Part 3 is here

Agony in Motion

~ Part Four ~

~ Secenes from Atlantic Canada - pictures from my album ~

I had been feeling dizzy for a while, as if the world was turning around me. I was familiar with vertigo – a condition related to the inner ear, causing lightheadedness and imbalance. When B remarked on my staggering pace during that evening stroll, I realized it was not something to be ignored. I returned to Montreal with stress induced vertigo. Medication was not helpful. Nor were the classes I was assigned. Discipline was a major problem. Administration had changed during my sabbatical and was useless in asserting much authority or support. Support staff was downsized and because of the increase in student population we were short of classrooms. I was relegated to teaching in a kitchen-lab and a sewing room, where students were more interested in breaking the needles on the 25 year old sewing machines than learning housing design and color schemes.(I'll leave my memories of teaching Consumer and Home Economics for another post.)

By the end of November I was under tremendous stress, my hands started trembling and I had to take time off. Medical and psychological follow-ups required by my employer showed that I was suffering from separation anxiety and a form of depression, as well as familial tremors (shaky hands) and vertigo. I was placed on long term medical leave at 70 percent of my salary and prescribed all kinds of medications. Some caused weight gain, some forgetfulness. I wanted to be with my husband but out of moral obligation I thought I should stay in town, because I wasn't really on vacation. I started using a cane when I went outdoors, because outside world made me so dizzy. Everything whirled around my head – the sky, trees, sidewalks, the air I inhaled. I had become a memory of my once self in slow motion.

About that time my husband declared impotence saying that sex was not everything in a happy marriage. He loved me and we were close and physical – that's what really mattered. I struggled with the idea, yet I didn't nag him, because he had told me horror stories about his ex – and I believed. If sex were going to be an impediment to the marriage of true minds, I could live without it. Our minds seemed to be so in tune to each other that often we started a sentence or a thought at the same time, or read one’s ideas before the other even voiced it. It was almost eerie; yet all our friends found it adorable.

In 2007, B would be turning sixty – a milestone birthday. I wanted to spend it with him. His initial plans were to host a small party in a pub for our friends in St John's. Unfortunately on October 18, his father passed away, and B had to fly back to Montreal a day after he had left visiting me. We spent a few days at his brother's after the funeral, where his other siblings - all six of them had flown in. What I remember of that week is the laughter and memories of their lives and their parents' adjustment to living in Canada when they immigrated from Holland fifty years ago. It was as if there was a big celebration - not a death in the family. Photo albums were spread out, people in their flannel pajamas sitting on the floors, consuming mugs of coffee with slices of the date nut bread I had baked. It was a very different experience for me. In one way, I felt closer to him than ever before. I envied the lack of formality among the family members – everyone was being himself and herself. That was a nice legacy to leave behind in one's children.

Dad's 84th birthday souvenir with some of the siblings and grandchildren

On our drive back to Montreal, I made, what I consider in retrospect, the biggest mistake of my life by telling B the most sacred secret of my life – which I am not going to reveal here. It is not a bad thing, but I had made a promise to Annecim as a teenager not to reveal it to anyone. Yet on Highway QE 407 between Toronto and Montreal, traveling at 65 miles per hour, overcome by my grief of maternal rejection, juxtaposed with the closeness of his family, dizzy by the motion of the car, I cursed my promise and betrayed Annecim. He listened without reaction, his eyes fixed on the smooth pavement, partially shaded in the waning Autumnal glory. I had not even told my first husband this secret, thus I felt our lives were sealed at that passing moment – as if we had cut our fingers and rubbed our blood together to be one with each other in the knowledge of something so privileged.

Photo taken from the car as we drove for his Dad's funeral- Oct 19-2007

I will never know for certain if that revelation had made a difference in the ensuing events, or if it was just one more justification to ease his conscience. It doesn't matter anymore either. After he flew back to his lectures at the end of the month, he changed his mind about his upcoming birthday celebration. He expressed a desire to spend a quiet evening on his birthday, by himself – contemplate life and mourn his father. It would be too soon to party or celebrate just two weeks after. I respected his wishes and stayed in Montreal delaying my trip to Christmas.  We planned that he would, as usual, spend the holidays in Montreal - a city he loved very much, and we would fly back to St John's together since my medical leave was extended into disability leave for six more months.

How little did I know then that his real plans were so different from what he promised me, and the shovel had long hit the earth marking the burial site of our marriage long ago. 

My daughter was coming home on December 18th from Victoria, British Colombia. I was happy and excited to see her after a whole year. B was flying in the day before. I made plans and invited friends for the  21st. I baked, I cooked and I shopped – at my own pace. Changed the bed sheets, sat by the weather channel and the telephone, praying the snow storm on the east coast would not delay his flight. He always called before he left, and when he landed. I still have his last three messages on the answering machine. I wonder how he could address me as “Sweetheart” and sign off by saying he loved me, knowing what he was about to do within a few hours.

( To be continued. . .)

Selim welcomes daddy with a kiss

Füsun Atalay ~ Copyright © Will of my Own -2011