OT - Pat Robertson

This coming from the same guy who thinks gay folk getting married destroys "traditional" marriage. 


  Thank you! 

To my dear and beloved husband Al:

The day my mind goes to lunch and I no longer know what end is up or who YOU are and have no recognition or recollection of you as my spouse I RELEASE YOU to go to dinner with anyone else who is willing to love you just the same or even more than I do. 

Al, please, pleaaaaaaaaaassssssssssseeeeee.... do not keep me in the house trying to take care of my mentally impaired arse yourself ..less I go down by the pond thinking it is the bidet and drown myself accidentally .. or in a moment of you being distracted I may wander out the front door thinking it is okay to dance around the tulips in oncoming traffic ... PLEASE AL DO NOT LOVE ME LIKE THAT....DO NOT KEEP ME IN HARMS WAY ... please honor those papers we signed and place me in the appropriate facility where I can be taken care of and be managed both medically and physically. 

PLEASE SEEK HAPPINESS AND FULFILLMENT ELSEWHERE my body is still around but I, your wife, am no longer there ... I hope to have met up with my daddy or traveled back to the farm where I grew up and to be happy in my happy place...when memories of you and I flash occasionall through my mind on those times I WILL SMILE because I would have met you in my happy place ....  Please DO NOT be sad and do not mope around longing for me for I WILL BE GONE .... I hope you and others around me respect my dignity and leave me in my happy place ... just serve me a glass of water and tell me it is Vodka and I would be a-okay ... grape juice for Merlot is fine too don't bring me back ... 

DO NOT FEEL OBLIGATED TO STAY BY MY SIDE WHEN I NO LONGER KNOW YOU ... YOU MADE A VOW WITH ME NOT WITH A STRANGER WHO DOESN'T RECOGNIZE YOU... TILL DEATH DO US PART FOR YOU AND FOR ME MEANS THAT AS LONG AS WE ARE BOTH RECOGNIZABLE ENTITIES IN OUR MATRIMONY WE WILL DUKE IT OUT TOGETHER ... AND VICE VERSA..

Copy this letter AL ... and ditto it right back to me ... because it is just what I am going to do if and when your mind goes to lunch ... and you no longer know me ... like I said ... I am going out to dinner ... with somebody else OR EVEN BY MYSELF...

I am not being cold hearted, I am not being mean..MY reality is that the day my spouse does not know who I am I no longer have a marriage as I know it.  I love him enough to release him and he loves me enough to do the same. This is our scenario and our agreement.  To each his own ... I am not knocking anyone willing to stick it out ... my hat off to them... I will provide continuum of care and the best quality of life within means ... but I REFUSE TO CEASE LIVING ... I will always remember us the way we were.  So far I have stuck by his side during his kidney shutdown with years of dialysis, his kidney transplant, multiple tram flaps and amputations, numerous hospitalizations several times yearly ... and he has stuck by my side through numerous issues too ... because we love each other and we KNOW each other ...

JUST MY TAKE ... I could understand what he was trying to say even though he comes across as being LOCO DE REMATE....

 And as long as the two of you are in agreement, there is no betrayal of trust.

I heard a discussion of this yesterday on Christian talk radio.  Of course they were taking him apart.

Now I'm no Pat Robertson fan, but I just ask before anyone picks up any stones, to think.  Because it happened to me.

My husband suffered a massive stroke when he was 47 and I was 35.  We had a son, who was four at the time.  The stroke left my husband blind and paralyzed on the left side.  I could not care for him at home and still work, so he had to go to a nursing home.

He had no family except for his aged mother, who died not too long after he went to the nursing home.  I and our son were his family till the day my husband died, seven years later, in 2004, at 54.  He suffered seven years of the indignities large and small of nursing home life: being diapered, hoisted by a crane like apparatus, lukewarm food, urine and feces smells, screams.  Yes, screams.  And he was fully mentally cognizant.  If that's not hell, I don't know what is.  I know for damn sure I will take my own life before I live that one.

We did what we could to make it better: birthday parties, holiday dinners, outings, which took the planning of the Normandy invasion.  But at the end of the day, he went back to the facility, and I went home alone.

Throw your stones at me if you want.  God knows I've beaten the living **** out of myself for it.  I have survivor guilt and bad dreams about him and his mom to this day.  But I wanted at least a shot at a relationship with someone who could hold me.  And I told John I wanted a divorce.  I sugar coated it for him, and told him it was to protect my 401k from Medicaid.  He cried.  I cried.  I told him that I still loved him and would never abandon him.  And I never did.  Our son and I were his family till the day he died.

John continued to introduce me to new nursing home staff as his wife.  I didn't correct him, I thought that would be hurtful and unnecessary. 

I'm sorry to go on so long, I'm pretty emotional these days.  But **** like this does happen.  And while I'm no Pat Robertson fan, and I think he could have expressed his opinion better and not taken so much flak for it, I think he was not so far off the mark on this one.

 be ironic if he said this because he is in the beginning stages of Alzheimer's...