Living Happily Ever After
test123

Blog Articles

The Rest of…the Trip

Date: October 21, 2013  Author: Andrea Merriman

“That ends this strange eventful history…” (William Shakespeare)

I was in Colorado  less than 48 hours. But I conquered all the major hurdles:

1. I drove the streets of Denver, Aurora and Centennial, Colorado (all the areas of my old stomping ground and life) and I felt great! I didn’t feel homesick, I didn’t feel like I didn’t belong there, I didn’t have an urge to cry…I just felt like I was in a place I knew very well and enjoyed. I felt welcome!

2. I drove to my former home. And I felt…nothing. I didn’t feel homesick, I didn’t feel loss, I didn’t have an urge to cry… I felt nothing but peace.

3. Although I didn’t get a chance to see a majority of the friends I would have loved to have seen, I got to see several people I love and have missed.

4. I even had the privilege of seeing and speaking with a few victims of my former husband. They could not have been kinder or more gracious to me. (There are some really good people in the world!)

5. I realized that I can, and want, to return for a visit again someday. (And I want to bring my children, too!)

And then, all too soon, it was off to the airport again and a quick flight back to Salt Lake City. I arrived home–everything looked the same yet everything was completely different. I went to work the next day–everything looked the same yet EVERYTHING was different.

I was different. I had conquered the last hurdle from my unexpected life. Consider me recovered!  But I’ll refrain from adding “The End” to this story. Because there never is one to…the unexpected life.

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” (Winston Churchill)

“Family” of Strangers

Date: September 27, 2012  Author: Andrea Merriman

In the moments following my former husband’s 2009 revelations,  as I wrote about long ago, he instantly became a stranger. I felt like I didn’t know him—and never had.

The June 20, 2012 “American Greed” episode revealed another stranger I guess I’d never really known: my former mother-in-law.   Sadly, it became apparent that she had never really known, or gotten me and what I’m about, either.

I discovered that when posted online with the “American Greed” episode teaser was a letter she had written to the judge at the time of her son’s sentencing, a letter I’d never seen or read—the letter that said something to the effect that she believed I’d been in cahoots with her son and helped him hide the money he stole so we could enjoy ourselves when he got out of prison!

Not! In fact, not even. By the time she’d written that letter to the judge urging him to make her son pay for his crimes and as part of it attempted to erroneously throw ME under the bus along with her Ponzi scheme-committing offspring, I’d already divorced her son and had moved to another state.

Sometimes the unexpected life isn’t just strange…it’s stranger than fiction. All you can do is shake your head and laugh—that’s what I’m doing.

“It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.” (Mark Twain)

 

 

Did I Say Strange?

Date: December 13, 2011  Author: Andrea Merriman

“Let your mind start a journey through a strange new world. Leave all thoughts of the world you knew before. Let your soul take you where you long to be…Close your eyes let your spirit start to soar, and you’ll live as you’ve never lived before.” (Eric Fromme)

Before I go any further I have to reiterate, again, that remarriage is a journey through a strange new world.

It’s unsettling, after living four or more decades of your life and doing things a certain way for specific reasons…to change it all up and do everything differently. But it’s also exciting, not to mention occasionally entertaining. You certainly have new experiences you never expected to have; you learn new things; and I like to think (or hope) that all of it will help keep me young!

Now back to the birthday cruise for my husband.

We both had prior cruising experience prior to our first one together. My husband had been on several cruises and I’d been on 10 myself (I had been married for 20 years to a man who did everything to excess; now that I know what was REALLY going on all those years, I see that he certainly lived up to Ponzi scheme criminal stereotype/reputation for “living the high life.” Bummer that I, like everyone else, simply thought he was just very successful and good at his job!)

We brought to our 2011 marriage our own (different) travel habits and expectations. But since this cruise was with in celebration of my husband’s 50th birthday and we were  traveling with his family and friends,  I told him not to worry about me; we were doing it his way—and while I don’t think we did the whole trip “his way,” (my husband is too considerate for that) I pretty much went along with everything my husband suggested (like karaoke) and had a lot of new adventures (like karaoke) that were part of his previous experience but had never been a part of mine.

It was a very different cruise than any I’d ever been on before, but it was also a LOT of fun!

“Old and young, we are all on our last cruise.” (Robert Louis Stevenson)

Make the most of it.

Wasn’t That A Movie?

Date: March 28, 2011  Author: Andrea Merriman

“Life is the movie you see through your own eyes. It makes little difference what’s happening out there. It’s how you take it that counts.” (Denis Waitley)

And then, just a few hours later (after government officials called) I got another phone call. It, too, was unexpected.

It had begun as a typical Friday, except that morning #5 stopped by before I went to work and announced the papers we’d been waiting for were coming that day.

I laughed and replied, “No, they’re not.”

He smiled and said, “You just keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better. But they ARE coming today. I know it.”

He said it was just a feeling he had, but I had to give him credit: he’d said all along that our papers were arriving a specific week. It was that week. I also had to give him credit for being firm in his belief. He had checked with me every day, “Did you pick up your mail? Did you get any mail today?” (Mail collection is a challenge for me. By the time I work all day and commute home, I’m so excited to see my children most of the time I forget mail is even delivered during the day! I typically remember to pick up my mail only a few days each week.)

Like a watched pot that never seems to boil, my mailbox had been unusually empty every single day that week. I know, because very uncharacteristically for me, I had checked it every single day: Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday.

Later that day, that Friday, #5 called me at work. “What are you doing? Are you driving home?” he asked.

“No, I haven’t left yet. I’m still working,” I answered. I had a big project I was trying to finish before the weekend. I had stayed at the office later than usual. ”Why? What are you doing?” I asked.

“Oh, I’m just at the house,” he said. “I came by to check your mail.”

“And?” I asked.

“You’ve got mail!” he rejoiced.

Wasn’t that a movie?

“It sometimes feels like a strange movie, you know, it’s all so weird that sometimes I wonder if it is really happening.” (Eminem)

I know what he means.