I cherished this time with her, even as the cancer took its toll. As Carolyn lay dying, Barry told me he found all this additional pressure too much to handle and left. The marriage was over and it was finally time for me to find myself.
Chapter 10
Orphaned, Divorced, Afraid – and Free
The morning that Carolyn died, I found Barry sitting in our living room appearing very dejected and out of place. He’d come to offer me comfort, which was kind, but he had no plans to attend the funeral. Carolyn’s children, now newly married young adults, stepped into the breach and took care of all the plans.
My sisters were unable to attend or offer much support. Sandy had moved to California and also was alone as she dealt with her husband’s imminent death from an aggressive bone cancer. Bobbie had just had a perilous second delivery of a baby girl. At the time of delivery, the doctors discovered that she had two uteruses and that is why her first daughter had died at birth. She was not well, and because of all my difficulties chose not to share her problems. She did offer to have my brother Howard come live with her since she was still married and could offer more stability than I could.
Losing Carolyn was difficult for all of us. We’d loved her dearly. But the family was actually somewhat giddy the day of the funeral for we were relieved that she was no longer suffering. We actually were laughing hysterically as we pulled up to the graveside in my stepbrother’s rickety VW bus. Everyone looked so serious as they waited for us, that we had to drive around Lakeside cemetery one more time before we could compose ourselves, get out and go to the ceremony. As we gathered at the family home after the simple ceremony, we laughed and cried together. Her kind spirit filled the space and we remembered her with love in our hearts.
My stepbrothers graciously forgave the loan that Carolyn had given us for the down payment on our house, so at least for the time being, I could stay where I was while I figured out how to pay for the groceries.
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I decided it was time to make “man’s money.” I had no idea how I would do that, but I had to find a way. In a moment of madness, I decided to try sales. No too many women were taking this path in 1975, but I really didn’t think I had a choice.
My rationale was simple. My grandmother, father, father-in-law, and husband had been or were still in sales. Why wouldn’t I think I might know something about this field? If that rationale didn’t work, I could just say it must be in my blood too.
To my great surprise, this career choice actually worked. I was stunned when the woman at Jewish Vocational Services agreed with me and sent me on an interview. I was hired immediately and began to sell something called “advertising specialty items.” This was a fancy way to describe junk with a company’s logo on it. I was terrified that every sales call would end in disaster, but somehow people bought the stuff and liked me enough to talk with me while they were signing their company’s money away. Before each call, to get courage, I would spit my gum into the bushes outside the company’s door. It was a dumb way to feel that I had something on these people. While it probably didn’t do much for the environment, it seemed like a good-luck charm at the time.
Newly divorced, my boys and I also needed a home that was a more comfortable fit, financially and otherwise. At that time we were living in a very white, homogenous community and I was feeling stifled as a divorcee in such an environment – feeling “different” once again. I decided we had to move to the local hippy community where the schools were integrated. I had missed out on so much of the 70’s playing the role of a corporate wife that I felt it was time to catch up.
Luckily, a local realtor knew the perfect spot for us. It was a huge side-by-side duplex in the Coventry area of Cleveland Heights. The woman who lived on the other side of the duplex was a professor at the local community college. The realtor and I convinced her that we could buy the house together. None of the banks really wanted to look at two women doing such a thing, but eventually one relented, and I was on my way to financial independence.
Everything was beginning to feel pretty miraculous to me. Yet, I was still lonely, bitter, and sad because my boys had a father who didn’t seem to really care. In spite of all that, I was soldiering on.
In those days, being in sales really was a much rougher way for a woman to earn her keep. Very often I had to disabuse the purchasing agent from the notion that I was offering anything more than the product line to close the deal. Now, I wasn’t that gorgeous -- just young and vulnerable and therefore “fair game.” But I had had enough stuff happen in my life by then to know that I wasn’t going to “take any bull shit.” And I didn’t.
Two amazing things happened during this time of achieving economic solvency. One is that I began to like myself more than I ever had before. I’d made my way through some very rough times and I was still standing. Life had given me some tough blows and I had withstood them on my own and without help from anyone. After all, I was an orphan. My sisters weren’t able to help me. They were going through tough times too. I stood alone.
I was terrified on a daily basis and woke up each morning with terrible knots in my stomach. Would this be the day when no one would buy anything and my ruse would be discovered? They would find out I was all bluster and couldn’t really sell after all. But by the time I’d put my darling boys to bed, I had made it through another day on my own. Something my mother had never felt she could ever do, I was doing every day.
I would take inventory at the end of each day. Had I fed my children good, nutritious food? Did they have clean clothes, a clean bed to sleep in, and did we have a roof over our heads? Were the children cared for properly each day while I was at work?
If the answers to all those questions -- just for that day -- were yes then I was okay. I had to trust that tomorrow would take care of itself. I couldn’t afford to worry that far in advance. I’d fold one more load of laundry, then fall into bed and sleep through another night.
The other amazing thing is that I was finding time to ponder questions about life as all the rules I’d been taught were dissolving. I had no family to turn to, no elders to answer these questions. I knew I was going to have to find the answers on my own.
I was certain my parents had all died without ever knowing why they had been alive. My parents certainly had developed a philosophy of life, but it hadn’t served any of them well. I thought of all the times I had asked my stepmother for her best advice and she had lovingly shared all she knew about how to be a good wife and a good person. Yet cancer had cut her down in her prime also. It appeared that her philosophy of life hadn’t served her well. Where could I find the answers to how to live a good life in a way that would not leave me open to wanting to die young as all my parents had done?
That became my quest. I picked up a simple book on astrology that seemed to fall into my hands at a book store. I devoured every word and finally felt there was something that could give me a modicum of meaning to this mess called life. As I read the chapter on my sun sign, I began to see that here was something that could tell me more about who I was. Learning about Virgos was telling me about myself.
The most amazing contribution to my awakening came from a woman living upstairs in my neighbor’s home. Shortly after I moved in, I discovered that she had just finished taking astrology classes; she handed me her books to read. She also did my chart and patiently explained all she saw there. Here was a woman who lived the life of a free spirit who did
