipe of life ingredients that came together to cause a broken family, a broken marriage, and a broken heart. I hold tightly onto that. In faith I make it through another day. In faith I choose to believe that He heals ALL wounds. In faith I walk the path before me, not knowing where it leads. He is the Master Healer. My broken heart is in His capable hands.

My Child, artist David Bowman