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The First Date (Continued)

Date: June 7, 2010  Author: Andrea Merriman

I couldn’t believe it. I was in a car with a total stranger and it wasn’t weird at all! How could that be? How could I have been married 20 years and NOT feel weird my first night out? But I didn’t. At all. The man was friendly, talkative and very entertaining. I couldn’t believe how comfortable I felt. But at the same time, it was hard to let myself enjoy it. I kept thinking, “What is wrong with me? Why does this not feel weird?”

Then we got to the parking lot where the dance was being held. Suddenly I wondered, again, what I was doing. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. The comfortable feeling while driving must simply have been a bit of beginner’s luck.

He opened my door, helped me out of the car, and we walked toward the dance entrance. Like a coach preparing his player for a competition, the man was briefing me about the dance, what to expect, and offering last minute advice and encouragement. As I was beginning to wonder what hyperventilating felt like (and trying to figure out if I was experiencing it) I think I heard him say, “Don’t worry, you’re going to be great in there!”

It was a long walk to the dance from the parking lot. Periodically he’d look over at me and check my status asking, “How are you doing? Still breathing? Still doing o.k.?” Unfortunately, I was. So we continued on. It was all so new, I decided to set small goals for myself. That night I had just one goal: to walk in the door, dance one dance, and then I could leave and count the night a success. Progress.

But then we walked into the dance and I could have died. Lets just say it was a very eclectic crowd. The people were NOT who I expected to see. (Keep in mind the last time I’d gone to a dance was the 1980s when I was single the first time.) It wasn’t the 1980s anymore!

I stopped in the doorway and stared. I was in shock. Everywhere I looked, there they were: white haired grandpas, bald men, wrinkled men, heavy men; OLD men! My date looked at me, winked and said, “Yes…there’s a lot of heartache in this room!”

I guess that’s what you’d call it. But I was a bit more self-centered than my date. Instead of acknowledging all of the heartache that had to have been in the room, my thoughts were about me: “WHAT am I doing here? I don’t belong here! This is NOT me!” But I guess I did belong there and it was my new life. Although I hadn’t chosen my circumstances or my new life, although I’d never planned to be single, I was.

I guess in some ways, sometimes it still surprises me. To this day, every singles dance (all four of them) those are still the same thoughts I have each time I walk in to the room: “What am I doing here? I don’t belong here! This is NOT me!”

And then thanks to my rebound friend, I remember and think, “There’s a LOT of heartache in this room!” I know I’ve had more than my fair share in the time since my former spouse revealed His Ponzi scheme, crimes and everything else. So I try to make the night not about me, but about the heartache of others. I say yes to every man who asks me to dance, and I try to be friendly, polite, kind and interested in helping them have a good time for that song. (And I’ve met some fun women friends, too.)

But that night at the dance, my first date, we laughed. We danced. We had a lot of fun. And before I knew it, his cell phone rang. He looked at the caller and handed me the phone. “I think it’s for you,” he said.

“Mom? Where are you? What are you doing?” my oldest son sternly asked. (Who knew I had a teenage son in charge of my curfew?) I explained it was only 11:47 p.m., I was an adult in my 40s, and I was fine–I’d be home around midnight or a little after. My son laughed, said he was just doing to me what I had always done to him but that it too late for me to do that; it wasn’t almost midnight, it was almost 1 a.m.! At the same time my son told me that, I heard my date gasp and say, “Oh no! I’ve been in California on business all week–I forgot to reset the time on my phone. It’s actually…”

Too late. First date in 20 years and I had already blown my curfew! I was busted…by my teenager! CLEARLY, it wasn’t the 1980s anymore.

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Filing Papers

Date: May 12, 2010  Author: Andrea Merriman

The packing of possessions continued, I started my new job working from home, I was moving from Colorado to Utah in less than two weeks and there was one other task to complete prior to the move: file the final paperwork for my divorce.

He went with me to file the last of our paperwork. It went very smoothly. We got along, talked, I made a few jokes (my typical style of making fun of the hard stuff so I don’t think about what is REALLY going on) and I tried not to think about what was taking place. As he drove, He commented that he didn’t think many divorcing couples were as cordial to one another as they filed their final paperwork as we were.

I couldn’t respond to that. I just kept reading and re-reading the words on the papers and no matter how many times I skimmed them, they didn’t seem real. Could they really be about divorce? I had never imagined myself divorcing. In fact, my divorce had made a liar out of me.

I couldn’t help but reflect on the many times over the years, as parents of one of my children’s friends would divorce my child would ask, “You and dad will never get divorced, will you?” (I remember asking my parents that same question when I was a girl and parents of one of my friends divorced.) And my answer had always been the same: “Absolutely not. I can’t think of a single thing a member of my family could do that would ever result in divorce.” Unfortunately, I never imagined the double life my spouse had been leading. I never imagined that anyone I knew personally (much less lived with) was capable of committing a single crime (much less all that He had done.) I never imagined that promise to my children would turn out to be a lie.

As we drove to file the paperwork, He also made some predictions about the next five years–five years was the amount of time He anticipated being in prison. His first prediction? That I would re-marry.

I didn’t expect to hear that. I was sure, for a myriad of reasons, that would never be in my future. And I certainly didn’t want to discuss it with Him! At that time, I couldn’t comprehend it. I was sure it wouldn’t be true. After being married nearly 20 years, I couldn’t comprehend dating much less getting married! He also predicted the demise of an extended family member who struggled with mental health issues and addictions. Funny, but the remarriage He predicted for me shocked me WAY more than hearing what he thought the future held for extended family.

He then told me I had His permission to fall in love again with another man, as long as the man would be good to our kids. I didn’t respond for SO MANY reasons.

I didn’t need His permission. His permission was not His to give. We were divorcing–not to mention the fact that after all He had done, I didn’t feel He had a right to dictate anything for me or my children, then or in the future.

I thought it was strange to have him mention something like that while we were legally still married.

I knew there was no way I’d even have time to date, much less re-marry, when I was the sole parent to four children who had been traumatized. I felt all of my time, energy and effort needed to be directed toward helping them heal. I truly felt like I’d had my chance at life, and now my life was to help my children make the most of their chance.

As I mentioned before, I firmly believed no one in their right mind would ever want an “old bag!”

And who would ever want to take on the financial, emotional, and every other type of responsibility for four children?

Those are just some of the reasons I didn’t respond to his predictions. I was getting very good at “not hearing” and thus, not responding, to difficult things. It was the only way I survived those terrible months of 2009 and continued to live and hold my head up in the face of persecution and publicity and everything else that went along with my position as the wife of a criminal.

I had the terrible feeling I was destined to be alone on so many levels for so many reasons. I only prayed I’d be up to the challenge of loneliness. Because the loneliness was extreme. From the moment I found out about the ponzi scheme and pending incarceration of my spouse, although we were legally married and even living in the same house, I felt acute loneliness. I was alone in the world.

For the first time, I understood the concept of someone being surrounded by people yet totally alone. That was exactly how I felt. To anyone else who has ever felt that, I am truly sorry. I wouldn’t wish that degree of loneliness on anyone.

“Loneliness is the ultimate poverty.” (Abigail Van Buren)

A VERY unexpected life.

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The Irony of Crime

Date: May 11, 2010  Author: Andrea Merriman

So life in Colorado continued winding down. I was packing and preparing to move my four children to Utah and begin a new life. He was wrapping up the details of His life and preparing to go to prison.

As part of that, He went to our cabin to take care of some business. As soon as He arrived at the cabin, He called me, absolutely furious and disgusted by what He had found. We had been robbed!

He ranted about the situation, listing every thing that was missing. He was so upset to have been stolen from!

All I could do was laugh.

He stopped, mid-rant, and asked why I was laughing. I said, “I’m sorry, but I think it is kind of funny! So ironic! The man who stole has been stolen from and he is angry that someone stole from HIM!”

Funny how that happened, huh?

He tried to justify His indignation, but I just didn’t feel it. Now that I knew the truth about the life He had led, I realized the cabin had been purchased and furnished with money HE stole! It wasn’t really ours and never had been.

The irony of the situation entertained me for a moment in the nightmare that had become my unexpected life. And it validated something I had heard His mother say time and again in the nearly two decades we’d been married: “What goes around comes around.”

It surely did.

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Good News

Date: April 26, 2010  Author: Andrea Merriman

When my life fell apart last year due to the criminal behavior of the man I’d been married to for nearly 20 years, a dramatic change in lifestyle was not the only side effect. As the months went on, I saw other changes. Here’s one.

My three year old, who’d been potty-trained well over a year prior to my spouse’s revelations, suddenly wasn’t anymore. (Let me apologize in advance for what is coming next: bathroom talk.) He didn’t have potty “accidents” in his boxers, he never did that, but he quit using the bathroom altogether. He chose, instead, to go on the floor of his bedroom!

I figured that as awful as it was, it was probably just a manifestation of the stress that was so prevalent in the air of our neighborhood and home that if you breathed in too deeply you almost choked! Literally. I assumed it would resolve itself when we moved. But I was wrong.

We moved to Utah and my little son continued the behavior in his new bedroom. I felt like I was becoming BFFs with carpet cleaners I saw them so often. But no matter what I tried, I could not get my now four-year-old to use the bathroom like the rest of us. It was a total mystery to me.

It had been quite a year. My son not only had been going to the bathroom on his bedroom floor, at least weekly he said “bad people” were in our house. He was afraid to be alone in any room of the house. He was afraid of the dark. He was suddenly afraid of so many things. And it wasn’t just our house, it was any home he was in. The babysitter had commented on how strange it was that he was so afraid in her home, too. I tried to help my son understand, each and every time he expressed fear of “bad people” in a house, that our home didn’t have bad people in it and we were safe. I emphasized that we prayed every day and that God would protect us. But nothing helped resolve his fear. That fear, too, was a mystery to me, along with his bathroom behavior.

Easter Sunday 2010, ONE YEAR LATER, the mystery was solved.

A friend and I were sitting in my son’s room, watching my son play a video game, and my son innocently offered the comment that “bad people” were in our house. My friend, hearing this for the first time, explained to my son that he was safe in our home and that “bad people” aren’t in our home. My son disagreed and insisted that in Colorado, bad people had been in our house.

THEN it hit me. Like a ton of bricks. THAT was why my son was afraid to leave his room to go to the bathroom! THAT was why my son was afraid of “bad people!” They had been in our home in Colorado, and my preschooler had known it, could not forget about it and had been traumatized for one year–25% of his entire young life–because of it. I had never put it together until that moment. It made my stomach turn.

As a mother, this issue and incident bothers me more than almost anything I’ve been handed in my unexpected life. I’m so bothered, in fact, that I choose to blame someone and I’m not blaming who you think I might. I am not blaming Him. (Ludicrous to the rest of His victims, I’m sure.) You know who I blame? The “bad people” who entered our home uninvited. I’m talking about the people who entered our Colorado home, while we were still in possession of it and living there, late one Sunday night when they thought no one was home.

They were wrong.

It was down to the wire, I was moving in a few days. In fact, I had a moving truck packed and ready to drive to Utah. Late one Sunday night, my spouse and I drove the packed truck to a friend’s house so the friend, who was traveling to Utah, could drive it for me.

My oldest son took his brothers to a friend’s house while we dropped the truck off, and my daughter stayed home alone to read. Our garage door was up, the house lights were mostly off, the house was quiet. Not totally responsible behavior on our part, probably, but you have to understand the rural and isolated neighborhood we lived in. Quiet, calm, fairly undiscovered and totally safe. We had never even owned a house key. We didn’t lock our doors–except at night when we were sleeping. We’d NEVER had a problem or a break in. No one had (that I’d ever heard about.)

So my daughter lay on the couch in our living room that night and read a book while she was home alone. At that time, our living room was the staging place for the move. As I got a box packed, I’d haul it to that room, and stack it until it was time to load it into a truck. Boxes were floor to almost ceiling in front of the couch and piano.

She was all alone.

Suddenly, she heard a door open and voices talking. She heard footsteps walking around on our wood floors. She heard boxes being moved, the sound of boxes being opened in another room. She heard conversation in hushed tones. The only thing she didn’t hear was a family member. She said she thought THEY would come after her if they knew they’d been discovered basically breaking and entering our home (lovely experiences my children were having, eh?), so she dove under the piano to hide. In her panic, she didn’t call 9-1-1 for help; she texted her older brother.

“Help me. Someone in house. So afraid.”

Her brother got the text. He thought she was goofing around. He texted back, “Funny. lol. Don’t joke about stuff like that.”

From under the piano, behind the packed boxes, she texted again, “I am not kidding. I’m scared. What if they find me? Help!”

Her brother says he made the 15-minute drive home in just over 5 minutes. Thankfully, his friend’s dad came too, to offer my teenage son support should it be needed. In the meantime, my daughter heard the footsteps walk around the main level of the house, a door open and close, and everything was quiet. Until her brother arrived on the scene a few minutes later and rescued her from her hiding place underneath the piano.

I arrived home shortly after the drama to have my three-year-old run up to me shouting, “Bad people are in our house!” They told me the story. I don’t even know how to communicate my thoughts about that moment. It sickened me. And although I’d tried for several months to rise above the pettiness time after time after time, I was finally disgusted and completely appalled…and angry. (I thought I was over it, until now, as I write about it. My chest is aching with disgust. That darn heart attack sensation is back! lol)

I never put the events of that night together with the potty issues we were dealing with until Easter Sunday this year. It explained everything!

The good news? I haven’t heard a single comment about “bad people in our house” ever since.

More good news? Not a single potty problem since the reassurance from our trusted friend.

Other good news? We are all healing. I know we each have our moments, every step forward is followed by the occasional step backward, but I’d say my children and I are each close to 100% healed from the trauma of our unexpected life.

And some of the best news? The heart attack sensation is gone again. Finally. And this time, I’m sure it will never come back.

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Miracle Mail

Date: April 20, 2010  Author: Andrea Merriman

I am terrible at remembering to collect my mail each day.  I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because my former spouse always got our mail, so it has been over 20 years since I’ve had to collect my mail.

But one year ago that changed. Due to my spouse’s crimes, the revelation that He had been running a ponzi scheme for 15 years, His prison sentence looming, our pending divorce, and other traumas…I took over everything–including the mail collection.

Each day, it seemed, hate mail arrived. I was shocked that we received it, and even more surprised at where it came from: total strangers, all across the U.S. It became so frequent for awhile there that one day I realized it had been one week since we had received a piece of hate mail!

An occasion to remember.

However, not all of the mail was hateful.  For the first two-three months of the nightmare, other anonymous mail arrived, the complete opposite of hate mail. I would open an envelope to find a gift card to a grocery store, Target, Costco or WalMart.  Other weeks, I would open an envelope to find some cash.  Other times it would be words of encouragement or an uplifting thought I really needed at that moment and that helped me continue on when the day had been particularly disastrous.

I called it Miracle Mail. It was such a blessing to me and to my children. It helped us survive, not just emotionally, but physically.

Thank heaven for those who “never suppress a generous thought.”

We were getting by on very little money as all of our accounts had been frozen. The cash I had I withdrawn on March 18, I had put in my wallet and then kept my wallet with me at all times. I didn’t let my spouse know where the money was because I was afraid he’d steal it! Trust was non-existent. (I guess it shows you may choose to allow a stranger to remain in your home for your children’s sake and because you feel it is the kind thing to do, but that doesn’t mean you trust Him.  At all.)

Any time my children needed lunch money, etc…I pulled a small amount of cash out of my wallet and used it.  I didn’t dare look at it, because to see the minimal amount, and to see that minimal amount dwindling, would have added even more stress to a life that was already bursting at the seams with it!

I remember getting down to the last $20, and then finally to the last $1, and wondering what we were going to do…and then an anonymous piece of mail, miracle mail, containing a gift card or cash would arrive at the very moment I needed it. There are some amazing, generous, kind, and charitable people. They literally saved us.  And of course, most of it was anonymous so I had no idea who to thank.

We also lived off food we had stored for emergencies, so although we weren’t eating our favorite things, we were able to purchase less at the store and still had food to eat. And, as with everything else, we got by with a little help from our friends.

A friend stopped by one day and unloaded a car load of food items from Costco–”fun” food, as she called it, that my children hadn’t seen in awhile like fruit snacks, crackers, Mickey Mouse-shaped chicken nuggets, cookies, etc…THAT was a highlight of the nightmare experience for my children! It was like Christmas in our kitchen!  They were thrilled to enjoy, once again, some treats they remembered from their former life.

Other friends called when they were heading to the store and asked if I needed anything.  If I didn’t need anything, they usually dropped food off anyway. Other times, they picked up what I needed and more.

And many women from my church delivered meals to us as well.  I think we had one entire month of dinners brought to our home by good women who were concerned about us and wanted us to not only have food to eat, but to feel loved. They delivered dinner every night until I finally asked them to stop–I couldn’t move my food storage and felt like we needed to use it up and provide for ourselves as much as we were able to.

Another friend brought us huge, delicious Sunday dinners EVERY SINGLE SUNDAY until we moved out of state.

True, we may have been hated by some, but we were also SO LOVED by so many.  That compassion, and Miracle Mail, got us through.

What Do You Do When The Feds Come?

Date: April 13, 2010  Author: Andrea Merriman

Last April, one year ago, government authorities came to my home, as a result of my spouse’s crimes and ponzi scheme, and seized many of our possessions.  (To those not experienced with these kinds of things, lol, I’m talking about when they officially show up and haul everything away!)

What do you do when The Feds come?

I don’t know what other people do, but I spent the morning putting away clutter that had accumulated during our three weeks of trauma thus far so The Feds wouldn’t think we housed a criminal AND were trashy, dirty, messy people!

The U.S. Marshalls arrived in the afternoon and began packing things up and hauling them away.  My spouse wanted me to be gone, but I stood my ground and stayed.  I had done nothing wrong.  And besides, where was I going to go?

I can tell you what my neighbors did.  They all took the day off work to watch our demise.  They stood on the deck of our next door neighbor’s home, with drinks in their hands, watching our downfall while their children and grandchildren ran and played around them.  They talked, gestured, pointed, and appeared to glory in all that was our lot.

Meanwhile, reporters and camera men came and filmed the proceedings and a few of our neighbors followed them around, walked with them, and made sure they filmed all angles of our home and property.  Some of our neighbors stood, with their own cameras, and filmed my children and I coming and going as well.  Several reporters rang our doorbell; one even asked my spouse for a comment.  He declined to comment but said that He had four children and would appreciate it if the children could be left alone.  The reporter said, “I understand,” and walked away.

Despite the fact I’d worked as a journalist, I doubted my peers.  I didn’t think they could possibly understand.  But I guess they did, after all.  I never saw one report that included any photographs of my children or myself.

Later, the neighbors moved their gathering to the cul-de-sac in front of my house.  As I arrived home after running an errand and attempted to drive to my driveway, those same neighbors stood in their group, talking amongst themselves, blocking the road, unmoving, and glaring at me.

What do you do?  I laughed. (Inside.)

I laughed and joked with myself at what I like to refer to as their trust of me, my character, and my emotional stability in the face of my trauma.  Clearly they had NO CLUE how fragile I felt on the inside or they never would have stood, blocking my way, as I sat in the driver’s seat of an SUV, engine running, my foot inches away from the accelerator!

It entertained me the whole time I waited for them to finally move, and as I drove down the driveway and into my garage.

What else did we do when The Feds came?

We had my son’s birthday cake that night. (Note:  The government was sensitive to our family situation.  They intentionally scheduled the seizure of our assets for the day after my son’s birthday so that he wouldn’t have the seizure as his 16th birthday memory. However, my son got so many treats from friends who went out of their way to be kind to him on his birthday that he didn’t want his birthday cake that day. So we had it the next day–and that’s how we ended up having birthday cake the first day of the seizure.) The day The Feds came.

A friend drove my 3rd grader home from lacrosse practice that day but my son was afraid to get out of the car due to the circus of media, neighbors, and U.S. Marshalls everywhere.  I went out and brought him in to be with us.  There was a feeling in the air that even a little boy could sense and it must have engendered some defensive instinct in him because he turned to me as we walked into the house and said, “Mom, do you know what I want to say to all those people?”

I asked, “What?”

And he lifted his pinky in the air to let me know he wanted to give them a finger…or THE finger.  (I didn’t even know he knew about that yet!)

What do you do when The Feds come?

I laughed, I put my arm around him, and I encouraged him to rise above all of the filth of venomous hatred and choose the right (although a part of me certainly could relate to his desire!)

That’s what WE did when The Feds came.

Life Is Such a Roller Coaster Ride

Date: April 11, 2010  Author: Andrea Merriman

One of the people left in the world who has known me the longest emailed me earlier this year with encouraging words and fabulous advice that I’ve tried to follow:  Life is such a roller coaster ride…we just have to hang on, scream real loud, and enjoy the ride!

In my experience, truer words have never been spoken.

And no ride made me hang on (or want to scream) more than the ride I was on April 2009 last year. My spouse had revealed His crimes, He was headed to prison, and I found out I would be left alone to provide for and raise our four children. My roller coaster car was rolling away from the gate and the ride of my life had begun!

Things seemed very black a lot of the time, yet the crazy optimist in me refused to give in to it and I tried to find the light in every thing that I could.  It was SUCH a roller coaster I can’t describe it. I was worried about providing for my family, finding a place for us to live, beginning a new life in every sense of the word, and I did it all amid negative publicity about my spouse for His ponzi scheme crime and the public collapse of my life and marriage. Yes, there were ups and downs!

One huge roller coaster was the financial aspect of things.  It was pretty bleak.

The day my spouse told me of His crimes, He had already turned himself in to the authorities and all of our assets had been frozen. I had no money.  I had four children to feed and shelter and I didn’t know how I was going to do it. That was a low.

The government authorities catalogued items for seizure and told me they were not interested in my jewelry.  I rejoiced!  That was a high!  I admit, I love things that sparkle; I always have.  And although I’d never asked for jewelry, my spouse had given me a few pieces as gifts over the years. I loaned them to friends as often as I wore them, and although I didn’t plan on ever wearing my jewelry again, I realized I could sell my jewelry for cash and use it to help support my children and rebuild my life.

Then my roller coaster car took one of those sharp, unexpected turns–the kind you hit just when you think your ride is about over–and started racing downhill again!  The government investigators returned to my home.  They apologized.  They said they knew they told me they weren’t interested in my jewelry and had told me I could remove it from my home but…did I have any diamond necklaces or tennis bracelets?

That day was a low.  That day I discovered my friends, who had worn my jewelry and knew everything I had, were providing lists of my possessions to the government, hounding them to take it,  and the government had to comply.  That day I wrote, “Sometimes I don’t know how I’ll go on.  I work so hard to think, ‘I’ll start over and make a new life,’ I make a plan to do that, and then every little thing the government tries to leave for me, my ‘friends’ make sure it gets taken away.  It’s not for me that I want anything.  It’s for my kids. I just need to provide for them. I want, I want, I want! There is so much I want. So many injustices I’m being dealt and there will never be any restitution to me for any of it.  I am the one victim who is not on the victim’s restitution list.  I am THE ONE who will just have to let go of it, forgive, and go on.”

The government asked me to give them a list of the jewelry I owned, which I did.  And they called, amazed, that I had admitted to MORE than they knew I had!  That was a high for me.  I continued to value my character and integrity above all.

Then I met with bankruptcy attorneys.  They were appalled at how, in their words, “completely bereft” a position I had been placed.  I don’t think they’d seen anyone left in my position, to start over with four kids to the extent that I had been.  That was a low.

That day I returned home feeling very alone, and when I arrived home my daughter said, “Mom.  It’s April Fool’s Day!” The irony completely got me, and must have shown in my face, because my daughter said, “What?  What’s wrong, Mom?”  I just smiled and said, “Nothing.  I’m fine.  I’m great.”  It was becoming my answer to everything.

There were many other financial highs and lows that followed and I eventually learned not to get too worked up in either direction, to wait and see how everything played out to avoid getting devastated time and again.  Sometimes roller coasters can be a bit much, too many highs and lows.

So I rode the roller coaster.  And I hung on.  I don’t recall that I ever screamed but I cried. And although I wasn’t overly successful at enjoying the ride, I had two goals for myself as I rode:  To not hate anyone.  And to be cheerful, happy, and optimistic.  I didn’t want to be anyone’s “downer.”

Prison Humor

Date: April 9, 2010  Author: Andrea Merriman

One day I couldn’t help myself. I researched federal prisons on the internet.

It was like a terrible car wreck off to the side of the road. I didn’t want to see it, but I had to look.  It gave me the shivers to even know someone going to prison.

I wasn’t the only one thinking about prisons.

My oldest son was too.  He came home one day to report that at school his economics teacher showed the class a prison in Georgia.  I couldn’t believe it.  What are the odds they’d be discussing prisons in economics as my son’s father was heading to one?

To my son, the Georgia prison looked like a nice hotel: glass walls with forest views, basketball courts, tennis courts, ping pong tables, and every cell had a flat screen t.v.

It was incomprehensible to me, and to my kids, that we knew someone heading to prison.

I also couldn’t believe I didn’t know where my children and I were going to live or how we were going to eat, yet He was going to have everything provided for him in prison! Never had the thought of prison sounded like a dream, but there was a tiny part of me that felt like He was getting off easier than I was.  His sentence sounded a lot less harsh than mine.

So my children and I joked about it.  (And I have to give Him credit.  He sat there and took our jokes.)

We repeated jokes like, “In prison, you get three square meals a day. At home, you cook three square meals a day and try to get your kids to eat them. In prison, if you have visitors, all you do is go to a room, sit, talk and then say good-bye when you are ready or your time is up. At home, you clean for days getting ready for your guests, cook and clean up after your guests, and hope that they will one day leave. In prison, you spend your free time writing letters or hanging out in your own space all day. At home, you get to clean your space and everyone else’s space, too, and what the heck is free time again? In prison, there are no whining children or spouses asking you to do something else for them. At home….stop me when I get to the downside of prison, will ya?”

But my oldest son made us laugh the hardest.  He detailed the prison he learned about in school to his dad and suggested He “make a reservation” for Georgia for the next several years!

I guess you had to be there. But I do know the laughter was a nice break from crying! It always is.

“With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.” (Abraham Lincoln)

I knew the feeling.  We all did.

A Case of Bad Birthday Judgement

Date: April 8, 2010  Author: Andrea Merriman

It’s a fact.  Nobody is perfect.

And in 2009, like every other year, I didn’t handle every situation, perfectly, all of the time.

And probably no time did I exercise poor judgement in the eyes of outsiders more than my oldest son’s 16th birthday. Unfortunately for him, His dad chose to reveal His crimes a few weeks prior to his birthday.  So instead of the milestone birthday many teens mark, my son lost his entire life as he knew it, including any chance of a birthday present.  We had NO money.  Nothing material to give him.  Not the birthday experience I’d expected to provide for my oldest child at 16 years old, for sure.

His dad had purchased an Aston Martin V-8 Vantage a few years before.  My son LOVED that car.  His dream had been to drive that car and his dad had always said when our son turned 16, he could drive it. By the time my son actually was 16, however, his dad had turned himself in to the government authorities and confessed to running a ponzi scheme for the previous 15 or more years, all of our assets had been frozen, investigators had come to our home and had scheduled the car for seizure, and a Colorado spring snowstorm was coming.

In a fit of madness possibly only mothers of teenage boys/car enthusiasts could understand (or maybe my judgement was so off no one will ever understand!) I decided my son would take the Aston Martin for a 10-15 minute drive before snow came and the car was gone. For his birthday. As his present. It was all I had to give him.

I told my spouse the plan.  He was against it but for once, for the first time in our marriage, I didn’t listen to His opinion AT ALL and I honestly didn’t care what His opinion was.  My spouse had made His choices, and because of His choices, my children and I didn’t get to make any.  My son’s birthday was upon us, his reality and dreams had been shattered, and I had nothing to give him except a memory.

My spouse resigned himself to the decision I had made, but stipulated the drive had to take place in the dark so there would be less chance of neighbors and victims finding out. (We were under surveillance 24 hours a day.  Every move we made was watched and reported to the victims and the authorities.) Wrong again.  (Poor judgement, again, on my part.)  I was planning to take a picture of the drive that my son could keep to document his 16th birthday and the only “gift” he got.

Of course I (and my poor judgement) won.  My son took the Aston Martin for a 10-15 minute spin–and as he pulled out of the driveway I forced a smile, gave him a “thumbs up” hand sign, and snapped a photo of him in the driver’s seat. He was beaming! Thrilled.  I will never forget the look of delight on his face as he drove away.

I didn’t have a gift to give him, but I got to make one of his dreams come true instead.

Later that evening, as my spouse was driving my daughter to a class, a neighbor stepped in front of the car and stopped Him. He yelled, he cussed, he said the most vile and hateful and despicable things to my spouse IN THE PRESENCE OF MY DAUGHTER. She was sitting in the passenger seat and had to endure every word.  His tirade went on and on–and then he ran and told all of the neighbors what the Merrimans were up to in their house of crime.

My daughter was physically sick from the experience.

I believe both “sides” exercised poor judgement that day.  Believe it or not, I try to see all sides to the situation, and I have tried to do that from the very beginning. (Sometimes I feel like I, and a few select former “investors”, one of whom I have already written about, are the only few embroiled in the mess of my former spouse’s creation who do.) But poor judgement or not, I would not change a single choice I made relative to letting my son drive the Astin Martin and having that memory as his birthday gift.  One year later he is still talking about it, remembering it, and rejoicing in that 10 minute drive as only a teenage boy and car enthusiast can.

The next day the neighbor called me and apologized for doing what he did in front of my daughter. He said what he did was inexcusable.  I silently agreed with him…and then I forgave him. He is a decent man.  My judgement may be imperfect but my vision is clear.  I can see all sides.

I Never Knew

Date: April 7, 2010  Author: Andrea Merriman

“I never knew until that moment how bad it could hurt to lose something you never really had.” (From the television show, The Wonder Years)

In 2009, I lived that line for real.  I felt like the life I thought I had, the life I had lived, had never really been real. I didn’t even trust my memories of my “former life” for a long time; everything seemed so tainted by the crime, the lies, and the betrayal. The pain of losing something I’d never really had hurt more than I imagined.

The spring of 2009 can best be described as the season my heart hurt.  It literally hurt ALL of the time.  It ached all day, every day, every moment, and I didn’t know if it hurt because it was broken or if I was actually physically in trouble due to the stress I lived under! Can healthy women have heart attacks at 41?  I wondered…

Here’s how “optimistic” and hopeful I felt sometimes.  Last April, one year ago, I wrote, “I’m looking at an eternity alone, people hating me the rest of my life, latch-key kids, if you name it and it’s miserable it’s my lot in life! I wonder how will I make it three months, much less the rest of my life? How can one man destroy so much? I deserved better. I deserved more, and so did my children.  His lies stole my life from age 26-41.  The consequences of his lies will steal the rest of my life. Everything looks so black. I never imagined pain like this existed, especially for someone so innocent.”

I spent depressing days packing stuff to move, preparing to leave the home I had brought each of my babies home to, had lived in for 16 years and had always thought it would be the home I’d live in when I was 80 years old.  I cried a lot. I reminisced. I mourned. I felt as if my heart had broken and would never heal.  And when I thought about my kids…I felt grief like I’d never felt before.

But I always pulled it together by the time my kids got home from school.

I had to carry on and keep it together (or at least look like I was keeping it together!) for my kids.  I had to show them what we do when our world falls apart:  we keep living.

My mom taught me that.

When I was 19 and my dad died unexpectedly in an airplane crash, I came home from college for the funeral to a house full of well-meaning neighbors and friends who told me I would not be returning to school because I was needed at home to help my mom and family.  So many told me that I thought my mom had decided that in my absence.  When I asked her if it was true that I wouldn’t be returning to college because my dad died, she was stunned.  And she corrected that mistaken assumption.  ”Absolutely you will be returning to school!  Andrea, you don’t stop living just because something terrible has happened to you!  You keep doing what you need to do, you keep living, you keep smiling even though you don’t feel like it, and some day your smiles will feel real again.”

So I smiled in 1986-1987 when I didn’t feel like it.  And I smiled in 2009 when I REALLY didn’t feel like it too.  They were forced.  They were ‘fake’ in that I didn’t feel them on the inside but I showed them on the outside anyway.  I smiled for the sake of my children.

I remember I was still forcing myself to smile in August 2009.  By then, it killed me that I didn’t mean them. I’d always been a pretty cheerful and positive person and it was hard for me to not feel like myself any more.  I had moments that I wondered if, in addition to losing everything I had known as my life, I had lost myself too.  I remember wondering if I’d ever smile, for real, again.

However, my mom turned out to be right.  As usual.

By October 2009, the smiles were real and the tears were less and less.  Sometime that month I realized I had gone an entire week without crying!  Baby steps forward, but steps forward all the same.  I think that’s one thing 2009 reinforced to me:  it doesn’t matter how fast you move along the path of your unexpected life.  Just as long as you keep moving.  Forward. Pressing on.

Oh, and smiling!