My heart may be broken, but I didn’t cry...

A while back, someone told me about the movie “Regarding Henry.” I don’t remember who. It was in the midst of the haze--the months when I couldn’t help but be someone else, because it was as if I had fallen, hit my head, become unconscious. I was tied to this man in marriage, and when he was injured, so was I.

Someone looked into the haze, and something I said about the days sitting in a hospital, talking to a comatose invalid who didn’t even know who I was... something I said made this person think of the movie. I mentioned that I had picked the DVD up from a yard sale, but had never watched it. “Should I?” I asked.

This person was quick to reply, “No! Not now. Maybe later, but now it would probably be too close to home. It would make you cry.”

Since Todd cleaned out our bank account and made it clear that he has no intent to share any of his disability money with the family, I have been struggling to figure out how I’m going to pay all the bills. 

“Whose money is that?” he asked when I mentioned the disability money he had transferred out of the family account right when the mortgage was coming due. (Even though he’s staying with a friend rent-free.) 

It’s too soon to turn the kids’ lives upside down by going out and getting a regular full-time outside-of-the-home job yet... not in the midst of all this turmoil, not in the middle of the holidays... So, I’m selling things. Anything I can.

My wedding ring paid for a month of indoor plumbing. Two days after we moved back in the house, the water was scheduled to be cut off (because Todd had intercepted the mail I was having held at the post office so I could keep up with the bills, and he had ignored the water bill, allowing late fees to accrue.) 

A month of indoor plumbing: That’s what it came to. Over two decades of marriage, and the symbol of that union boiled down to being worth no more than a month’s worth of showers and flushes of the toilet.

The two are inextricably connected in my mind now: my wedding ring and the ability to flush the crap out of my life; my wedding ring OR the ability to flush the crap out of my life. Take your pick. You can’t have both. It’s profound, I think. I’ve always loved a good metaphor. I don’t think I could have ever dreamed that one up on my own.

The month of flushes has passed. Now I need to pay the bills without the asset of a wedding ring. (The metaphor goes on.) I have to find other things to sell. Since there’s a good chance that we’ll end up losing the house, I figured I might as well sell even the little things... even if they don’t make a big dent in the bills, it will be less to move or less to put in storage as I try to sort out what goes and what stays in this new life. So, I’m listing some of our DVDs on E-bay.

“Regarding Henry.” I still hadn’t watched it, but I listed it... and since I hate to waste anything, I decided I’d watch it before letting it go. Would it make me cry? I’ve cried enough. Why be a fool and induce more? But I was lonely, and sometimes movies make the best of friends. I felt like crying with a friend would be preferable to being alone. Maybe a good, identifiable movie would be like a shoulder to cry on.

As I watched Annette Benning’s character sitting by the bedside of her character’s husband (played by Harrison Ford--Hans Solo) ...first in the I.C.U., then in a regular hospital room, then a rehabilitation hospital... the journey portrayed was very familiar. But I didn’t cry. It was factual. Not emotional. Benning said, “I think this is teaching me to be strong,” and I nodded.

As Harrison’s character rehabilitated, the familiarity dwindled. He was inconsiderate and selfish before his brain injury, but his blow to the head made him nicer, more empathetic, and less selfish. Ah, the imagination of a screenwriter! I remember one nurse telling me that the injury would likely change Todd... warning me that things could be worse--that head injury victims frequently get mean.

I asked her the hypothetical question: “What if things were bad before the accident?”

“Well,” she said. “He could get nicer.”

I asked if that sort of thing happened often... she shook her head. 

As I experienced Todd’s agitation through every step of recovery--beginning with the long hours of trying to keep him from pulling off his restraints, when he would shove one hand in his pants in search of feces as the other hand grabbed at his IV and ventilator lines... He would get so upset when I tried to keep him from doing himself harm or creating an unsanitary (and stinky) mess--I dreaded his return home too soon.

Benning’s character couldn’t wait to get her husband home. She had something I didn’t have. 

Todd wanted to come home long before I was ready to receive him. And he was bright enough to figure out what it would take: He needed to “be good.” He stated that understanding repeatedly, and he strove to “be good” for the rehabilitation staff. I liked having them in the room because he would be nice when they were there. Maybe there was hope that the slim chance the nurse had mentioned--of a brain injury making a person nicer--might be the miracle my family would experience...

Maybe.

Maybe not.

Fast forward. We know which direction that one went!

So, I’m watching the movie alone in my bed. Watching Ford’s character become kind and noble. Near the end, Benning embraces Ford, and something sparkles. A big sparkle. It’s a honking big diamond ring on Benning’s hand. She still had that symbol. He still loved her. Perhaps he loved her more than ever.

Bridget and Todd’s story is different.

I was reading through the transcript of our court case--seeing all the blatant lies Todd told to make himself look good at the expense of both his wife and his daughter’s reputations--at the expense of the chance of either one of them ever trusting him again.

It was sad, but I didn’t cry.

This is factual. My finger is empty. It has been empty for a long time. Even from the start, it was only the bare minimum that Todd could get away with. Even then, I should have seen that he was willing to spend all sorts of money on himself, and yet he would half-heartedly apologize for the diamond on my ring being so small. It didn’t matter to me because I was busy “writing” a romance. Facts didn’t matter. Emptiness could be filled with the swoop of my imagination.

I tried to embrace Todd, to hope for the best, to believe he could change... but when I tentatively reached my arms around him, there was no sparkle... no glimmer. 

My hand is empty.