I guess my story starts in 2016 when I met my ex husband, a strange time in my life – I had not long left a very toxic and domestic violent relationship. This is one of the reasons I was drawn to him – James. He was quiet, calm and kind. At times too quiet, he didn’t seem to have learned any normal communication skills so our relationship for a long time consisted of me talking and him answering or listening. I loved this it helped me heal from my previous relationship and I’ll always be so grateful for that.
Quickly our relationship turned to something more difficult. I had no experiences related to terminal illness or to death, my family is small and we hadn’t lost anyone close to us at this point. It took James a long time, all most 6 months to tell me his father was unwell. He initially told me that his parents were divorced and his father lived in another city near us. His mother had another partner so I never questioned this. Only until one night his best friend said to me “Has James told you about his dad?” I responded “Yes” thinking to myself that’s an odd thing to ask – my naive mind believed James with 100% certainty that he had told me the honest truth. His friend responded “That he’s really sick?” I said “No, what do you mean?” He said “That’s for him to tell you.”. I dwelled on this for sometime and came to the conclusion I would ask some questions to see if he would like to open up to me. He did.
This was the start of the next 6 months being surrounded by illness & death. His father had a deteriorating neurological condition, one which had lasted years and left him in a hospital for the last 8 years. His father died a slow and cruel death and all I could do was support him. I was 21 and had never experienced anything like this before – but I did what I could with the information and knowledge I had.
After his father’s death he felt the need to get tested himself, he felt he had symptoms and wanted to know what was ahead of him. At this point I had developed a relationship with his mother Jean and step father David, I had spent a lot of time with David while his father was dying so we had developed some sort of relationship and I felt more comfortable with him than anyone else. His mother was lovely and always welcoming but I just couldn’t put my finger on why I didn’t feel 100% comfortable, the eyes lingered a little too long and the questions often bordered on judgemental.
His upbringing was totally different than mine, it involved obviously his father being unwell and going into a hospital at a young age. I imagine it involved a lot of trauma from him and his sibling and from what he told me a lot of unaddressed grief, anger and trauma from his mother – often taken out on him. It also involved growing up around alcohol – which was something I had never experienced before involving my parents. This was a huge culture in the small town I lived in with him – not where I was raised. I adapted quickly as most 21year olds would and I noticed all our friends parents were the same, heavy drinkers. It was ‘normal’.
We would often go to his parents house for family dinners once a week or fortnight. My relationship developed with Jean and I began to feel more comfortable with her. There was still an underline feeling of judgement and wanting to please and impress her but I dealt with it. I quickly learned that she was the ‘leader’, she had the control and liked to be in control with everything – including her own biological family. They almost seemed to all look to her to make the decisions. She liked to control part of our lives as well, which was something I didn’t like but felt it wasn’t worth addressing as both James and I were very intimidated by her. Even back then I understood that she had suffered a lot and was doing the best she could with the knowledge she had, to cope with her suffering. I could see she was hurting and with ever glass of wine filled to the rim, trying to drown out the background noise. She had lost control over the part of her life that you would naturally want control over, she was robbed of raising her children in a loving ‘normal’ home, with a loving ‘normal’ father and partner.
It took awhile before I ever witnessed an outburst James described to me. He was 20, 1 year younger than me and had big goals he was determined to achieve. He was amazing with money and always had a savings account, he wanted to buy a house and he had set his mind to it. He found a house he loved in a low price bracket & and in the part of town he liked. I supported him and we shared the excitement of moving into a house together. He couldn’t wait to tell Jean and David. We headed over to their house for our family dinner and after awhile he brought it up. I watched Jeans face turn from a smile to a flat, slightly annoyed expression. “Terrible idea.” She stated. We stared at her blankly, I glanced at James and he began to twitch uncomfortably. I glanced back at her and she said “That’s right beside the flats where the criminals live, you’ll get robbed all the time and it’s too close to the main road.” James began to speak and she cut him off, “We won’t help you organise anything if you go ahead with it.” He stared at her and quietly said “I’ll do it myself then.” The rest of the family dinner was uncomfortable to say the least and we got out of there as quickly as we could. I felt shocked, my parents had always celebrated even the smallest wins with me throughout my whole life. This was huge. How was she not so incredibly proud of her son who had worked so hard to achieve this.
He carried on with his plan and organised all the logistics himself. He put in an offer and the day it was accepted we had a family dinner at his parent’s house. We walked in and sat on the floor, the couches were taken up by David’s grandchildren who often stayed, 13, 12, 7 & 3. James handed Jean the listing pamphlet, she stared at it then burst out “He’s done it he’s fucking brought that house!” As she threw the listing at David. The kids stared at her shocked – as did I. We left shortly after.
Jean made the decision that James would be entitled to a small inheritance from his father $24,000 which was to go towards his first house. This was huge for James, he had enough of a deposit but this was more than a year of mortgage payments and he was extremely grateful. Jean made it clear from the get go that she wanted a prenuptial agreement to be drawn up to protect the money from his father. I was happy to do so – James on the other hand was not. He told Jean he wouldn’t sign anything, he felt it was disrespectful to me and while I could see where he was coming from I also wanted to make Jean happy. Jean went ahead and set up a meeting for James and the family lawyer to draft the agreement. James refused to attend the meeting and never showed up. I was kept out of it so I’m unsure of the exact details but I gathered that she wasn’t happy. She set up a second meeting which James again – no showed. After that it wasn’t spoken about again and I’m not aware of her even bringing it up again with him.
The house was brought and we moved in. It was an older house 1983 red brick house 86square meters but enough for what we needed. James had always talked about getting a dog and that was his immediate goal. He got to work on the fence straight away and it was done within two weekends. We searched online for the dog he wanted, contacted breeders and found one that suited us. We sent the deposit and a few weeks later we had our new best friend by our sides. His name was Copper and he was a Doberman. In the time we had moved in, built the fence and got our new puppy, Jean had made it clear we weren’t to get a dog. When he had sent photos to her of the fence he had lovingly crafted her response was – “That better not be for a dog.”. Surprise Jean .. you’re a dog-grandma!
James and I had a lovely relationship, we worked well together and rarely ever disagreed on anything – as all relationships do there were ups and downs and neither of us were perfect. Just two early 20’s trying to be adults and figure out this thing we call life. We had fun with friends, both had great jobs a good social life and families that were involved and loved us. Life couldn’t be better. Until it wasn’t.
