Summer of 1997 had been a very hot one. We lost koi we had raised in our large and deep koi pond here. My husband liked the fish. I wanted the pond because I liked being near a body of water, but built it with my husband in mind because he really loved watching and feeding fish. He had completed the pond for me as a Mother's Day gift, even though we had lost our only child when a newborn. His only son, so he was deeply affected by the loss. Time by the beautiful pond was often in reflection and thanks for what we did have.
I knew he would enjoy the large koi and fantail fish I brought home that a customer had given me. These had gotten far too big for her smaller garden pond. I named the great white koi (with a bit of calico color spots) Moby Deliah. We had a morning and evening ritual of going out and sharing coffee next to the pond just before the sun hit it, then feeding the fish. But the fish had died the year before when the pond dried from severe drought. Another loss.
We still enjoyed the mornings outside at a patio table with our coffee. I had left my husband from mid-March 1995 until July 3rd of that year because he was taking a medication that made him impossible to live with, and not his fault. He had a VA counselor from hell dealing with him, over-medicating on something he should never have been given called Zoloft. He became psychotic and extremely dangerous on it. One of two percent of the population who absolutely should not be given the drug. It was pitiful to see him suffering without sleep at night from flashbacks from his time as a scout/sniper in Vietnam, worse to see him on the Zoloft.
So, I was glad in early September, that we were back together again and him coping. Our time together was quiet since he needed it. He was dealing with far worse than I was over our parting. In a terrible psychotic episode, he had tried to kill me when taking the Zoloft. It was hell to leave him, and too dangerous to stay. I stayed away long enough to finally feel that he had control of himself once again. We were always survivors with anything thrown at us.
So this particular morning, we were out at the patio table with our coffee where he had called me over to share some conversation with him. He asked me to join him that morning, since I didn't just assume he wanted my company anymore. The time with the counselor from hell had taken what was left of our marriage away. We were managing to stay together thanks to the fact we had built a foundation of friendship before dating. We were being kind as he healed and I worked. We had compansionship.
The beginning of the real end for our marriage had been my husband's near fatal almost head-on wreck where someone had run a light at a major intersection and nearly killed him. He suffered many injuries. He was scalped at the time, and head injury became a new way of life for us to try and cope with once his other massive injuries began to heal. He was a survivor, so he tried very hard to overcome everything that had happened to him.
This particular morning we shared was no different. He held my hand at the table before I had a chance to sit down with him. My husband was a deeply spiritual man, but had never found a church home he was content with in organized religion. He found too much discontent and money often soured the broth of most every church he had tried attending. But he still prayed. So this morning he prayed. He held my hand and prayed for everything to be well and good and happy again. He prayed for us to be closer again.
I had remembered him suffering so much at one time that he prayed for God to take him away so that he might find peace. His depression was often worse than his physical suffering. I knew his suffering, so I understood his prayers. The man was so honest that he never uttered a word he didn't mean. I rejoiced to listen to the one he prayed that morning. I was so happy to feel he was healing with or without me. He had decided to turn a corner and enter life again, and he wanted me to share listening to his prayer to hear this. He had projects that had been waiting too long with his depression not letting him act on much of anything. I had left him alone on these things as I never nagged him the entire extent of our marriage.
We shared one of the most beautiful days of the whole year then. We commented on that, and I was to think about it many, many times later when we had months of unusually heavy and too frequent rains. Friends talked about the heavens crying later. After his prayer and our coffee, I had to run some errands and go to the post office with the letters he was always writing of enc`