by Ira Wagler
The date approached, her new wedding date, I mean. And as it got close, I had to get out of the house. That Friday, the day before, I boarded my truck and headed west to Daviess, the land of my ancestors. My fatherland. There was a little gathering going on that I figured to attend. Some old historic Amish house in Daviess was going to be torn down soon. And that Saturday, the place was open to all who wanted to walk through it one last time. The house had been in my blood lineage, on my mother’s side, I think. Anyway, I just figured I should hit the road and drive. Maybe I could get my head cleared.
It was a real good trip, more than I could ever have hoped for. I connected with the Freundschaft that Saturday and hung out with friends and relatives. I thought of the wedding now and then but only fleetingly. Ellen is getting married this afternoon. Overall, the trip went better than I had dared to hope it would. And the next morning, early, I headed back east toward home.
I got back late that afternoon. And I walked into my home. And it was one of the strangest things I had ever felt. The ghosts were gone. There was no vestige, no hint of their presence. Whatever had existed between Ellen and me, that time was past now. It was so clear. Now she belonged to another man. Coming from where I came from, this was a very strange place to be. But there I was. And since that day, the ghosts of our pasts, Ellen’s and mine, have never returned.
We communicate now in a way I never figured we would. We can, anyway. We don’t that much. But we can and do. A few years after Mom passed away, Ellen’s father, Adin, died. We communicated both times. She contacted me before Mom’s funeral. And she told me, “Back when we separated, you told me you didn’t want to go alone to your mother’s funeral. I promised then that I would come and go with you. Do you need me to?” I was touched that she remembered. I thanked her and declined the offer.
And when Adin passed, I called her. And we simply spoke for a few minutes. “I remember how you tried hard, so hard, to reach your dad,” I said. “And he never would let you. He always rejected you. I never forgot how that was.” And we grieved for a few minutes, at the tragedy of all we had seen together. And we cried a little bit together, too.
In time, then, Ellen and I looked after each other and cared for each other about as much as two people coming from where we came from could have. We emailed briefly now and then about this and that. And I’ve always said, pretty much, I don’t mind talking to Ellen and even seeing her here and there. I would be OK if I randomly ran into her and her husband, Tim. I’d be good with that as long as I wasn’t expecting it. But then I always poured a little bit of concrete. I will not deliberately go to a place where I know they both will be. A day like that is a day that will never come.
The summer of 2016. Ellen’s brother Paul has a large party every summer in July. It happens out on his large back deck every year. The formal tables are set up. He cooks up a great feast. And all the guests dress up in white. That year, I looked at the invitation. All other years, I was all ambivalent in my response. Maybe I’ll make it. Paul and I both knew I had no intention of showing up. That’s how it always was before. But not this time.
That year, the invite came in the spring, like it always does. And this time, I looked at it in a way I never had before. Yes. I will do this. An outdoor party. I can wear my white pants, a white shirt, and my seersucker jacket. And my little white hat. I think that would work out just fine. I will go to places like Paul’s White Party. That’s what I thought to myself. Step out. Live a little. And I told Paul, “I’m coming this year, for the first time ever. Looking forward to it.”
I think he was a little surprised. But he didn’t let on. “Great,” he said. And that’s how we left it early on. But then, a few weeks later, he had something more to tell me.
I don’t remember if he called me or just sent me a text message. It’s not that important, either way. But somehow, he told me, “Ellen wants to come for the White Party this year. She and Tim are going to be here. Are you OK with that?”
And right there it was. The day I had told myself would never come. I would not walk deliberately into a place where I knew my ex-wife and her husband would be. It wasn’t something I got showed how to do, growing up. It was always the outside English people who got caught up in traps like that. And I remember hearing of such a thing here and there, and wondering how it could be. How can any former husband and wife be at the same place in peace, especially when a new spouse is right there, too? I’ve always wondered. And I’ve always thought, That’s for those people to figure out. It’s not me.
But now it was me.
I wrote back and told Paul that I planned to be there. And that’s how we left it. The date slowly drifted in and came at us.
The party was in late July. And as the day approached, I got to thinking it might be real hot that evening, too hot for a suit coat. And then the week arrived. And was it ever hot all week. The sun scorched down every day, and the hottest temps of the week were forecast for Saturday afternoon. And then the day arrived.
It felt so strange, walking up to a new door like that. I felt no stress at all, and no flashbacks came at me all week. The actual morning dawned, and the day crept by. And by four I was dressed and ready. White pants, seersucker shirt, white hat. And I cruised up north on the forty-five minute drive to Paul’s big mansion.
I pulled in right at five and parked. I was a good bit early. I had planned it that way. I couldn’t stay late, because of some other things going on. So I figured I’d get there early and get some visiting done. I walked into the garage, where Paul greeted me. “I’m early,” I said.
“That’s totally all right,” he said. I turned toward the house. And she came walking through the foyer and out into the garage. She was smiling.
It was Ellen. The woman I had married almost precisely sixteen years before that moment. It had been a good number of years since it had all blown up, and we had both aged a bit. I’d aged the most, of course. I was old and gray haired now. Gray bearded, too. But she was still as beautiful as ever. Her smile was exactly as I remembered it. She greeted me, and her voice was the same, too. I smiled and spoke back. We walked to each other, and we hugged each other hard.
And it seemed like it all washed away from both of us in that moment. The horror and the hurt and all the pain and darkness of long ago. I swore back when it happened that the pain of it would sear me inside forever. And in a sense, I guess it’s always there somehow. It bubbles up now and then in the sadness of all the memories and all that was lost. But you can reach a place where you look back and realize you have grown beyond any point you ever thought you could have. And you can walk calmly through a new door as it opens, on a day you swore would never come.
It all seems so strange, but that’s how it is. I can tell you that from where I’ve been.
We chatted for a minute, then walked into the house. In the kitchen, people were bustling about, getting the large feast ready. All of them smiled and welcomed me. Ellen and I sat at the table then. I kept glancing around. “Oh,” she said. “Tim is upstairs, changing. He’ll be down in a few minutes.” And we just chatted along and caught up until I saw the man approaching from across the room. We are Facebook friends, so I recognized him. Tim. Ellen’s husband.
I stood and held out my hand. He gripped it hard. We looked each other in the eye and smiled. “I’m happy to finally meet you,” I said.
“Same here,” he said. And he sat with us, and the three of us just talked about a lot of things. And when Ellen wandered away for a few minutes, Tim told me almost shyly that he’d read my book, and he liked to read my blog. I thanked him for taking the time. “I’m always honored,” I said.
And soon the other guests began trickling in. I walked about, greeting the people I knew and introducing myself to those I didn’t. When Ellen came around, I introduced her, too. “This is my ex-wife, Ellen.” Some people looked startled, but mostly everyone seemed very OK with everything.
The evening came at us then. As we were ge
tting seated, Ellen asked me, “Would you like to sit with us?” I hadn’t really thought about it, but I accepted. “Yes, I’d like that very much.” And we sat and ate together, the three of us. Me and Ellen and Tim.
Paul’s White Party is a big, big deal. He and his people had prepared an enormous and delectable feast. Five or six courses, I can’t remember. Salad, then soup. Then the main dishes, which included grilled salmon, lamb chops, and steak. The food was beyond delicious, the wine robustly red. And sitting right there, I sinned grievously with my feasting.
The hours wore on, and we were comfortable and relaxed. Right at eight, I told Ellen, “I need to leave now.” And I told her the reasons why. She understood, and Tim did, too. I stood and he reached over, and we gripped hands again. I wished him well. And then Ellen asked, “Can I walk you to your truck?”
“You may,” I said. I thanked Paul on the way out and waved good-bye to my other friends. I went inside to grab my keys, and Ellen met me in the garage. We walked over to the open door. And we stood there and looked at each other.
And we wished each other well. “I had a lovely time,” I told her. “I enjoyed meeting Tim. He’s a good man. I’m sure you guys have to work through things, like every couple does. But I wish you every blessing.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I had a lovely time, too.”
We were done. There wasn’t a whole lot more to say. We faced each other, and then we hugged.
“Good-bye,” I said.
“Good-bye,” she answered.
And then I turned and walked out to my truck.
Whiskey and Me
It was a strange time in a lot of ways, the summer of 2017. A major stressor was draining a lot of energy from my life. The whiskey. It all hinged back to the whiskey. I had reached a place where a decision had to be made, where something different had to be done. Well. I was reaching that place, late that summer. I’m on the wrong road, here. I’m not young, anymore. Looking back, a few things are clear in retrospect. I was sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. I was overweight, bloated like a fatted hog. My face was swollen, my eyes were puffy. It was a hard and relentless slog, every day. Somehow, somewhere back there, I had chosen to embrace the one nemesis that can never be fully and finally slain. There had to be a better way.
It’s always a choice. Everything you do is. And there is only one person in all creation who is responsible for your choices. You. Always. Talk to me about addiction all you want, and how tough that life is. It still boils down to how you choose to deal with the aftermath of your previous choices. And no, that’s not harsh. It’s just reality. I know what it is to be addicted. I know how hard it is. Trust me. I know, way better than I want to.
And I was hedging around, looking at the situation from every angle. Near as I could, anyway. Kind of poking at it, to see if any sleeping monsters would wake up. You calculate the cost, you make a choice. And this was a new door. That’s what it was. A new door to a new road. And I could turn from it or walk through. It takes a while, to get to what you know is the right choice when you’re standing in a place like that. At least, it does for me.
Sometimes you hear people say, when mentioning someone who passed on, “He drank himself to death.” And it is understood exactly what is meant by that statement. It’s something like this: Oh. That kind of man. Yeah, he sure didn’t have much self-control. He wasted his life away. He sure loved the bottle. He drank all that hard liquor. What a sinner. We can only hope he repented at the last second and maybe just squeaked through the door into heaven. Probably not, but we won’t know for sure until we get there. If he made it, he’s probably stuck in a little room way down in the basement somewhere. We’ll have to go looking for him.
That’s what people think to themselves and mutter to each other. Not me. I don’t go there. I understand completely when I hear that someone drank himself to death. I understand the pain and loss and bitter sorrow that such a person could not face. I know the monsters that lurk in the recesses of the mind and in the dark corners of the heart. I know, because I deal with my own demons of what was and what might have been. I’ve heard those voices calling in the night. I understand, because I poked my head through that door and looked around a bit. And I gotta say, it’s not a terribly scary place. I wasn’t frightened there, in that room where death is. I understand why people go there. And I understand why people choose to stay there.
It was just so hard to think about giving it all up. I had been close friends with the whiskey for a lot of years. More than twenty, I’d say. It’s in my blood, it’s in my genes, to crave that soothing amber fire. Much of my genetic attraction to alcohol comes from Mom’s side of the family, that I’ve always known. We heard the stories about Uncle Joe Yoder and how hard he drank. And I remember when he died, at about my age. He drank himself to death. That was pretty much the accepted narrative. The Yoder blood was strong in a lot of ways, but it was flawed and weak in others. This I always knew, because it never was a closely guarded secret.
But it wasn’t only the Yoders that the insatiable drive to drink came from. There was a strong pull from the Wagler side, too. Just not out in the open. The Yoders were honest about who they were. They had few pretensions. The Waglers, not so much. We never knew it, growing up, but there was a time when Dad nipped at the bottle, too. Way back in his younger days there in Daviess, he did. His older brother Ezra was always saddled with the burden and the shame of being the wild child, the renegade drinker in the family. Dad told me once that when Ezra came home from the Amish singing late on Sunday nights, he always threw his empty whiskey bottle onto a little ledge above the barn door when he took his horse in. (I can only imagine what kind of terrible rotgut it was that Ezra bought and drank. I’m sure it wasn’t the single-malt scotch I got used to a generation later. I always thought it would be fun to knock back a few with the young Ezra of long ago. He could tell me lots of things I never knew.) There was a big pile of those empty bottles up there on that ledge, Dad told me. And I never thought to ask, What about you? Were some of those bottles yours? He’d tell you if you asked in the right spirit. He’d also sense it in a second if you were asking to try to nail him or trap him. And he wouldn’t tell you, then.
We heard the furtive, whispered stories somewhere along the way. Long after we were adults and had left home, the first such whispers came. At least the first such whispers that I remember. And we poked and prodded and dug around a bit. Were the stories true? Looking back from where I am today, there is little question in my mind that there was a time when Dad was no stranger to the bottle. Way back in his younger years. The thing is, back in those days, I don’t think it was all that big a deal if you drank a little. I think it was more of an accepted thing in the Amish Church, at least the Amish Church in Daviess County, for there to be whiskey in the house. So it wouldn’t have been all that uncommon for a man like Dad to imbibe. He sure would have been predisposed to, if the whiskey sang to him like it sings to me.
Waglers and whiskey. It’s a little startling to recognize that I’m not the first one of my blood to reach this door, to give it up. Because there is also no question that my father quit drinking, cold, long before I was ever born. He always talked against alcohol. Always wrote about how bad it was. Bad for your health and bad for your soul, too. That’s what Dad believed. Maybe he was writing to himself as much as he was writing to his readers. I look at his life and his life’s work, and I get some small grasp of the man’s astonishing drive and strength. What he believed, he proclaimed boldly to his people, as no one had ever done before. He strode forward, confident and forceful and unafraid. What his hand found to do, he did with all his might. Such a man is who my father was.
That’s where I come from, a place like that. None of it is any excuse for how far I went with the whiskey, of course. And I’m not making any. It’s all about choices, whether you drink or don’t. I don’t judge it as a moral issue, even. It’s simply a choice. As it was always a choice for me duri
ng those last twenty-odd years when I hit the bottle hard. A choice I never felt much inclined to change. Sure. There were a few dry spots in there, but those were aberrations. Mostly, I was content to hold it close, to embrace my good friend. To invite the brooding spirits in. I pretty much had to, I believed, after I started writing. I had to keep the bottle close, or the writing wouldn’t come. Way down, I sure used that as an excuse to drink. And it didn’t take much to fool myself into believing it was actually true.
And so it went. Until that summer of 2017. I talked to a few close friends about it. That was the first step looking back. Opening up to one or two friends I trusted enough to confide in. But I still don’t know where the drive came from to go there in my head, to consider seriously what it might take to walk away. Maybe I was getting old and tired. Or maybe the Lord was nudging me along. He moves in mysterious ways, like the hymn says, His wonders to perform. I don’t know why the resolve came to approach that door, let alone walk right up and step through. I just know it did.
It’s always hard, when you’re addicted to anything, to even think about giving it up. Doesn’t matter what it is. Food. Cigarettes. Whiskey. Work. (Oh, and drugs, of course. Still. Real addictions are about so much more than just drugs.) It’s scary and unnerving to force your mind to consider an alternative universe that doesn’t include the thing you treasure so deeply in your heart. That idol you can’t quite let go of. And this wasn’t the first time I quit a habit that seemed impossible to break. I remember a similar place years and years ago. Back in my Amish days. Only it was cigarettes I was trying to shake off, back then. Not whiskey.