An open letter to the ex....

If it is true and you are dying, I suppose I have honored your soon-enough-to-be memory by thinking of you sporadically during football game time-outs and moments at the grocery store, perusing eggplant.

Without conscious thought, while driving I made the decision that you cannot die with our children. Your crying for them at every turn these days doesn’t move me. Your constant phone calls are not accommodated. You will not drag them into your dying because they were never included in your living. I will see to that.

You cannot simply claim life and love and be transformed amongst the living and those that are cherished. I knew I had it in me to be this unforgiving. Had your epiphany occurred at a less predictable time, then I might have had a modicum of sympathy. As it is, every word you say echoes hard in me.

You want to be loved at this late date? Love is not born in a day and the desecration of respect for the traditional takes a long damned time. I gave you every chance to be a father. You didn’t know how, would not let me teach you, demonstrated disdain for the institution, thumbed your nose at everything I hold sacred and, along the way, taught me the meaning of disrespect.

I’ve never met anyone I dislike more than you. You may have played present parent to our oldest daughter but her will, her love and her potential are mine. While you simpered in a stew of fabricated misfortune fronting a penchant for strong drink and violence that started before I ever met you, I worked, cleaned the house, mowed the grass, put money away and raised that daughter of ours. Yes, she may look like you, but I pray every night that she will be as unlike you as the wind is to the rain.

Still, it doesn’t surprise me that you attempt to cleave to her. I have been telling you for years that she is all you have. She IS your meager family, the only one left standing out of your lifetime of piteous self-indulgence. And I will tell you something else…the only reason she is still standing is because she has not yet learned the skills to walk away.

The other child is another story entirely. That one is mine and mine only. I earned her. You brought her on me hard and I learned to love through discord. When I had the sheriff take you away when that child was 14 months old, my resolve was of a magnitude you will never even in your death be able to understand.

You forced me into facing my own worst case scenario. I have shut myself away, traded off my own life and ignored my calling muse to raise both children completely alone. I have endured loneliness, isolation, friendlessness and desperation, all because you would not stand to offer one bit of help or even take your turn. No family there.

In my eyes, the youngest child has no other father than myself. She does not want to see you. To her, you are a strange, foul-smelling disappointment. I didn’t have to tell her that. She learned it herself, the first lesson resulting from personal contact with you that, even at 12, can be counted on two hands.

I hope beyond hope that is the only lesson she learns from you. She does not know to be crushed beyond belief when you don’t do as you say you will. She does not know the pain you can cause with your drunken, angry tirades. She does not know the sadness of living with you or knowing that you are in the world. I intend to keep it that way.

You will never tell this child that I am a nasty homosexual or that I should have died on the highway. You will never tell this child that she is stupid or too fat. You will never impose your will on this child or expose her to your bizarre opinions. No one remembers your crazy war. You are not America; I AM.

So, I suppose I am sorry you are dying. Until you die, I will never believe it. I will simply think you are trying to get out of work. You cannot redeem yourself with me. You can, however, stay away from my family. Even if you comply, I will not thank you. As you have told me so many times, maybe it’s a shame YOU didn’t die on the highway.