Jennifer Croly - Missing Being Mrs: Surviving Divorce Without Losing Your Friends, Your Faith, or Your Mind

Text copyright 2004 Jennifer Croly
This edition copyright 2015 Lion Hudson

The right of Jennifer Croly to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published by Monarch Books
an imprint of
Lion Hudson plc
Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Road,
Oxford OX2 8DR, England
Email: monarch@lionhudson.com
www.lionhudson.com/monarch

ISBN 978 0 85721 639 7
e-ISBN 978 0 85721 640 3

First edition 2004
This edition 2015

Acknowledgments
Unless otherwise stated, Scripture quotations are taken from The Message by Eugene H. Peterson, 2002 by NavPress.
Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Cover images:
Ring frender/iStock; Woman 68/Ocean/Corbis

Wow Jen allows us right inside her heart. She shares exactly
how it feels when an apparently happy, successful marriage
abruptly ends She writes so well there was no putting the
book down until it was finished.

Jennifer Rees Larcombe

I read this book in one sitting It will be very strengthening
and encouraging to so many in similar situations.

Celia Bowring, CARE

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to Jan Greenough.
Without her support and endless cups of weak Earl Grey
it would never have been written.

Chapter 1

Have They Really Gone?

The nightmare begins

I have trouble watching people walk out of doors. Just ordinary doors. Just leaving the room. I have real trouble watching people walk out of doors. Especially if I love them. I know exactly why. On 2nd September 1997 my husband and two daughters walked out of our back door. Nothing was ever the same again.

A strange reality

I lost my husband and two of my four children on the same day. They left in the morning as usual, the girls happily following their dad out of the door, and they didnt come back. At first I didnt believe it. I couldnt believe it. I couldnt conceive the reality of it in my head. Reality turned into a nightmare. Thats a clich because its true.

I lost my husband and two children on the same day. I wanted to dial 999! I wanted to dial 911! Fire? Police? Ambulance? Coastguard? Call out the Marines? But there was no emergency service to deal with this emergency, and no one did anything about it. No one seemed to care. Worse, no one seemed to notice. It was as if it wasnt happening. There was no outcry, no newspaper headlines, no outpouring of national sympathy. My girls had been taken from me and they treated it as normal . What sort of nightmare was this? Nightmare acting as reality. A nightmare where you try to speak but cant be heard. My girls had gone. Theyd been taken and no one did anything about it.

I went to Social Services. They looked concerned, but powerless. I went to a solicitor, who showed me his filing cabinets. Its very common, he said. It happens every day. It was just a job to him. BUT SOMEONE HAS TAKEN MY CHILDREN! My heart was screaming but my voice was level. You may see this every day, but its the first time it has happened to me, I tried to explain. These are not statistics; they are my daughters, and they have been taken away from me.

Theres no law against it, he said. Its not worth bothering the police with. It would only cause the girls more distress.

Obviously he didnt understand. I searched for a more sympathetic ear. Two more solicitors said the same thing. One recommended a counsellor. She listened for an hour and then summed up the situation neatly: It seems to me, she said, that you want someone to say this cant happen, but in my experience Im very much afraid that it can.

I lost my husband and two children on the same day. At a quarter to nine. Just before I went to work. I told my boss what had happened. He looked shocked, pitying, powerless. So did everyone. No one moved. No one did anything. A force field suddenly opened up around me. People walked by giving me a six-foot clearance. It was as if any closer would be dangerous. My boss was at a complete loss. Totally out of his depth. Take some time off, he said, as a drowning man clutches at a piece of passing flotsam. Take some time off if you want you must have some practicalities to sort out. Life moved on again. It looked like a video playing to itself.

I lost my husband and two children on the same day and I couldnt take it in. This cant be right, my mind reasoned. Not my husband! Not my man! Not my man! GOD! You can do all things! Make it right again. Bring them back to me. I prayed. I pleaded. I couldnt believe it. Soon theyd all come walking in again. Id hear the car on the gravel and their voices ringing as they jostled in at the door. Laden with packages, home from the shops, look at the money theyd made Daddy spend again! Twisting him round their little fingers. Thats girls for you. Ten and twelve they were, a vulnerable age. They couldnt have gone. That only happens in nightmares.

I lost my husband and two of my children on the same day. Well at least you still have the boys, someone said. I think that was meant to be comforting. My mind flipped to the memory of their young faces when they were told. So many emotions in one moment. The shock, the total disbelief, the grief. Trying to make sense of it all. They were sharing the same nightmare. Trying to be strong. Trying to be strong for me . But that was all the wrong way round! I should be strong for them. What sort of reality was this? Yes, I still had the boys. We were now a family of three, not six. I kept cooking too much food. There was suddenly too much space in the house. It was unnaturally quiet. Empty bedrooms. I shut the doors. Empty spaces at the table we tried to ignore them. We carried on, attempting to be normal. Remind me, what was normal?

On that day I had lost him for ever, but my head expected him to walk in the door again, smiling, familiar, normal, like he had every day of my adult life. Soon I would wake up and everything would be normal again. Soon he would walk in and laugh and say what an idiot Id been to worry. Soon he would come to his senses and return and say sorry and wed kiss and make up. Like wed always done. Wed always overcome any problem together. Now, it seemed, there was no together. All our adult lives wed been together. Now I was alone. Id never been alone before. Now, everywhere I went I would go alone.

So, inexorably, the nightmare rolled on, daily played out in familiar settings. There was never any end to it. There was never any funeral. No public demonstration of mourning. No cards, no flowers, no gathering of sympathetic friends. There was no acknowledgement of our loss. No one to share past happy memories with. It was as if the past was wiped out. As if it had never existed. Twenty-two years suddenly gone. My whole adult life. My husband. Their father. Our family. Gone.

In those early days I once had a dream. It was an ordinary dream. I was walking beside him in easy familiarity and the children were all around, running backwards and forwards, shouting and complaining. A normal day out, in my dream. Reality returned to a recognised shape, feelings relaxed, happiness returned then I woke, and the nightmare invaded with all its nightmare feelings. I woke up into the nightmare. Thats not right! my heart screamed, as the mangling pains twisted somewhere very deep and the tears forced their way out of my eyes. Reality shifted again. My mind couldnt get round it. This isnt right! Youre supposed to wake up out of the nightmare, not into it! The tears, temporarily staunched in dreamland, now welled up again and flowed freely in disappointment.