What About Bob?

Cory was buried on the eleventh of July.  I did not allow her biological father to attend the service or to see her at all.  Some have expressed it should not have been my decision to make, but I made it nonetheless.  Regardless of what people thought, I would not allow him to be there, honoring a life he had chosen not to be part of many, many times.  He had left me to make all the decisions for her care her entire life, and some of them were more difficult than anything I’d ever imagined.  If I could make those, I could certainly make the one about the service, as well.  And so I did.  Afterwards, of course, I second-guessed myself.  I wondered if it were what Cory would truly have wanted.  She’d had a complicated array of emotions about her father.  Hell, didn’t we all?

I made it months before contacting him, which was pretty good considering I’d been fighting a burning urge to call and give him a piece of my mind ever since I realized he didn’t send flowers to her service.  This was a domino that set a chain reaction of resentment into motion.  How dare he not send her flowers just because he wouldn’t be there to enjoy them?  How dare he not offer to help see her decently buried?  How dare he promise her the world and let her down time and time again?  Why didn’t he follow through with meds and counseling so he could be a healthy part of her life?  How could he leave us yet again? 

What if he had gotten well and stayed well?  Would things have turned out any differently?  Would he have been around to go buy the chili powder or to cross the road with her?  Ridiculous, but it ran through my mind, it sure did.  Blame must have a face, and whose better than the one who had let us both down our entire lives? 

I’ve read since then that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder causes unreasonable anger towards some of the people you are closest to.  Truth be told, Bob was one of the people I’d loved most in the world.  There wasn’t much I hadn’t and wouldn’t do for him.  It took me over twenty years to walk away from him completely, and at the time was the most painful thing I’d ever experienced.

Poor Dr Z sat with a furrowed brow as I asked for his advice.  Should I or should I not contact Bob?  I did not sugar coat it.  I had a burning need to contact him and fill him in on just what he missed this last go round.  I wanted him to hurt as I was hurting.  I wanted him to suffer.  I wanted him to bleed.  I wanted him to have to walk around every day of his life with the pictures I was currently carrying around in my head.  I wanted the lifeless form of his daughter to keep him awake nights and haunt his dreams, as it did mine.  In short,  I wanted to share the misery, and I wanted to share it with him.  Why should he get off scott free yet again?

Dr. Z nodded as if this desire was perfectly normal, and perfectly healthy.  Bless his sweet soul, that man’s tolerance of my strange mourning behaviors simply knew no bounds.  He had not batted an eye when I’d revealed my plate slinging tantrums or how I’d been beating myself up with one small fist in time to scream-over music  while driving in the car.  Dr. Z accepted you, and loved you…just as you are.  No wonder Cory loved him so.

So instead of telling me that contacting Bob was a horribly stupid idea, he posed a question.

“Was he in her life consistently the first three years of her life?”

“No.  We broke up when she was 2 months old because he was abusive.  After that he saw her a couple of times with supervision, and then he left the state when she was four.”

Dr. Z nodded, not at all surprised.  He shot me a slightly dubious glance before reminding me, who he knew had been involved in early childhood for years, “You realize that he did not successfully bond with her.  The attachment was simply never formed.  It is natural for you to want to share your grief with the other part of her, but he will never experience what you are looking for.  How old was she when he saw her next?” he asked.

“She’d just turned fourteen.”  I answered.

He nodded, nonjudgmentally.  “Ten years.  Yes, well then, she was really more of an acquaintance to him rather than a permanent fixture in his life.  He will not process her death the way you will.  Not to mention, he has a serious mental illness that has gone untreated his entire life…that, combined with all the substances he used….his brain is literally disintegrating daily.  His day to day life is about fighting his demons…it is all about me, me, me.  I doubt if he is even able to get outside of his own pain and suffering to think of others for long.”  He paused here to meet my eyes.  “I know you want to share this with him, but he will never be able to give you what you are looking for.  You are better to look to your loved ones who knew Cory and loved her as you did, yes?”

Yes.  Yes, I knew what he said made sense.  But his logic did nothing to calm the uncontrollable, violent rage I felt.  It did nothing to quiet the what if’s.  It did nothing to silence my shameful secret need to have Bob tell me he knew it wasn’t my fault, and that he didn’t blame me for killing our child.  Like, seriously?  His opinion should matter the least, but somehow all those years of watching his eyes and reading his face before making a move had taken their toll.  Those pathways were still hardwired in my brain; it was sad, but true.

I revisited the topic with Dr. Z several times.  I wrote in my journal.  I vented to friends.  I talked to my husband about it.  I agreed with them all, wholeheartedly- it was a bad idea.  I made peace with my decision to leave well enough alone. 

 Then I said to hell with it, and contacted him anyway.

Halloween was my first holiday without Cory.  It’s never been a favorite of mine, but somehow that didn’t matter one bit.  It knocked me flat on my back to see Jake standing in a costume…alone, for the first time in ten years.  Suddenly, I wanted to run and hide.  Uncle Bud volunteered to take Jake around trick or treating.  I retired to my cocoon like bed, wailing and screaming, as a parade of Cory-Girls, aged one to nineteen, paraded through my head in various costumes.  I couldn’t breathe.  I wanted to die.  Feeling self-destructive was the perfect segue to contact him, and contact him I did.

I wrote him that I’d been wanting to contact him ever since it happened.  I told him I wanted him to know what he’d missed out on this time, but I didn’t know any words gruesome enough to describe what it had been like to run up and find her laid out on the road like that.  I told him even if I did know the right words, I knew it wouldn’t affect him the same way because he hadn’t loved her the way I did.  I told him I didn’t blame him for her death, that one was all my fault, but I did blame him for how badly he’d treated her when she was alive.  And she’d never deserved it.

His response came quickly, and was short.  Just a couple of lines about how he agreed, and had gotten what he deserved when he flew up here at a moment’s notice and was turned away at the door. 

---TO BE CONTINUED