The person who had the biggest impact on my life was my second wife. She had a 157 IQ, but never once acted as if she was better than me. She easily got angry at injustices, and would on occasion lash out against the hypocrisy of politicians, while helping the underprivileged and the rights of women in a male-dominated society.
She was what someone in the 1970s called a “Jesus Freak,” a born-again Christian. I resonated with that upon first meeting her, because I had been following a guru from an ashram in West Philadelphia at the time. (I’d later learn how to meditate and find the divine through meditation years later. But that’s another story.)
We married and she helped straighten me out. I got no more traffic tickets or driver license suspensions. I started to go with her to Christian groups gatherings and even studied the bible in a study group a Presbyterian church.
She inspired me to become a lawyer, and while I worked part-time jobs while in law school, she did the heavy lifting with her job as a copy editor at the Inquirer. (She had also worked at the Philadelphia Daily News and the old Bulletin. I met her when I was a reporter for the Pottstown Mercury newspaper.
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She fell and stuck her head on the steps of our dining room in 2006. She got a traumatic brain injury. It disabled her and eventually lead to her complete disability where I could no longer care for her in our house with our son. I didn’t know it then, but that tragedy had “impacted” me in a way I never thought it could, and my life has neer been the same since.
The injury opened a new path for me; I entered a stage of spiritual revival and my love for writing re-emerged. I wrote a blog on meditation, loving compassion and the “higher self.” I published one book, and am currently seeking a publisher for a book on my Vietnam experience as well as my mystical experiences.
I couldn’t have done it without the intervention of a higher source and the love and acceptance that my wife Wendy had provided me.
I had to “put her away” as they say about loved ones you’re no longer capable of caring for at home when full-time loving assistance is required. I still love her, and am glad to have been given me the freedom to not only chase after my dreams, but to see them come true.
Thank you dear.
Wish me luck with my next NaNoWriMo adventure. (That’s National Novel Writing Month, for the uninitiated!)
Your loving first husband,
Michael J
(Wendy died April 27, 2018, as I held her hand and she took her last breath in a hospice in Philadelphia where she had been staying. The following obituary appeared in the newspaper where she once worked as a copy editor; The Philadelphia Inquirer:
October 4, 1949 – April 27, 2018
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