I mouthed at my own reflection, with smiling lips, in what I must say was a very fine, audacious red. “Hi, Nuala! Welcome back, girl!”
No matter what I was to face in the future, I was going with Liz Taylor: “Put on some lipstick, pour myself a drink and pull myself together!”
And just before I opened the door, I couldn’t resist turning. “And see that auld dame, that other Nuala. No way is she ever coming back!”
15
The Last Straw
No, that trachled woman was never coming back, but if I had thought I’d fixed everything with a new wardrobe and a fresh outlook, I would have been naïve, and dangerously wrong. No divorce comes easily, for any of the parties involved. Perhaps it’s a bit like crying at a funeral, when you don’t only shed tears for the one just gone, you find yourself remembering every funeral, everyone you’ve ever lost. So in the ending of a marriage, there are tears for things long past and ripples from other times. Things are exposed, even when you suppose them hidden or lost. Meanwhile, life doesn’t stop because a marriage happens to be finishing.
Early in 2011, my worries were mounting about Dale: he was again in limbo and without supply work. When he needed it most, real hope came as a new private nursery opened with eleven vacancies for HNC childcare workers. With the help of his DEA and The Trust Employability Services he applied, despite the intensity of the recruitment process. His CV earned him a place from sixty applications for around twenty places overall. Dale attended the nursery’s open day, as usual suited and booted – well, he needed the boots, as we were knee-deep in snow once again.
After the event, his DEA phoned the Trust staff to get feedback on his performance. He’d made a real impression on the nursery managers. The Trust staff gave him a mock interview, and his four years of employability training with Prospects had paid off. His interview skills were excellent. This time, Dale was relieved to hear, he was to get advance notice of the panel’s questions. As the interview was only a couple of days away, I phoned his DEA, anxious that the questions hadn’t yet arrived. My heart sank when she told me, “They are generic questions. It wouldn’t help to have them ahead of the day.”
My blood started boiling. If the questions wouldn’t help, then why not supply them anyway? It was, after all, my son’s right. Infuriatingly, there was no time to challenge the situation, and he had no choice but to attend, unprepared. Yet when he came home, he was relaxed. It had gone every bit as well as his mock one. However, his next words floored me. “Mum, one of the panel told me I had done well to get to this stage.”
The gravity of that was lost on him, but not on me. I already knew what the outcome was: “We regret to inform you on this occasion you have been unsuccessful.”
Again, no reason.
Outraged, and with Dale’s permission, I phoned his DEA. She had obtained feedback from the nursery managers. What I was to learn horrified me. There was just one question that confused Dale to the extent that he struggled to answer, and no wonder! If he was left alone with the children and two kids had a fight, what would he do? Dale’s answer was ambiguous and confusing, because, to him, a fight would be what he’d expect to see in a boxing ring. Secondly, he had understood the word “alone” quite literally, that is, that there would be no other staff available in the building to help him. Following on from this, the nursery wanted “More detailed information on Dale’s capacity to do the job . . . [and that] the children were safe in Dale’s hands because of the nature of the job.” Discovering this was devastating because many a time he would tell me that the children’s safety was his priority at all times, and he would do whatever it would take to keep them safe.
Such was the gravity of the nursery managers’ concerns that they had sought advice from Isobel at Gibshill on his performance in a workplace. Not surprisingly, she felt able to reassure them. She had, after all, given him a reference. The quick-witted DEA saw an opportunity to salvage something. She asked the nursery managers if they would consider a work placement for Dale affording them the opportunity to see for themselves how he worked.
This would entail him doing the job for four weeks while staying on JSA. His placement would be supported and monitored by the DEA or by another agency. If it went well, the position would be made permanent. As the nursery hadn’t opened, this couldn’t happen immediately, but certainly the DEA would be in contact and something could be arranged. This gave us all a little faith, but we still had huge concerns about him working in an environment with such a poor understanding of autism.
However, there was one more point which needed to be addressed. At the end of his rejection letter, the Employability Services invited him to utilise their expertise, including CV, application and interview workshops, to enhance his employability. This was deeply distressing for Dale, and added unnecessary insult to the already painful injury. Prospects had, after all, spent four years training him in all aspects of employability. Billy Docherty contacted the Trust, recognising that maintaining Dale’s increasingly fragile self-esteem was of paramount importance. Sadly, that chance for him to try a work placement disappeared. Strangely, it didn’t even reappear when a second nursery opened within easy commuting distance from home.
Somehow, he carried on. Barnardo’s provided him with training in Makaton sign language, and despite all the obstacles, all the setbacks, he still beefed up that CV, still grasped the belief that one day, he was going to get that job. But when?
In February a familiar voice called on the phone. Moorfoot School wanted him to cover a full-time nursery position! The receiver was hardly replaced but Dale was on his way there! It was quite a challenge. The preschool provision was fully integrated into the Primary setting. It had one class of thirty in the morning and another of the same number after lunch. The pressure was on. His life revolved around work, and not just in work. At home, he was planning play activities and taking children’s profiles home to complete. He was often stressed and exhausted. Despite this, I was hearing great things on the grapevine. The staff were delighted to have him on board. A young teacher made a point of telling him how impressed he was by his performance. He taught Amy and had read my book, so he was under no illusions about the extent of my son’s achievement. This meant a lot to Dale. Even other parents I knew at the school who were looking out for my son witnessed him in action and reported back to me. It was all good.
There was only one problem in need of urgent attention. We had another, smaller mole on the premises!
“Hello, Dale! Dale! What are you having for dinner today?”
Amy was having a ball. Her brother wasn’t. “Mum, we need to call an emergency family meeting to explain to Amy that when she sees me at school she has to call me Mr Gardner. She’s even got her friends calling me Dale!”
So Amy learned to call her brother Mr Gardner, and would even send him formally addressed emails, knowing she had got the last word. Eventually, Dale ignored her and the fun, at last, wore off.
With Dale settled at Moorfoot, I felt a lot stronger, so I made That Appointment. The one with the solicitor. Jill Carrick came highly recommended. Emotionally, I still had an age to go, but my confidence was rising daily, and thankfully, even the tremor had gone. My decision was made, and the relief I felt at that office door was palpable. Being my son’s mother, I arrived there early! If I had any nerves, they soon dissipated. Jill was about my own age, and her greeting was both professional and warm. I sat down, and she opened the meeting. “How are you feeling about things? Is this a separation, or have you decided to divorce your husband?”
I replied with conviction. “Thank you, I am certain that I want a divorce. I wish I had had the courage to do this years ago.”
“Why is that?”
Why was that? Soothed by her kindness, the words tumbled out. Thoughts and explanations, reasons I hadn’t even really formulated before. In that stranger’s office, I bared my soul until my voice cracked. The nerves crept back.
“It’s all right. Ta
ke your time.”
I did take my time. I took all my time to explain things twenty-five years and more in the making. I described how I had kept going for the children’s sakes, especially given their autism. How were they to cope with a divorce? My terror in the face of it all.
“So, what’s changed?”
“Both of them have improved so much. I know they will be able to cope now.”
Jill had seen so many mothers who had struggled on in marriages. The autism in mine added an extra ingredient to a mix we both knew to be already unpalatable.
“It must have been so hard.”
“Oh, yes.”
Jill gave me the time and space to say more than I had ever intended to say in a legal appointment. It was more than professional courtesy, and it enabled me to unravel a great many knotted threads for the very first time. I will always be grateful to her. When at last she did interject, it was to let me know she empathised, and that she was there to help me and my family move on. She explained that the best way forward was to sell our home. It was impossible for me to keep it. It was too big, with too many bad memories. Anyway, I needed a fresh start. I wanted to keep things amicable for Dale’s well-being and especially for Amy’s; she was so young.
When I left Jill’s office, it was a beautiful day. The sun was high in a cornflower sky and there was a brisk wind. I returned to the car, ready to head for the shore and unleash the waiting boys on their much-needed walk. Doubtless, they’d chance a bracing swim in the Clyde. I needed the walk too. The swim I could forgo. I felt great. I’d turned the corner, taken the first legal step. I was on my way . . . then I put my key in the ignition. What had I said? What had I done? Why was I spilling out my past . . . to someone I’d never even met before?
Once that distant past is unblocked there’s just no damming up the torrent. Old times, good times, bad times, times with Jamie, and times before Jamie. I gripped the wheel, sobbed and sobbed, still parked – in full view – in that busy street. I wept as if I’d never stop. I sunk my face in the wheel. Sometimes I think I’d have stayed in that car; I’d be there yet. Oh, I’d have filled it with tears and stayed there, stuck, a permanent fixture in the gutter. But I was saved from that by twin cries cutting through my own.
The boys! I’d completely forgotten them. I pulled myself together and took my red-eyed, puffy-faced self and two very desperate dogs to the beach. I reckon I was as needy of the time and space as they were.
There were harrowing weeks to follow. More weight fell off. There was loss, there was grief, regret about what I might be losing, regret about what I had lost, even before my marriage. I began to wonder if I should have married in the first place. Or at any rate, should I have married him? Had Jamie ever been The One? Was I ever right for him? So many fears, so many doubts. I managed to dissect my life and fillet out any shred of my own self-worth. I was a complete failure. A failed wife, a failed woman!
I salvaged one thing in all the darkness: I was a good mother.
Eventually, one almost sunny day, I managed to drag myself back into town. There it was, in that boutique window: the dress of dresses! Even in my downed state, I swear, that dress was winking at me! Come on in. Try me on! I obeyed!
The shop was quiet and the assistant greeted me immediately. It was my old friend Susan, whom I hadn’t seen in years! We went back ages, through the challenging times with Dale. As ever, she looked great – being a former beautician – and she complimented me on my look. “Back to your old self,” as she put it. Once I’d started explaining, I told her everything. Nuala, the disaster with men.
“Nuala, your emotions are all over the place. You’re grieving. You’ve been living in an autistic bubble for twenty-three years and you deserve to be happy now! You are not a failure. You’ve just not met the right one, and it’s not too late!”
I so needed to hear that.
That evening, as I reflected on her words, I realised something huge. Autism and disability puts a huge strain on a family. Marriages crack up under the strain all the time. The really weird thing was that, for us, autism was the glue that held our marriage together. Our children were the best things to ever happen to our relationship. That strongest love of all kept us together as a couple, way beyond our own partnership. I don’t think Jamie would dispute that either.
I dug out old files, letters, cards and photo albums from the bottom of the wardrobe. I looked back into the dark stuff, looked at things I’d buried for years, and I sat on my bed and wept. Suddenly, I remembered Amy, downstairs on her own. I dried my eyes quickly and returned the folder to its grave, where it belonged. She was playing contentedly with her iPod, so I sat across from her, pretending to watch TV.
“Nuala! Is your eyes all right? What’s wrong with your eyes? I’m worried about your eyes.”
“Amy, come over to me. I want a big hug. That will help my eyes get better and help me.”
As I hugged her I couldn’t help but acknowledge, through my heartbreak, that I was the luckiest woman alive, having such wonderful children. It is no mean feat for a child with autism to be able to interpret the signs of distress, or indeed any emotion, skills we neuro-typicals take for granted. Amy had starred again, or so I thought until a few weeks later when she completely astounded me once again by asking, “Nuala, is Madaleine still missing?”
Now this may seem like simply another question, but for Amy to display this particular emotion – empathy – that was astounding. She had not been prompted by any news show and had no other reason to ask this, but simply from her own observations she thought to say it. This demonstrated her awareness of other events and a true ability to empathise, an emotion that is very difficult for people with autism to display. I was completely blown away.
Hearing this, and having finished processing my emotional tidal wave, I sat her down and explained that, sadly, the little girl she had asked about was still missing. Amy nodded in understanding.
Back to a few weeks before, presented with a big hug from my daughter, I also thought of her brother. How would he cope? I was to find out a week later.
I was passing Dale’s bedroom when he called out, “Mum, are you all right? I’m worried about you. Are you upset about divorcing Dad?”
I was astounded by his remark, because I thought I was just fine, outwardly at least. I went into his room.
“Mum, I’m really worried about your health. The weight you have lost has happened too quickly. Please, Mum, tell me what’s wrong. Have you got cancer?”
Shocked, I said, “Dale. Oh no! It’s not anything like that. I will explain but you have to promise me you will keep what I tell you private, just between us.”
“Mum, I understand. You can trust me. Remember, I have to keep my work with the children confidential.”
I went to my wardrobe and exhumed my bombshell – a couple of wedding pictures of myself, not with Jamie but with Alex, who had been my first husband. My first marriage. My first divorce. Before I let Dale see them, I had to explain, had to share how much of a failure I felt. I had to share my past.
“Jesus Christ, Mum! You were married. Alex was your husband?”
I let him see two pictures. The moment he saw them, he became subdued, but relieved. Finally, he understood what was really going on with me. His next words floored me. “Mum, these pictures are really beautiful. You made a nice couple.”
“Dale, my emotions have been in turmoil. It’s been twenty-five years. It wasn’t meant to be, life is like that, but thank you for understanding. That means so much to me.”
Now I was composed. I asked if he wouldn’t mind telling me how he felt about the future, about living with his sister and me.
He had his own bombshell. “Mum, I’m sorry, but I want to live with my dad.”
I felt as if he had stabbed me in the heart. Then I did what I have always done when conversing with anyone with autism. I paused for six seconds to process what I had heard. Then I replied. “Dale, that’s absolutely, one hundred per
cent fine. I respect and understand your decision.”
He went on to explain. “Mum, I love you very much, and I know all you have done for me to get me the life I have now, but you need to let me go. I’m twenty-two, an adult. Let me make my own mistakes in life and be the independent person you made me.”
Yes, I felt sad, but I couldn’t have felt more proud. Dale was absolutely right. I had given up so much in my own life, in the hope that one day I would hear these very words. Dale’s day had come. With the decision made there was one important issue. I had no option but to split up the boys. I explained to him that Henry would obviously be with him, but for me, and especially Amy’s sake, we needed Thomas every bit as much. I couldn’t imagine living without a golden retriever in my life, even if it was Thomas! I’d never cope!
Before I left his room, I said, “Dale, I’m going to let you go with all my love, and remember I will always be there for you. If you need me, for anything, promise me you will come to me.”
“Thanks, Mum. I know that.”
He stood up and gave me a big, manly hug.
“Mum, you will get through all this, but it will take time. I will help you any time as well.”
I left him to continue watching his DVD, and shut his bedroom door. With a heavy heart and a sense of relief, I had said a loving goodbye to my wee Dale and Henry that night.
There wasn’t much sleep to come when I did find my pillow. That’s not strictly true. I never did find my own pillow that night. Wreck of a woman that I was – after a decade-long puzzle to solve the Bed-a-thon, after only a few weeks of successful nights – yes, this wreck of a woman crawled right in beside her daughter, in her daughter’s own bed! Hands up, I admit it: the perfect lesson in what not to do. I crawled in, trying to lie still. My mind wasn’t managing. It was churning.
There was so much loss. My marriage, my nursing career, and now this. Sure, there was the canine education programme, but none of that was secure, it was only in its infancy. In its infancy? That was a joke. It still felt unborn, with no money, no dogs – no nothing to advance my ideas! All the avenues I’d gone down – the emails, the letters, the phone calls – all very interesting, but funding? No. Nothing. All my work and shared thoughts offered to other dog charities in the UK was for nothing. I was at my lowest ebb. What else was there left for me to fail at? Hell, by undoing my good work on the Bed-a-thon this very night, I was failing at the one thing I did do well. Was I really now failing as a mum too? Was it possible? While I was sure I was doing the right thing in leaving my marriage, the future began to terrify me just as much as my unhappy past had. Where was I going?
All Because of Henry Page 19