The Chosen Step

“I think I underestimated how hard it would be as a step-mother.“

-Carol

I made it very clear to my husband that I needed lots of help from him. He promised he would help. Well, that promise turned out to mean abresolutely  nothing to him, I got no help at all. We moved upstate New York close to his older siblings, it was okay for awhile, but it felt like I was competing with his older sister. She would laugh and make fun of the fact that I was Catholic and went to mass every week. He would make fun of my laugh in front of his family. Again I got so frustrated that I would say that I was going to the local Kmart store to look around, but I would just park and cry hysterically.

There were so many times I became so frustrated I took a belt to all 3 of them, crying hysterically as I did begging them to tell me why they didn’t do something they were supposed to do. They never said a word, and all their father said was I needed to change my method of punishment. At one point I gave him an ultimatum… It’s them or me. I was trying to get him to realize I needed help, but instead the next day he called the kids mother to come take them. She took my stepdaughter, but not the boys. 

The problem is that he would never humble himself to tell her that he changed his mind. This was an ongoing problem with alot of things. It was shortly after that he had a massive coronary and  it scared me half to death. He became somewhat nasty, not even sure why. At this time I became pregnant. There is a 10 year age difference between my daughter and son and needless to say my husband was not thrilled at the news. 

I don’t think he liked the idea of being a stay at home dad. It stopped him from doing the things that he wanted to do. So when my daughter got home from school, she took care of her brother until I got home. His lack of humility came out again when he said we were moving to Arizona so he could be closer to a friend that he had worked with, but we found out that his friend was divorced and he had moved back to New York. So here we go again, without his oldest son who was 22 and working in NY, off to Arizona we went. His first daughter had already been in Arizona for a while with her mother.

Shortly after we moved, my husband developed several other medical problems such as Trigeminal Neuralgia, triple bypass surgery, and diabetes which caused several comas. As a part of his “leave me alone” attitude, he never allowed me to see his doctor until his coma happened 2 days in the same week. He spent 2 weeks in the hospital having several tests and a biopsy which showed stage 4 lung cancer. He did not qualify for chemotherapy or surgery. From August 18th through Saturday the 25th,  family came to visit with food and we had a gathering. Monday the 27th he had an appointment for an MRI, but unfortunately he never made it. He passed away that morning.