The things I loved about Phil were the opposite of the things that I hated about Phil. I loved that he was creative and smart. I loved that he was a romantic and would do things like buying me a gold rose for special things and anniversaries so that in the end I would always have a dozen roses in the house. In the end, he didn’t make it to a full 12 before he died, but he got close.
When we were dating, he would call me instead of texting me. He would write me cards and letters when he felt moved to share feelings. He told me he loved me often and never made me second guess him, which in many ways played into the total breakdown of my romantic love for him when I found out about the cheating after he died. I had never felt romantic love for someone die so quickly and I was shocked at how fast it happened considering that he had been my husband and that we had children together. It began after the call from Scott, but I don’t think it was fully truly dead until I called his mistress several months later and asked what had gone on.
“I knew he was married,” she said. “But, it was what it was and eventually I did cut things off. It began around late 2017.”
We had been married in November of that year and I was already pregnant with our eldest by that point. He was his father in the end. I was floored.
She went on about other things, about the last time they saw each other a couple of nights before he died and swore that all that had happened was actual moving and she may have touched his arm. Was that supposed to make me feel better? She had the audacity to ask about my boys and if they were talking. I would come to find out later that this is something that Phil would openly put down our children about which I found amusing considering that their speech stuff was inherited from his side of the family. His mother’s sister told me in one moment of clarity that her children all had speech issues.
After our eldest got a diagnosis, I began to read and research all that I could about what he had going on and what I could do to help him. Would he ever talk? Would we all need to learn sign language? I was relieved when it was clear that he would talk, that he would most likely overcome this with regular support and therapy. My research also led me to the reality of how my life choices in choosing Phil as their father played a role in the speech issues.
Phil came from a family where alcoholism, addiction and womanizing where things that you talked badly about, but for the most part was largely accepted because everyone either was one or all three. They would run their mouths about it when the person was being an addict, an alcoholic or a womanizer, but it was always accepted in some regard because it was what it was. However, if someone in the family showed something like a learning disability, it was immediately shunned, swept into a dark corner and blame assigned wherever they could but never something that came from them, because their bloodline was so perfect. It was a very weird juxtaposition and one that I never understood. It led Joanne and Kaitlyn to calling our son retarded among many other hurtful things to the point where I told my husband before he died that I was absolutely done with all of them. In many ways, I was thankful when they chose to stay away over us protecting our children instead of enabling a chaotic addict.
However, it was this inability within his family to love and support someone who was developmentally different that I believe led to the kind of life that my husband led. Our eldest carries a diagnosis of childhood apraxia of speech which means that he can think of the words he wants to say but there is a disconnect between his brain and his mouth that deals with motor planning so he can’t always say what he wants to. Apraxia can present often with autism, but our son was tested, and we were told he was one of the super small segments of the population that is not autistic, but is apraxic and that with the proper love, support, and speech therapies that he would most likely over come it and be a fully articulate adult. The good news is, that after years of supporting him, he is now intelligible and people outside of my family can understand him. He will navigate school on his own next year for the first time and at the end of last year even earned student of the month for his grade level because of how far he has come and how much he has recovered academically. I am very excited as his mom to see how he blossoms in the new school year, because I truly feel that this is the year where he levels out and he hits his grade level all around.
It was in my research of childhood apraxia of speech that I discovered some studies that were hinting at a link between having a parent with ADHD and the child developing with apraxia. In the 10 years that I spent with my husband and in the 15 years of experience I have in special education, I could tell you without even taking that man to be screened, that he was the epitome of an undiagnosed adult with ADHD that never had the therapies or supports needed to become a fully functioning adult. A conversation with Joanne in earlier years, confirmed my thoughts when she had mentioned that they had had my husband tested but they found that he only had a touch of ADHD. I knew when she said it how full of it, she truly was, because even in the 1970’s to 1980’s no doctor or child study member was going to tell you that your child had a touch of anything—your child either has a diagnosis or they don’t. And I am sure that my husband did have one and it was ignored for much of his life because that is just something that could not possibly exist in their family.
As creative as he was, he was also a mess. He was scattered in his thoughts, he always had little piles and little things scattered around the house, often stepping over his things instead of acknowledging them. He always had to be moving or entertained by something, or he couldn’t control himself. His lack of focus on pretty much everything in life was sometimes all together mind blowing. In hindsight, I wish I could have seen his struggles earlier, but the adult problems I faced when we were married and having to be someone’s full on support took over being able to have clarity in all situations.
However, it was this chaotic mess that I think also made Phil very funny. His mind would race faster than the words that he could get out of his mouth most times. When he became impassioned by something, he would go on what we would call a Phil Rant. They would be epically long rants, full of strung together thoughts about whatever made him angry in the moment. They would be about anything from friend gossip to political opinions to one of his timeless rants about Rory in the Gilmore Girls. Sometimes he would become so enthralled in them that you would be laughing so hard that it would hurt to breath. That was Phil though, a larger-than-life persona who knew how to make people laugh, make people feel comfortable like you knew him your entire life and command a room. Those were the good parts of him and the parts that I hold on to when his children ask me about their dad. Sure, they will ask me about the other stuff too especially now that I have chosen to publicly write about it, but the one lesson I got from my marriage and loving Phil, was something that my dad said to me in the kitchen after my husband died and I told him about the cheating and how I just couldn’t understand why he just didn’t take care of himself while I did everything else.
“Katherine,” he said, “Sometimes, love is just not enough.”
A simple, very truthful statement coming from my very German, often overly stoic father that I have held onto since. In the weeks and months since I found out about the actual state of my marriage, I have found myself in the selfish thoughts about how could he have done this to me and our family, but then I stop myself because I realize that he had done all of this not because of a lack of love for me or even for our kids, but a lack of love for himself that supersedes my appearance in his life. He was born out of another’s man’s chaotic life of jumping from woman to woman, family to family and in turn never got what he needed to become a fully functional adult capable of making a real commitment to me or let alone to himself. He lacked stability in his most formative years and that played out well into his adult life. However, his charisma and his charm always seemed to get himself out of hot water and on a snowy January evening, caught the eye of a young teacher who thought that his nerdy hobbies were cute and at least that meant he wasn’t a bar scene kind of a guy.
One of the last heart to heart conversations that Phil and I had with one another before he died happened in our living room. He had come in from somewhere, walked over to me and gave me a kiss.
I probably said something like, “What was that for?”
He smiled at me, the tender smile that he would give me when he felt total love for me in a moment. “Thank you. I was never about the house, and the dogs and the kid stuff, but having done this with you, it just feels…really nice. I never knew how nice it could all be.”
I gave him a heartfelt smile, because even when it was hard between us, there was still those moments where it was…really nice.
“Sometimes I have wondered if you love because you’re not big on expressing your feelings, but then I think about times like when I came home from the hospital this last time and you had the entire house set up for me to recover in, including a refrigerator filled with kale and it’s the stuff like that, that when I think about it, I know how much you really do love me.”
I gently reached over and touched his hand. “I love you, Phil.”
“I love you too, Pigeon. Thank you for being my wife.”
And we hugged for a bit, both teary eyed before Phil sat back and made a joke about how crying wasn’t manly and that someone must have turned the heat up because he is sweating and needs to go wash his face. I returned to whatever it was I had been doing before he came in. It was these moments that made me hold onto the idea that Phil and I would always find a way back to each other even in the chaos of kids and the house and the dogs and whatever else life was going to throw at us because I always did believe that love was enough.
It took me falling out of love with Phil to realize that my dad was right. Love is not enough, it also takes a shared vision, loyalty, and unwavering commitment to one another for love to last a lifetime. Things that Phil was just not capable of offering me though I have no doubt he loved me and our kids in the best and only ways he knew how to. I think that the reason God brought Phil and I together was so that I could have three kids and learn what it meant to be a wife in the hard times. I think the reason God gave me to Phil was so that Phil could know what it was like to be loved loyally and honestly until his last breath because that is not something that he had not had in his lifetime before me. My dad is right in that love is not enough sometimes, but I think sometimes love is meant to teach us and to lead us home. For Phil, that was to the end of his life and back to God. For me, I think that story is still being written.
Katherine Kuzma-Beck 