My 82-Year-Old Father Confronts His Dead Marriage

“Aging is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person you always should have been.” David Bowie.

I overheard a phone conversation between my father and his second wife. Now now Enraged Reader, I didn’t deliberately listen to this phone conversation. Well, sort of. But please let me explain before you respond with angry comments that I violated his privacy.

My father is 82 years old and is in terrible health. He can’t walk more than a few steps without having pain in either his back, hips, or calves. He does use a cane. He needs a walker but has been stubborn about it. He is a diabetic and has had a heart attack. The one symptom that concerns me the most is that he doesn’t sleep. He basically stays up all night and might nap for an hour or two on his couch.

Over the summer, my sister and I spent a few days with my father and his second wife. His wife is 88 years old and she is the opposite in the sleep category. She goes to bed early and sleeps until after 10 am and then she takes a long nap in the afternoon. I’m not in the medical field but that seems somewhat normal. It must be exhausting to move your body at 88 years of age.

My sister and I confronted our father on the fact that he isn’t sleeping. To which he responded “I don’t want to sleep. I might miss something.” This made me sad. I’ve heard that some elderly people are afraid to sleep. Regardless, the fractured sleep patterns are catching up to him. He is now having delusions. He will fall asleep for a brief moment and wake up shouting. One time he thought someone was attacking him and smashed his hand on the table and broke a plate. He has fallen asleep while eating and dropped whatever he was holding. Right now he is visiting me for a few days. He wasn’t in my home for more than 30 minutes when he fell asleep while drinking coffee and spilled the entire contents on his lap.

That was why I started listening to his phone call. I didn’t realize he was on the phone when I heard him talking. I thought he was having one of his delusions. It felt late until I realized that I’m in New York and he is used to Arizona time.

What I figured out was that he was talking to his wife. These were the lines I heard him say before I realized it was a very personal phone call and I should walk back into my room.

“I feel like we’re just roommates. Our marriage is dead.”

“You never want to leave the house. I may not be in the best of health, but I don’t want to stay home all day.”

“I want to travel but you have no interest.”

He had his wife on speaker phone and I heard her angry voice say in response, “That’s not the issue. I don’t believe that you ever loved me.”

When I heard my father say “I do care for you. I see that you always wanted more and I thought I could get there. But that isn’t the point now. You never want to do anything and I don’t know how many summers I have left.”

That was enough for me to hear. I closed my bedroom door. I thought about how my father had been telling me that his wife was going to move back to Chicago to be closer to her children. I was shocked when he said he wasn’t going to move with her. My sister and I were going to try to convince him that he should follow her.

My mother passed away in 1999 and my father remarried in 2004. I didn’t like his wife at first. I felt that she might have been marrying him for his money. But I kept my mouth shut because it was none of my business. Then I grew to appreciate that my father was no longer lonely and now had a companion in his later years.

The loyal readers who follow my story know that I am in a new life. I divorced from a 27-year marriage that had grown hostile and then abusive. I never regretted my decision to divorce. Yet, ironically, I am now struggling with defining the type of relationship that will accompany me as I enter my final phase of life. I hope to retire within ten years. Once I have a lot more freedom what “situationship” do I want to be in? I always want to be single. Yet, there are still so many unconventional options available to me. Do I want to live with a partner? Do I want to be in a committed relationship but live separately? Or accept serial monogamy in that I will have loving relationships that will come and go? How do I really feel about consensual non-monogamy?

I naively thought that I would eventually figure it all out. My father’s conversation gave me pause.

I realize that not every person who is divorced had wanted to be. Yet, when a person is happy about that choice, there can be excitement and optimism for what could happen next. To some, it is a crossroads. They are so petrified about being single and lonely that they immediately seek another marriage. I had a lot of pride that I would never make the same mistakes. I like the idea of discovering passion and intimacy with another partner. But this time I won’t be shackled by old-fashioned societal dictates and religious institutions. Yet after hearing my dad’s conversation, I now see that relationships can bring ambiguity.

After my mother passed, he said that he didn’t see the need to marry again. He felt that you only get married to raise children. By the time you were his age, it isn’t necessary is what he kept repeating. Well, relationships don’t always follow rule books. His second wife was very Catholic and it seems she put that pressure on him. Since that conversation I overheard, he has spoken to me about her. He brought up that she is too introverted and that he enjoys socializing. That she refuses to even meet their friends out anymore and he is frustrated. He also let it slip that she has retained her own lawyer for her estate planning. My sister is sad for his wife but I wonder if deep down, his wife is better off without the pressure to be someone that she is no longer comfortable being.

I pointed out to my father that in the past, she did travel with him. They went all over the world. So many countries that it would encompass a long list. She did fulfill his needs at the time. He has great memories and he loves sharing the stories of those amazing places with his grandchildren.

Maybe the answer is to look at the journey with an intimate partner as one of experiences. Whoever is with you at the time can add romance and adventure.

It makes me wonder if the secret to happily ever after is to accept that you will always be growing and changing. Even at 82 years of age.