Sally & Jane
Human tragedy takes all forms. Every time you hear a sad story you hear an even sadder one. My old pal Dave is such a story. Dave was not a regular guy in college, he was a superstar. Everything about him screamed success. He had his pick of the girls on campus and he went on to have his pick of the companies he could go work for. We all wanted to be Dave.
After a misfired marriage in college (that is a whole other story to be told at a different time) Dave married a nice Jewish girl from Delaware and settled down to a nice normal suburban corporate life. The company he worked for was very progressive by the standards of the day and also tended to rotate people geographically every eighteen months or so. It was a tough program for the trailing spouses and families, but the benefits and the pay was good and the company was one of the go-go companies of the time. That meant that despite the locational drawbacks, it was considered quite a coup to be working for them.
Dave and Rachel had a daughter, named Sally, during their first posting. When she was a toddler, but not yet out of diapers, they were posted to Los Angeles. That was a tough spot because the normal American suburban lifestyle was harder to achieve economically speaking in LA. They had to settle for moving from a big house with a lawn to a condo townhouse with no yard. Nevertheless, they settled in with a few grumblings from Rachel, but not so much that she didn’t find herself soon pregnant with their second child.
Little Jane was born in LA and that condo started to get smaller and smaller. Finally Rachel put the wood to Dave and told him she was moving back east whether he and the company wanted her to or not. Dave had spent enough time on the Freeways of LA to make a case for a transfer and they got posted back to the Big Apple. That allowed Rachel to get her suburban McMansion in New Jersey with the gains on the LA condo market. It was closer to her family and more the lifestyle to which she had become accustomed. Little Sally and Jane were in tow and all was well with the world…for a while.
It was about this time that Dave’s life-defining affliction kicked in. It seems he had been harboring a bipolar tendency his whole life but had managed to direct his manic aspects towards his studies and let his depressive tendencies play out as his chilled-out personal manner. It had become harder and harder to hide either side of the affliction as the pressures of corporate life increased and even festered a little bit based on the forced and premature exit from LA. From what could be seen from the outside, it was not affecting family life too much at the early stages, so life went on with Dave commuting and Rachel being the housewife in New Jersey.
During those suburban days both Sally and Jane grew and prospered in their own ways. They were sweet little girls with Sally being a bit shy and quiet and Jane being rambunctious and tending towards the loud. The whole family vacationed regularly with my family, which included a young boy and girl of approximately the same age as Sally and Jane. They all became fast friends the way kids at summer camp become friends. They didn’t see each other that often during the regular school weeks, but often saw one other during the holidays. Skiing in winter, camping and beach-going in summer. It was a great comradery that was built over the years.
Then Dave got sideways with Rachel and they split up, so for a few years the kids didn’t see one another much until Dave got repotted with his next wife. Then the vacations became even more important in some ways since they were the only times Dave really got to spend with the girls and he liked having the familiarity of the “whole gang” around. The relationship between the kids remained strong despite the parental discord.
Then Dave’s affliction went from bad to worse just as his corporate career came crashing down around his ears. It was amazing how long his progressive employer put up with his illness since they hung in there with him through long bouts of debilitation. His bipolar affliction was always getting exacerbated by medication which he would take and then not take (not an atypical problem I am told). There were times when Dave was bedridden for up to twelve weeks at a stretch, so it was not a small thing. Luckily, since the girls lived with their mom and not with Dave, they did not get the worst of it. But Dave did finally leave the corporate world and that was the beginning of the worst of it.
Leaving the corporate life is usually cause for celebration, but sometimes the corporate embrace is a good thing. With an affliction like bipolar disorder, that embrace can be a Godsend. Dave initially pursued his dream entrepreneurial venture, but under ideal conditions a start-up is a challenging thing. Somewhere between the high stress level and the ups and downs of launching a new company, Dave’s condition came to the surface and was with him almost full-time. The young company’s fate was sealed very quickly and it became apparent that shutting it down was necessary. Whatever natural trajectory of Dave’s mood swings, they were suddenly turbo-charged and quickly spun out of control.
Dave’s decline was epic in a bad way. He had run through his savings and was quickly burning through his retirement accounts at age fifty. His debilitation made it harder and harder for him to get and keep employment. He tried many things, but was just not able to do the work. His last attempt was as a clothing sales clerk, which for a person with two advanced degrees, was more than a small step down. Even that was too difficult for him.
Meanwhile, Sally and Jane’s life continued on with their mother. She tried for a while to get her settlement due from Dave, but eventually gave up since she had other means. The things that Dave promised Sally and Jane, whatever they were, no matter how small, went unfulfilled. Little girls can ignore things like that only so much. Gradually, since they would often not be able to see Dave for lack of funds or because he was not well, they saw less and less of him. As times got tougher, feelings got more and more hurt on all sides.
I once stumbled on Sally’s phone number (she was living in NYC) and called her to invite her and Jane to a dinner with my grown kids. They agreed on the firm condition that I not tell Dave about it. They didn’t want to see him. It was nice for the kids to see each other again after such a long absence. The girls seemed fine, but then, to honor them, we did not discuss Dave.
Dave is living out his days tending to his ailment with public assistance. He luckily has someone who supports him minimally, but he has lost his lovely girls. As a parent, I can imagine no greater tragedy.