Saturday morning, October 6th, he called and he was at his ugliest. He started the verbal abuse his intense hangovers brought on and said for the umpteenth time, “Diane, we have to stop doing this to each other.” I am not sure what we were arguing about, it didn’t matter, it was the same script. We had rehearsed it over and over and over and I was in tears.
But this time, I changed my line. Instead of saying, “Honey, we can work it out,” I found myself saying, “Red, you are right. We can’t keep doing this to each other. I am 51 years old and I don’t want to fight with you the rest of my life. I am going to pick up the papers and file for a divorce.”
There was silence on the other end of the line.
I continued, “Why don’t I pick you up at the airport in Atlanta on Monday as we planned and we can spend one last wonderful week at the mountain and figure out how to divide everything up.”
I swallowed and couldn’t believe my ears. Did that come out of my mouth? I was accustomed to hearing things come out of my mouth unexpectedly, but these words shocked me as much as they must have shocked him.
The silence was broken by his gruff, angry, “Fine, we’ll talk about it later.”
He called later, expecting everything to be ok and back to normal. He told me he had taken a nice bike ride and was ready to go to work. Either he was pretending the morning’s conversation had never happened or he didn’t remember it.
I told him to have a good night at work and how I was looking forward to being at the mountain home with him one last time.
He said, “You aren’t serious about this divorce-stuff are you?” and I said, “Yes, Red, you aren’t going to change and we can’t keep this up.”
“You are right. I am not going to change for you or anyone else. Have a good day. Maybe I will call you tomorrow,” he hung up angrily and most likely in disbelief. I used to call the state he was while in the Keys his “alcohol fog” because when one drinks day after day after day, there is no reality. I have been there. I understand what it feels like. You drink to cover up the pain, to forget, and then you just drink because that is what you do.
When he called on Sunday, he was a bit more humble and asked if I still felt the same way. I remember thinking, well, at least he remembers, and I assured him I thought it was the only way. He got angry again.
How could I do this to him when he was on his way to work? I had heard him say that a hundred times. He was always on his way to work. When things were unpleasant between us he would call on his way to work so he wouldn’t have to talk to me for very long. He knew I was one of those people who had to communicate and he wasn’t. Pretend everything is ok and it will be.
I tried to calm him down, but it was a waste of my breath. He hung up on me and I went back to packing my bags. I was planning on driving north to spend the night in Atlanta so I could pick him up at the airport in the morning.
After he was done with his Sunday afternoon gig in Islamorada, he called me while he was driving to where our motor home was parked. He was finally realizing I was serious and he was furious. He blamed me for the way he felt and he couldn’t stay in the motor home any more, it was parked in the yard where three of my best friends lived.
He couldn’t stay anywhere. He didn’t belong anywhere. He didn’t belong with anyone. He was going to get into his car and just drive. He would let me know whether or not I should pick him up at the airport on Monday. He didn’t know what to do.
I drove the six hours to Atlanta and stayed with my girlfriend wondering what would happen next and knowing I had to do exactly what I was doing.
When I got up in the morning and turned on my phone there was a message from him. He had canceled his plane ticket and was driving to Georgia. I rushed up to the mountain home to get some of my belongings and get out of there as quickly as I could. I didn’t want to be at the house with him in person. I was afraid he would try to talk me into staying with him, which would have been easy because I loved him so very much. I also had a little fear I might stand my ground and really leave him, and that would make him mad, fighting mad.
There had only been one occasion of physical violence during our entire relationship, and that was a long time ago, when I was drinking too much along with him. This was different. I had never told him I was REALLY leaving him before. I wasn’t going to take any chances with my safety.
I drove through the 2 creeks and up the hill and quickly packed my truck. I breathlessly headed down the mountain knowing I would meet him on the way out, actually hoping I would, because I did love him so very much and I wanted to see him here in Talking Rock one last time.
We met at the bottom of the hill. He screeched on his brakes and I stopped my truck. We spoke for a couple of minutes, while sitting in our vehicles and he kept saying, “I can’t believe you are doing this…” and then he was at a loss for words.
I asked him if there were any tools he needed, so he could work on the guitar he was building and he said if I could spare the drill he he’d like to use it while at the mountain and would return it on his way south.
I climbed up in the back of my pick up truck and got the drill out of my tool box. As I was handing it to him I noticed he wasn’t wearing his wedding ring. I took mine off and gave it to him and asked him to pawn them and split the money with me. He’d purchased them in a pawnshop a month after we had met and it seemed only fitting they go back from whence they came.
He said no, he wasn’t going to pawn them. He’d throw them in the creek. I said, “Then give it back to me,” and he did. He said his was in the ashtray for now and he would try to figure out what to do with it later.
I told him we could work through this. We could split everything up while we were still speaking. I told him he was my best friend and quite honestly, financially speaking, this was the stupidest time for me to break up with him. With my help his career was flourishing and mine was just starting to be profitable. There isn’t a lot of money in healing the earth and home improvement is hard work. I would figure out what else I had to do to make ends meet.
He reached in to his car and gave me an apple and asked me to come up to the house. As I write this I wonder how things would have changed if I had gone with him but I don’t wonder for long. It was always the same; a happy beginning, a rocky road and then the bottom would drop out and then we would make up. Making up was fun but the rocky roads were not.
He spent the next few days alone at the mountain home calling me often and writing loving emails to me, “Please, won’t you reconsider. I really am a lonely boy in northern Georgia now and I don’t want us to end this way.”
He visited with his friends in northern Georgia and had as much fun as a broken-hearted man could have. He talked things over with his old friends and they all said the same thing, “If you love her and want to be with her you know what you have to do. You have to do what she is asking you to do. Cut back on the booze.”
Nope, nobody was going to make him do that.
For the next four weeks he was the kindest, most loving man he could be for someone going through a divorce. I picked up the paperwork at the courthouse and began filling in the blanks while he wrote long, loving emails every day. He never took the time to write to me while we were together. He was too busy with his hangovers and his fans.
He stopped on his way back to Key West to drop off the drill and we sat at our kitchen table in Dixie County and wrote the first draft of how to split everything up. I wrote an email to all our fans letting them know we were going to have the first public, friendly divorce ever. He always joked that I needed my own fan club and I told him we could just share all of our friends/fans. We could even stay friends ourselves, if we tried hard enough.
His emails began to tell me a lot more. He began to open up and admit he was SO angry with himself and what he did to his body. He told me how sorry he was he had directed all that anger towards me. He explained he was feeling better about himself. He was cutting back on his alcohol consumption, riding his bike and feeling better. He was changing for himself. He thanked me for making him see what he needed to do.
He never gave up trying to convince me we could work it out.
I never stopped loving him and wanting it to work out.
November 11th, 2007……………………………Let’s Try Again