Living Happily Ever After
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“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)

 

 

Stressed Out

Date: March 27, 2012  Author: Andrea Merriman

In the midst of all the adventures—moves, work and everything else life brings—we had a very special one. My oldest son began the process of belong called to serve as a full-time missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

It was something I’d anticipated his entire life. You see, the majority of young men in the L.D.S. faith serve missions from the age of 19-21 years old. (You’ve probably seen them—clean cut young men, wearing white shirts and black name tags, walking or riding their bikes to meet with investigators, volunteering in the community and talking to people about faith, Jesus Christ and the gospel He taught.) When young men are of that age (or shortly before they turn 19) they submit their paperwork to serve a mission and then are called to serve where they are needed.

They don’t get to choose where they serve. Missionaries leave behind family, friends, work, sports, schooling and any other interests and dedicate their lives to their missionary service for two years. You don’t get to see them other than in the pictures they might send home. (They send letters and emails, they can call home twice each year, but other than that, they are focused on their mission and you don’t see them in person until they return home when their mission is completed.) And they pay all expenses associated with their missionary service.

I’d always hoped this son would choose to serve a mission. I’d planned he would serve a mission. I’d raised him to serve a mission. (I’m anticipating it for all of my sons.) But somehow, all too soon, the time is almost here.

He filled out his paperwork, met with the appropriate church leaders, and his papers were submitted to Salt Lake City for assignment. All that was left to do was wait for his mission call to arrive in the mail. (I think our official wait was actually less than 2 weeks by the time everything was submitted. But somehow it seemed longer than that. A lot was unknown, so it made the time seem to pass slowly.) In the meantime, I had no idea how stressed out I would become!

Lets just say this motherhood thing is a whole LOT more than I anticipated when I first became a mother. Those days, I remember sitting on the couch much of the day, holding and enjoying my newborn baby boy all day long, sometimes watching a video while he slept in my arms (I never wanted to put him down I was so thrilled to be a mom!) thinking, “I don’t know what all these mothers have been thinking and saying, insisting motherhood is such hard work! I don’t know what they think they are talking about!” I seriously thought they had to have exaggerated a little bit! (Ah…youth. And inexperience, huh?)

Waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting for that envelope to arrive.

And I, who rarely remembers that mail is delivered daily much less to pick up said mail from my mailbox, suddenly started checking the mail every day.

“I believe in opening mail once a month, whether it needs it or not.” (Bob Considine)

Waiting.

“Open, Sesame!”

Date: March 29, 2011  Author: Andrea Merriman

“I turn on my computer. I wait patiently as it connects. I go online. My breath catches in my chest until I hear 3 little words, ‘You’ve got mail.’ I hear nothing, not a sound on the streets of New York. Just the beat of my own heart. I have mail…from you.” (“You’ve Got Mail”)

I had mail? I didn’t quite believe it, so, true to form, I denied it. (The Queen of Denial was back!)

“I DO NOT have mail.”

“Yes, you do,” said #5. “I am holding a letter from The First Presidency of The Church, addressed to you, in my hand.”

“Did you open it? What does it say?” I asked.

“No, I didn’t open it, it’s addressed to you!” he replied.

“Open it,” I requested.

“No,” he responded. “Because I haven’t been to my house, yet, to see if I have letter too.”

“Open it,” I requested. (Again.)

“No,” he answered. “What if it’s a letter telling you NOT to marry me?”

“OPEN IT,” I commanded.

So he did. There was a brief pause while he opened the envelope, removed the letter and silently read it. ”It’s the letter we’ve been waiting for,” he reported.

I didn’t know what to say. I still couldn’t believe it, so I denied it again and then asked him if he was teasing me. He finally put my oldest on the phone. ”Mom, it’s the letter. It’s to you from The First Presidency,” he said, and he began to read it to me over the phone.

I was at work. My children and #5 were gathered together at my home, reading my letter. They all sounded happy and excited. It was noisy in the background.

As for me? I’d waited so long, by the time I finally got my letter of authorization to marry in a temple, I’m not sure what I thought or felt in that moment. Relief. Excitement. Yet a sense of “this can’t be real” mingled with the other thoughts and emotions. I hung up the phone, my mind racing with thoughts of people I needed to call about my letter finally coming.

But instead, I hung up the phone and…unexpectedly…cried.

I wasn’t planning to do that.

“A woman can laugh and cry in three seconds and it’s not weird…” (Rob Schneider)

It Didn’t Go Over So Well

Date: March 21, 2011  Author: Andrea Merriman

“Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning.” (Thomas Alva Edison)

Although I’d love to look brilliant, organized and like I’m a woman who has it all together–including a special letter she needed–it wasn’t intentional. I didn’t know I was going to get engaged to remarry just one year after my world collapsed or that I’d need a letter from my former spouse to apply for permission to marry in a L.D.S. temple! It came about more as a result of my former husband.

When he revealed his crimes in March 2009, everything changed. Especially for me. I didn’t just lose my entire world, life, marriage, family and everything as I knew it. In one moment I went from loving, trusting and respecting my husband of 20 years to looking at him through completely different eyes. I didn’t know who he was or what he was. He became a stranger in a moment. I wondered if he was sociopathic. He even looked different, physically, to me. It was as if I didn’t know him, and never had known him, at all. But ironically, at that time, possibly for the first time, I actually knew everything about him. Finally.

Yet he didn’t get that.

I remember shortly after he had revealed everything he had done. When we were alone, he told me it was ironic to him that all he wanted to do was be with me, be alone with me, be close to me, hold me–yet that was the one thing I didn’t want! Soon after that, he told me he didn’t think a divorce was necessary. I was dumbfounded.

I asked, “No divorce?”

“No divorce,” he replied.

“So you think it’s completely realistic to expect that you did what you did for as long as you did it, you say you’re sorry, I forgive you, and we can remain married?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied.

“You think it’s realistic to expect that while you go to prison for who knows how long, that we remain married, I’m alone, I raise our children alone, I keep our children alive in your absence, you serve your time, you get out and then everything goes back to normal and goes on as before? And we’re married the whole time?” I clarifed.

“Yes,” he answered.

All I can say is that we sure didn’t see things the same way! I saw no other outcome or consequence to his crimes, lies and other betrayals, than divorce. Not to mention the fact that every attorney involved advised me to cut my ties to the criminal as fast as I possibly could, for my protection and for my children. Regardless of how I felt or what I may or may not have wanted to do, I didn’t have a choice. My former husband had made my choice for me and left me with no choice.

Divorce.

“When two people decide to get a divorce, it isn’t a sign that they ‘don’t understand’ one another, but a sign that they have, at last, begun to.” (Helen Rowland)

And although I didn’t know it at the time, some day, I’d need a letter.

Certified Mail Spells Trouble

Date: March 20, 2011  Author: Andrea Merriman

“Certified mail is scary. Got one from the IRS about a month ago and my heart hit the floor. Luckily, they were just notifying me I wouldn’t get a couple of refunds that were really old.” (Alien42, online forum)

I made an appointment and met with my pastor. He was fairly new to his position and didn’t know me very well (but we certainly got to know one another well during the application process and the wait for approval!) He couldn’t have been nicer to work with, more efficient or do a better job at following up, keeping in touch with me during the wait and checking up on me as I was waiting.

We sat in his office one spring evening in May 2010 and began the application. He informed me he’d need to ask my former husband for a letter and he needed to send the request certified mail. I told him that wouldn’t be possible as my former spouse resided in jail. My pastor brainstormed about how he could do what was required and work with a former spouse in jail. He said, “Hmm. I do need a letter, maybe I could send it certified mail? Maybe to the warden?”

That panicked me. There are very specific guidelines and rules that must be followed when sending mail to jails and prisons. (Another thing I’ve learned in my unexpected life.) Envelopes have to be a certain size; specific information and ONLY that information must appear on the outside of the envelope; pages of letters are limited (at the time, no envelope could contain more than three pages inside.) When the guidelines aren’t followed, the prison inmate can get in trouble.

When my former spouse first went to jail, I received mail guidelines from his attorney. I followed them strictly, including writing “legal mail” on the outside of the envelope as the guidelines I’d received had instructed. I assumed I had to do that to show I was a law abiding citizen sending nothing illegal to a prisoner in jail!

Wrong.

The attorney had forwarded me the guidelines for legal mail–legal mail for an attorney. And Shawn Merriman almost got in a lot of trouble because I was following those guidelines, too, when I reported to him regarding our children through letters. I was afraid anything like certified mail would get my former husband in even more trouble with the jail staff. I told my pastor we just couldn’t do that, certified mail could be really bad.

But I had a solution.

I had my own letter.

I’m sure, especially as a new pastor, he never expected to encounter a situation like mine. I wish you could have seen the look on his face when I told him I already had a letter! He probably wanted to roll his eyes and say, “NOW what?” But he didn’t. He asked, with quite a bit of surprise, “You already have a letter? How did you do that?”

“I have received no more than one or two letters in my life that were worth the postage.” (Henry David Thoreau, Walden)

Why Wait?

Date: March 18, 2011  Author: Andrea Merriman

“My kids always perceived the bathroom as a place where you wait it out until all the groceries are unloaded from the car.” (Erma Bombeck)

Or in the case of my younger sister, the bathroom is where you wait it out until all of the dinner dishes are done! (I’m sure I’ll hear from her on this one. But she KNOWS what I’m talking about:)

As an adult, since my engagement to #5, I’ve also been “waiting it out,” but unfortunately, couldn’t hide in a bathroom; I had to keep living my life.

What was I waiting for?

Marriage. To get married, to be exact. Actually, it’s THE reason for my “long” engagement and wait. Yes, the time to thoroughly get to know one another, to help our children prepare for the life change and blending of families has been very helpful. But the main reason for the wait is that I need authorization to marry where I wanted to marry.

As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I believe in marriage (and family) and in beginning all of that by marrying in a L.D.S. temple. A temple is the place we believe covenants, and the ties that bind, are made not for just this life but for eternity.

To qualify for the privilege of going to a temple to worship, marry or participate in other ordinances you must have a temple recommend (a paper permit.) This is required not because what takes place in a temple is secret (it’s not secret), but because the ordinances performed therein are so sacred. To receive a temple recommend, you must live certain standards and then obtain the recommend/permit from your local clergy.

In a first marriage, you only need a temple recommend to be married and sealed to your chosen spouse. In the case of divorce, additional authorization beyond a temple recommend is required to remarry in a temple. Men and women sealed to previous spouses in a L.D.S. temple must obtain special permission to be sealed to a new husband or wife in a temple. The additional authorization is known as a cancellation or clearance of your previous sealing and it is in letter form. As both #5 and I had been married and sealed in a temple to our previous spouses, both of us needed additional authorization to remarry in a temple. And that letter of authorization to do so comes directly from The First Presidency of The Church. They are the only men who grant that permission.

It is a process that takes time. In fact, you never know how long it all can take to gather the required information, complete the interviews necessary and do everything else that is part of obtaining a cancellation or clearance to remarry in a temple. I think for that reason, most L.D.S. couples who remarry choose to marry civilly (not in a L.D.S. temple) initially, and then go to a temple approximately one year after their civil wedding to be sealed to one another.

But that’s not me.

For a variety of reasons, I guess.

My parents raised me to live a life that would allow me to marry in a temple, and I had always chosen to live that way. I hadn’t changed, I didn’t change the way I lived or what I believed in, just because my former spouse made the choices he did. Or because I was divorced or living an unexpected life. A temple marriage was still my ideal. For me, it was the place to marry–my only choice.

I was also raising my children to marry in a temple. I needed to remarry in the temple not just for me, but also as an example to them (especially given the “example” the other Merriman parent had set.)

We began the application process that would allow us to marry in a L.D.S. temple within weeks after we got engaged. We just never realized how long it would take.

“If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.” (Oscar Wilde)

Waiting.

The Bright Side of My Divorce

Date: March 9, 2011  Author: Andrea Merriman

“Always look on the bright side of life.” (Monty Python)

When I divorced, initially, I thought my situation was more difficult than a “typical” divorce because my former spouse is in prison. His incarcerated status left me completely alone to raise and support our children. There is no child support; no parenting time with the other parent; and while I wouldn’t wish the prison experience on anyone (although the choices my former spouse made certainly warrant prison time) as time has gone on, I’ve been able to look on the bright side. 

“The habit of looking on the bright side of every event is worth more than a thousand pounds a year.” (Samuel Johnson)

The bright side? Of being left alone, the sole source of support for four children, while the former spouse serves over 12 years in prison? Some might wonder, “What bright side?”

Here it is: I am completely alone to raise and support our children. There is no child support.

I have sole custody–medical custody, educational custody, social custody, religious custody, every type of custody I could think of when I wrote my divorce. And after observing many divorced couples have to co-parent their children, I’ve realized being left completely alone is much simpler and easier (in some ways, for me) than what some divorced couples experience.

I get to do what I feel is best for my children. I don’t have to get permission, approval or really even report to another parent. I don’t have to compromise. I don’t make plans and have them changed by the other parent. There is no other parent to get frustrated or mad at me. While some former spouses have to endure spending time with one another for the sake of their children, I don’t have to do that either. And now that we’re used to seeing “Unsensored Inmate Mail” stamped on the outside of envelopes that arrive occasionally in our mailbox, basically, I’m drama-free!

Yes, there is always a bright side–if you choose to find it.

The whole prison thing also meant #5 didn’t have to meet a former spouse face-to-face. Instead, he received a letter from Shawn Merriman, mailed from a Colorado jail, early in our engagement.

I don’t remember much of the letter other than that my former spouse tried to be kind and supportive in what he wrote–although how his attempts to do that came across in writing I still wonder about. It seemed a little “lecturing” to me as it told #5 he would be the one to do such-and-such with the Merriman children and it listed lots of things #5 would be doing with them. (It sort of read like Shawn Merriman was telling #5 all that he expected him to do as a step-parent.)

But #5 is not only a very nonjudgemental person and accepting of everyone, he is a good sport. He accepted the letter graciously…and we never really discussed it again. I don’t know what, if anything, he did with it. He just does his thing, in his own way, and my children are the better because of it. I credit the healing of my children to a great big miracle, to the passage of time and in large part, to #5.

“But when we have families, when we have children, this gives us a purpose for being, to protect our children, to avoid going to jail because if I’m in jail, who looks after my children, who’s there for my wife?” (Ernie Hudson)

#5.