by Diane Burke
But I also told him that I would not allow my children to grow up in an atmosphere of alcohol and drugs. That he had to get his act together or we were done. I’d divorce him and I’d do it on my own.
I gave him the choice. Do you want to be a father to your child? Or do you want to continue to spend your life in alcoholic stupors?
He chose us.
I was surprised and happy. We would find a way to make it work. We’d become a family. Family is all I ever wanted.
The first order of business was getting him off the methadone maintenance program and into a rehab center. That wasn’t an easy task. He decided to go cold turkey and kick methadone. He shouldn’t have. He was horribly sick for days. I placed blankets on top of him as his body trembled with chills. I watched him twist into a fetal position with stomach cramps. I listened to him groan in pain. I moved aside as he ran to the bathroom, barely able to control the contents of his stomach in either direction.
It took a good week, but he did it.
I was so proud of him and so hopeful for the future.
We got him into a rehab in Princeton. It was on the grounds of a mental hospital and allowed no visitors. Unfortunately, his placement in the rehab also resulted in me being homeless. Literally. I had nowhere to go. We’d moved out of that dive of an apartment months ago. We had been staying in a room over a bar. With Danny gone, so was the room and the money. I now had no roof over my head. No friends or family I could ask for help. Those bridges were burned. I had one apple to my name and some loose change.
I ate my apple and tried to figure out what to do next. I was in downtown Trenton, walking the streets. My husband was going to be away for a couple of months. I was five months pregnant and I knew I couldn’t remain on the streets.
I’d seen a billboard advertising a company called BirthRight, which was a non-profit organization that offered alternative solutions to pregnant mothers other than abortion—even married ones. When I called and explained my situation, I was given help immediately.
I was placed with a groundskeeper, Hank, his wife, Dee, and their seven children. Hank took care of a huge piece of property owned by the Catholic Church. The estate house on the property was a retirement home for nuns. As part of his salary, his family lived in the chauffeur’s cottage. As the years passed and more and more children came along, the garages had been converted into bedrooms and adjoined the cottage. In return for my room and board, I did chores and helped in the main kitchen two weekends a month when the church ran Marriage Encounter weekends for couples.
That family changed my life. They were the kindest, most compassionate people I had ever met. I was good friends with all of them but became particularly close to the wife, Dee. She remained my best friend for fifteen years. She died in her forties of ovarian cancer. I miss her to this day. Being the oldest of seven children myself, when I moved in with this large family, it felt like I was living at home. And yet … it was nothing like my home. This mother and father were very hands-on with their children. They showered them with love and affection as well as discipline and direction. They showed genuine interest in what was going on in their lives and who their friends were. Their basketball hoop in the driveway was a frequent haunt by local kids on weekends followed by barbeques and board games shared by friends and family alike.
These children were taught the importance of developing a work ethic. They had daily chores, even the youngest four-year-old. I remember being amazed that the dinner plates were stored in the lower cabinets so the littlest ones would be able to set the table for meals.
They raised chickens, collected eggs, tended a huge garden, canned vegetables and fruit in mason jars for the winter. They started their day with prayers, said prayers at each meal, and ended their days with prayer. The children were respectful and loving and obedient. They were involved in scouts and every one of them took on some form of community service.
I remember one particular Thanksgiving years later, Dee and I and a group of other women worked together cooking a full-course meal for the local migrant workers. The men drove out to the farms and gathered the migrant families together and brought them to our location. All the children, ours and the migrant workers, played together, and I remember watching my three-year-old son, Dan, dancing on the stage with the other kids and having the time of his life.
Living for those few months with this family didn’t change me overnight. It took many, many more years before the Lord finally got attention from me that was long overdue. But those years with that family did start me on my journey and impacted my life in a million different ways. Part of who I am today comes from my experiences with that family, witnessing the love they had for each other and the love they bestowed on others. I saw a family that didn’t just say they believed in God; they showed it in their actions every day of their lives.
Hank and Dee made connections within the community with some of the priests they knew. When Danny was released from rehab, one of the priests had arranged an interview for Danny with a local steel company where he got a decent job. The priest also helped us get an apartment.
The transition to our apartment and married life was bumpy at best. Danny was off drugs but he couldn’t seem to kick the alcohol. I’ll give him credit for trying. He’d go weeks without a drink but inevitably he’d slip again … and again … and again.
I kept doing all the wrong things. I kept nagging, fighting, complaining, threatening, covering up for him, bailing him out—enabling him—which resulted in the very opposite of what I wanted to achieve.
There was one particular incident from those early days that has stuck in my memory and just won’t go away. When I was eight-and-a-half months pregnant with my son, Dan, I got a call from the police that my husband and a semi-truck driver got into a road rage incident on the highway. They got out of their vehicles and had a physical confrontation. The truck driver smashed a crow bar into Danny’s head. Both men were currently at the police station.
When I arrived at the police station, I found that both men had apologized, refused to press charges against each other, and left. So I drove home expecting to find Danny there. Not only was he not there, but he and the truck driver had gone out drinking together. The next telephone call came in the wee hours of the night when the hospital called and told me that Danny had been admitted with a concussion—after the bars closed, of course.
The day Danny was released from the hospital, I was admitted. My blood pressure was soaring and the doctor’s feared toxemia. A couple days later, they induced labor. I tried calling Danny several times to let him know I would be delivering that day but couldn’t reach him. My only other idea was to call my sister-in-law, Marie, to see if she could somehow get in touch with him. She took over the calls for me. She finally reached him. He had gone out drinking the night before and was in such a deep sleep, he never heard the phone. She got him to the hospital.
But not in time.
For the second time in my life, I went through labor and delivery alone.
Even though this time I was awake through the whole process and had had a natural childbirth without drugs, I wasn’t allowed to see or hold my baby. He was born blue and instantly whisked away to the neonatal care unit.
It was hours before they would let me out of bed to go down to the nursery. They told me that I still couldn’t hold him but that I could see him through the glass. They placed my wheelchair as close to the glass as they could and I saw my son for the first time.
He had jet black hair and narrowed eyes that gave him an almost Asian appearance. He was beautiful and perfect—and this child didn’t look like me or any of my family members at all. He was 100 percent his father’s son. He was lying in an incubator with lights shining on him and he was the largest baby in the nursery!
All the other infants in the NICU were so tiny. Two, three, four pounds. Dan weighed in at nine pounds, two ounces. Compared to the other babies, he was huge. The nurse and I chuckled at his size. She
told me I couldn’t come in or hold him yet but she didn’t think it would be much longer.
It took another twenty-four hours before they determined there was nothing seriously wrong with him and the blueness had simply been because he was cold. They took him out of the NIC unit and brought him to me.
I was overcome with joy. He was almost the size and feel of a two- or three-month-old. I didn’t even have to stabilize his neck because his muscles were strong enough that he was already trying to raise it and look at me. He was alert and attentive and held his head still when I spoke to him, like he was really trying to listen to every word.
I basked in the joy all new mothers feel. I counted his fingers and toes. I kissed his head and his hands and his feet. I cradled him in my arms and continued to be amazed at how much hair he had and how thick and dark it was.
Danny had seen his son through the glass windows but had not yet had the opportunity to hold him. He hadn’t arrived yet that day and, for this short period of time, it was just my baby and me. I will never forget those precious moments. The feelings were almost overwhelming. I had gone through so much to keep him and now he was here in my arms where prior to this moment he had only been in my heart.
I was happy beyond belief and so deeply in love with this pudgy little boy, who looked nothing like me but was still mine. My smile was so wide, my face hurt.
But there was no way I could hold this child and not remember my other son. My tiny little guy with wispy light hair. The baby who looked just like me and my family. My first-born son, who I would never be able to hold in my arms again.
The agony and the ecstasy. Total joy. Total pain. And I felt them both.
When my son, Dan, was born, my best friend, Dee, was one of the first to hold him. Her children stood up as godparents for my siblings who couldn’t be there. My family didn’t see Dan until he was about two months old—when I left Danny for the second time.
Danny always managed to hold a job despite his alcoholism. But there were many payday weekends when he’d disappear on a Friday and not show up until Sunday night with empty pockets. Somehow, we always managed to scrape together enough money to pay the rent so we’d have a roof over our heads. Everyone and everything else had to stand in line and sometimes the line got pretty long.
Of course, his frequent weekend jaunts led to brutal verbal arguments. Danny would straighten out for a few weeks. But eventually, he’d slip and I’d live through another weekend of not knowing where he was, who he was with, or even if he would return.
Again, I contacted my parents. Again, my parents allowed me to move back home.
This time was different. This time my mother had converted a bedroom to a bedroom/nursery for me, complete with my twin bed, a baby crib, and a rocking chair. She was kind to me and seemed to accept the situation for what it was.
Danny sent child support regularly. I took every babysitting job I could get my hands on to supplement the money I was giving my parents for our support. I even started house sitting/babysitting for parents who wanted a weekend or even a week away. As long as I could bring my child with me, it worked and worked well.
I was happy. My parents seemed accepting. My siblings, mere children themselves, played with Dan and treated him as if he was just another one of the clan.
Of course, there were nights when I’d glance over at my son asleep in his crib and I’d wonder about the child I gave away. My heart would ache a deep, awful hurt that never completely went away. I couldn’t help but wonder who was holding my baby in their arms? Who was watching him sleep in his crib?
I’d push those feelings down into that dark dungeon inside me. I had to in order to survive, to be any kind of a loving mother for this little one. I prayed that God was watching over my lost baby, the baby my arms still ached to hold. I said prayers of thanksgiving for this little dark-haired infant asleep beside me. And I went on with my life.
The deal I made with my husband at the beginning of the summer was that he had to stop drinking permanently. He had to go to AA. He had to send weekly support checks. And if he did, if he could stay sober, attend meetings, and keep up with his financial obligations, then I would return. I gave him four months to do it.
I never believed he would be able to meet those demands. I felt comfortable planning a future with my family and contemplating a divorce from my husband. It was sad, but I almost wished he wouldn’t meet the demands. I didn’t love him. He didn’t love me. I didn’t want to go back. I just wanted to be with my family and raise my son.
But Danny called every Saturday. He sent a check weekly. He told both me and my parents he was working hard to turn his life around, attending meetings, saving for the down payment on a doublewide mobile home.
At the end of the four month separation, he asked the inevitable. He asked me to come home.
My mother and I sat at the kitchen table and talked about it. I told her that I didn’t love the man and that I didn’t want to go back. I told her I wanted to stay in Michigan and that I’d do anything she’d ask of me if she would help me stay.
“No, Diane, you can’t.” Her tone wasn’t angry or mean. Truthfully, she looked sad. “You made your choice when you married this man. He’s your child’s father. He’s done everything you asked him to do. You made a deal with him and he kept his end of the bargain. Now you have to do the same.”
“I don’t want to go back, Mom. Please don’t make me.”
“Your son deserves a home with two parents who love him. I know Danny has had problems in the past but I’ve talked to him many times over the summer. I believe he truly loves his son. I also believe he is working very hard to get things right. You owe him a second chance, Diane. You have to go back.”
We rented a small moving van and a couple of my brothers drove me all the way back from Michigan to Pennsylvania. I didn’t say much during the trip. My mother was right. I had to grow up and face responsibility for the choices I had made. I was a married woman with a child and I didn’t belong in my mother’s upstairs bedroom. I had had a wonderful summer surrounded by family and filled with love. But it was time now to grow up and leave.
When we arrived at the apartment, Danny was thrilled to see us. He immediately took the baby from my arms. “I can’t believe how much he looks like me.” He kissed him and held him and talked to him.
Maybe it was going to be okay.
It didn’t take long to unpack the van. I didn’t have many things. Then my brothers hugged me and left for home.
They hadn’t been gone more than a couple of hours when Danny hit me with the news. He hadn’t been going to meetings. He’d lied. He’d been drinking … a lot. He hadn’t paid the rent for a couple of months and we were going to be evicted.
Welcome home.
I didn’t call and tell my parents. When I came back this time, I finally realized that my life was my life, filled with obligations and responsibilities, and I couldn’t keep running home to my parents. Not anymore.
I’d made a series of bad choices. Those choices had consequences. I’d have to find a way to deal with those consequences.
And I did.
It took a while. We borrowed money from Hank and Dee to pay the back rent. Danny found a second job and worked hard to pay them back every cent.
He started attending AA meetings and I knew he wasn’t lying to me this time because I drove him to them. We moved to another apartment and began to save money for a doublewide mobile home in a family park.
Life became routine, stable, and for the very first time, I actually had hope that everything was going to be all right.
Everything changed the Christmas before my third child was born. I was six months pregnant. It was Christmas Eve, a Friday night, and Danny didn’t come home.
I knew there would have probably been a Christmas party after work and I’d hoped that he’d skip it. He didn’t.
I was at my wit’s end. He couldn’t be doing this to us on Christmas, could he?
I was angry and hurt and fed up. I’d promised myself that I would never let my children see their father drunk. So far, I’d kept that promise, but Dan was almost three and the child I carried was only a few months away. I wouldn’t be able to hide their father’s drinking from them much longer.
It was after midnight, Christmas Day for all intents and purposes, when the police called. Danny was at the station. He’d been arrested for a DUI. He had gone before the night judge, had been put on probation with mandatory AA attendance, and was released on his own recognizance. The police needed me to come to the station and drive him home.
Merry Christmas.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but that incident had truly been the best Christmas gift I ever received. The probation officer kept a close watch on Danny, made sure he made his meetings, made sure he kept sober and kept his job. The courts did something that a nagging, constantly complaining wife had been unable to do—they put him on a path that kept him clean and sober for almost seven years.
Those seven years were good years.
We moved from the apartment to a doublewide mobile and then two years later we moved into a large, three-bedroom townhouse in a really nice neighborhood.
We gave our children the life I had always dreamed for them. Our home backed up to Five Mile Woods, a government-owned property. My two boys went on many a hike and had adventures with their friends in those woods. We had an above-ground pool in our backyard, making our home a favorite haunt for the neighbors and their children on hot summer afternoons.
We threw parties and hosted neighborhood barbeques. We had season tickets to Great Adventure amusement park and went there frequently, not only to ride the rides, but to see the shows. We went to the beach in the summer. We even took a neighborhood family white-water rafting trip down the Lehigh River.
We lived on a cul-de-sac. Because it was a new neighborhood, most of us moved in around the same time. We were a group of young couples enjoying the excitement of owning our first homes. We had young children very close in age and the children made fast friends and grew up together.