We were done this time for sure probably hopefully

With the holidays behind us and March approaching, Dad took a fall between the garage and driveway. A couple of neighbors on their afternoon stroll saw him bloodied and leaning on the side of the garage, unable to get to his feet. I rushed home, pulled up just as the ambulance was about to leave for the hospital. While doing my best to distract Mom out of a frantic stupor, I could see where someone had hosed away the blood. The incident would lead to a four-day stay at the hospital.

This is relevant because Karina would bring it up during our final camping trip six months later. While still in the E.R., she offered to retrieve my dad's glasses and a few other things. I was grateful.

On the last day of Dad's hospital stay, Karina shared her frustration with the time commitment and the increasing amount of care my parents needed. I listened. My inside voice was telling me there wasn’t much to say and even less I could promise: I was committed to seeing how I could contribute to my mom and dad's welfare. To me, it wasn’t complicated. To Karina’s point—and the whole family's—I needed to ramp up my effort to line up more relief.   

Karina not only felt I was getting in over my head, but she believed my role interfered with our relationship. I understood, but I also failed to see how her frustration needed to be so cut and dry. 

I was obligated to be a supportive husband, but I also felt these were special circumstances. First of all, we were sort of separated. Second, if the role were reversed, I wouldn't question whatever Karina needed to do for her mother and stepfather. Actually, I would support her in (and give her a wide berth for) whatever she valued so highly. 

It dawned on me—not for the first time—that I wasn’t being asked to compromise. I was being asked to concede. So when my sister Mary—in town for two days—set up a somewhat-emergency meeting with a hospice nurse and Karina felt she wasn't given enough advance notice, things spiraled.

“You promised this was our weekend,” she said, very rant-like. I knew what agitation sounded like, and this was it. 

In one corner was me, realizing a family meeting with a hospice nurse was actually going to happen. It would require a couple hours, at most. In the other corner was Karina who wanted the whole weekend spent as a pair doing something that wasn’t yet defined. To my knowledge, we had tentatively planned on visiting a shoe store on Hawthorne Boulevard.

I tried to explain how important it was for me to hear what the hospice nurse had to day, and that we could restart our day afterward. Karina’s argument was about principle: a promise. If I can't keep a promise, she wasn’t important and I was steamrolling her feelings.

Obviously, I left to hear what the hospice business was all about. On my way over to my parents' house, I had a 20-minute drive to let my frustration sink in. It’s the same old dynamic I’d been experiencing for more than two years. It was why I had left her four months before: Her capacity for processing disappointment was limited. She felt wronged too often. She hung onto anger, and it never seemed to line up with what I view as a passing or temporary garden-variety problem.

I pulled into the driveway and texted, “I’m done, Karina. This is absurd.”

I walked into my parents' house just in time. My daughter Ellie and one of my brothers Chris and my sisters were sitting on the couch, my dad in his easy chair. I left my phone in the other room, imagining it vibrating with calls and texts. I also feared my parents’ house phone might ring, so I unplugged it.

The meeting went fine, but Ellie knew I was stressed.

My silence with Karina continued into the week.

Working for a large company at the time and knowing not to answer my desk phone, I would get paged over the campus intercom until I walked to H.R. to explain my dysfunctional domestic situation.   

Karina’s texts went from wrath (e.g., “fuck you,” “hope you die,” “fuck your parents,” “can’t believe I ever married you cuz you’re the biggest asshole I’ve ever known”) to conciliatory (e.g., “please stop ignoring me,” “I know I screwed up,” “I’m truly sorry,” “let me apologize the right way,” “I will live wherever you want to live”) to depressing (e.g., “I can't live without you,” “I don't want to live anymore”) with a sprinkling of passive-aggression (e.g., “thanks for ruining my life,” “thanks for fucking me over,” “good job, I'm hiring an attorney”) and creative (e.g., “karma will get you and your small dick”).

I put my attention on Mom and Dad and was glad to have somewhere important to focus my energy.

It took a good seven days for things to cool off.

A weird aside was returning a call from Karina’s mom after day three: she told told me if Karina kills herself, it would be my fault. Such an absurd thing for anyone to say, but I knew she was frustrated. I've always liked Karina's mother.   

I remained committed to not upsetting Karina—and making the legal petition for dissolution of marriage as easy and drama-free as possible. The fewer steps Karina needed to follow-up on, the better. But as the weeks turned into months, her excuses mounted: her inability to print documents sent by email, her request that I mail the paperwork, and then her decision to not sign anything.

Her emails tended to be business-like: “I’ve been busy. Plus, communicating with you is so unpleasant, that is why this is taking so long. Because I hate dealing with you, in any way."

Two months after the family meeting with the hospice nurse, I find out on a phone bill that "being busy" most likely meant she had a new man in her life. Right after helping Dad with breakfast, I clicked through my phone’s family plan and noticed something that would’ve been impossible not to notice: a repeating phone number appearing way too much. The number was being called and texted—to and from Karina’s number—at all hours. One call from Karina lasted 93 minutes, after 2 a.m.

Pictures sent by text after midnight can never be a good thing. 

I barely feel comfortable looking at people’s Facebook pages without verbal consent, so it’s not as if I was looking for something that wasn’t bonking me on the forehead. 

In conclusion, I speculated that Karina and her texting buddy were spending time together when they weren’t trading text messages and phone calls.

I told Karina it was time to get closure now that there is someone new in her life. My actual text message:  Good morning. Don’t mean to be unpleasant but this delay on the divorce petition is unnecessarily dragging on. Let’s clean this up. You have another person in your life while you have my belongs and I’m paying the equivalent of $700/mo for health care, utilities, phone, cable, auto insurance. Call me when you get a chance.

She texted something short, “Who said I have someone else in my life?” 

The delay with the filing dragged on some more. Ultimately, the lawyer—a matter-of-fact Jewish guy I named Saul—and his supporting cast of legal eagles recommended having Karina served.

We were legally divorced a little more than two months later, in June.

My dad passed away in late July.

I never heard from Karina until an email appeared in my Yahoo inbox in October. She suggested that we go camping.