A Divorce, A Wedding, and A Funeral

When you live in Tucker County and you end up getting into trouble, sleeping with the wrong person, or causing any stir outside the status quo you can bet it makes front page news. It may make the local paper literally or it may just make the morning edition of the gossiper but usually it makes both.

The news of my trouble with the law and subsequent divorce was one such event. Being a local business owner and someone who is firmly placed in the public eye means any detour from what is expected of you is met with a bit of shock and followed by some awe. If you want to know just how invested the fine folks in the community are in my life all you have to do is look at the month of March 2021 a month that saw at the time the worst and later some of the best days of my life. If you go back to that month in my sales books you'll find that I sold more than triple my monthly sales volume as the town poured in to find out what happened, why it happened, and what the future held for me and my businesses.

On March 13th 2021 the life I knew for more than twenty years came to an abrupt end. That night was one of the craziest nights in my life that saw me doing some things I'm not proud of that resulted in me spending a night in regional, facing a few charges, and finally realizing the woman who I thought would always have my back backed someone else instead. I know what you were thinking when you read the headlines and yes, from the outside looking in our relationship seemed like the perfect marriage. The truth is we both had issues from the start and were often in the arms of others, fighting, or just ignoring each other unless it was for a photo op. Like many people we had both grown accustom to having two faces one for the public and one in private. In public we toned down the arguing, better hid the distrust, and played it up as a Tucker County power couple while in private we spent almost no time together, slept in different rooms, and stayed together in our own little living hell just for the sake of the children. Needless to say staying together in this manner isn't good for anyone and the events of that night showed me that once and for all.

While I began fighting my legal battles and became more determined never to go back to the life I had I reconnected with a woman whom I'd had a crush on since my school days and began a new relationship. This new relationship was against the backdrop and fallout of the old one with the threat of my legal battles ever looming, a separated but not yet divorced wife, and a constant state of being on the phone with lawyers, the x, and running back and forth between my Parsons and Cross Lanes businesses. While my life was a hectic mess it was during this time that I found my happiness with the woman who had finally stepped out of the shadows to reveal she had liked me since our school days also. After about three months of dating in June I proposed to the love of my life while on paper still being married to my ex. With divorce proceedings in the near future I began reaching out once more to my ex to let her know that I didn't want to hire an attorney I wanted just to part ways amicably with us retaining our own assets. On September 7th 2021 we appeared before a family judge in Tucker County and were granted our divorce without a fight or an argument.

On October 30th 2021 one day shy of my favorite holiday Halloween I watched as our wedding party marched into the St. George church to the tune of The Addams Family and anxiously awaited my bride as she walked down the aisle to Canon in D. I honored the old wedding traditions and left her the night before with a note expressing my love. I was marrying the woman of my dreams a woman who made my heart skip a beat every time I saw her with all our family and friends present to witness two hearts become one. On that day I gained the wife I'd always wanted, the love I'd never had, and two wonderful children who I adore joined the family making two families into one blended one with five sons. It really was the perfect day as my mother-in-law welcomed me to the family before we headed off to our honeymoon in a secluded cabin on a lake in the Eastern Panhandle.

So far in this story we've covered the divorce, the wedding, and even though you may not have realized it the funeral. The funeral was the burying of a deceased man one who was never faithful, one who was always unhappy, and one who never had any self worth. The funeral I speak of was my own and my new wife held the spade and dug the grave. My actual funeral is I hope many years in the future as I enjoy my new life and being myself each and every day while looking forward to the next.