September 3, 2015

I can’t thank everyone enough for the hundreds of birthday wishes I received last weekend. I heard from folks far and wide via an assortment of methods, and it certainly impacted my days in a positive way. The anniversary of my birth on Friday, along with a big all-classes reunion for Cottonport High School on Saturday, and a New Orleans Saints preseason game with friends and family on Sunday should have made for a spectacular birthday week and weekend. But . . . that week was actually not a good week at all for me. In fact, it will be remembered as perhaps the worse week of my life. I didn’t want what happened to me during that horrible week to negatively affect the expected festive atmosphere for everyone else, so I decided to keep the excruciating news to myself until the weekend events were over with. This is not the kind of post you want to see in social media. It is not a post you will want to share. But, this is how we communicate now, and it is time to quit hiding from what has taken place.

On the first day of my birthday week, my wife asked me to meet her at a Mexican restaurant because (she said) our planned meeting with marital counselors had been canceled at the last minute. Her personal appearance was shocking to me when I finally realized it was her coming to the table. She was no longer the beautiful and classy, professional blond I saw when I had left town on Friday before the weekend. What sat before me now was a very dark (almost black) headed woman whose hair had been chopped into a decidedly different style. After she ordered a margarita, she proceeded to read a letter to me from her iPad that she had written to inform me that she was leaving me and planned to dissolve our marriage. Her letter talked about all the things she loved about me, but said we were “broken” and that she only had so much time left in her life and didn’t want to “waste” any more days. She told me she was going to spend the night at a friend’s house and would be by to pick up some things the next day. Yes . . . you heard me correctly . . . this took place at a Mexican restaurant.

On that next day, the second day of my birthday week, I made myself get up off the couch (that I had been forced to sleep on for months) in order to take care of some paperwork, and discovered online that almost all of the cash from all of our personal checking and savings accounts had been withdrawn. There was not enough left in any account to take care of numerous automatic payments scheduled for that day. The NSF notices were quickly generated and soon delivered to me. These massive withdrawals followed approximately three weeks of an unusual amount of binge shopping on Keri’s part. My wife had just bought a new iPhone, a new MacBook, various smaller items, and had me take her car to the dealership for over $3000 worth of work and repairs. I guess I should have seen what was coming, but I really had never seen Keri act in such a manner. After further looking around the house that day, I also discovered that every one of the gun cases were empty (except for one cheap shotgun) and all of the expensive jewelry was gone. The now empty gun cases had contained a variety of costly rifles, shotguns, and handguns. The jewelry collection was rich with gold, diamonds, etc. Keri never did come by to “pick up” some things that day as she said she would.

I had to fly very early on the third day of my birthday week. After all that had taken place, I steeled myself the night before to try to get enough rest for this event. All went relatively well that day until I returned home from work. I entered the house and discovered that every room in the house had been gone through and most of the furniture was now missing. There were empty spaces, empty shelves, and empty closets. All of the prime possessions were gone, i.e., all the Turkish rugs, Black Forest grandfather clock, leather living room suite, collectable sports memorabilia, high dollar tread mill, premium king sized bed, expensive breakfast nook dining set, all of the afore mentioned gun cases, all of the ammunition, an expensive futon set that turns into queen bed, desktop computer, laptop computer, a computer desk, all my German kitchen knives, expensive Calphalon pots and pans, all the good silverware, all the nicer cooking utensils, the bread maker I bought before we were married, the professional Jimmy Buffett blender I gave her, the KitchenAid mixer, wall hangings, photographs, nick knacks, etc., etc., etc. As good a writer as some claim me to be, I cannot come close to putting into words what it felt like to see the sanctity of one’s home adulterated in such a cold and calculated manner two days before one’s birthday. I cried myself to sleep sitting in an electric recliner left behind that was now damaged by someone so as not to even be able to make it recline anymore.

Gone are the wooden rocking chairs that were on the front porch. Gone are the gravity free lounge chairs from the back yard. She took my favorite Calphalon pot that I used to cook for her all these years. That pot is in almost every one of my cooking videos. Gone are the Calphalon stock and pasta pots in which I made many a gluten free gumbos and sauces for her. She left one very tiny pot and some pans that I never use. Gone are the mixing bowls that my parents gave me long ago. She also took a knife my Uncle Clarence gave me long before I knew her. She took my waffle iron. Gone is my favorite cutting board and all of the stainless steel measuring cups and spoons, some of these given to me as Christmas gifts by her own mother. The TV at the bar is gone. Every one of the really nice canisters are no longer on the counter. All of the good china is gone and most of the everyday plates, cups, saucers, bowls, etc. are gone. She left me one good fork, one good spoon, and one good butter knife. Those were left in the dish washer; one of each. Do you know what it feels like to eat with a utensil that weighs nothing; one designed for children or to be used at a camp? She also left one item and one item only in the dirty clothes hamper; she left one pair of the sexiest Victoria’s Secret underwear you can imagine; you just can’t make this stuff up. She took a number of things that were given to me as gifts both before we were married and after we were married. It was quite devastating to come home to this scene that looked like it was taken from a cheap reality TV show. Her and her enlisted men even decided to take a small window air conditioning unit. She took many things, obviously because of its monetary value. She took many other things purely to be hurtful. She left trash on the floors. And she left some things just to be spiteful.

Having had no warning, this home invasion was a real blow to my sensibilities of what is considered fair and proper behavior . . . to say the least. Keri had run me out of the dirty clothes hamper years ago (said she was tired of dealing with my smelly underwear) and had run me out of the bedroom some time ago (said I kept waking her up) . . . and now she is trying to run me out of our home, a home that I put so very much sweat equity into over the years. It’s relatively easy for her to walk away, she didn’t put her heart and soul into this place the way I did. The only time she ever helped with any projects around here was if one or more of her family members were visiting and busting their tails to help us with something. The excuses were always familiar, “the mosquitoes were too bad,” her back hurt, she had things scheduled with her friends, she was going to her sister’s, or she was traveling to her friend’s place out of state. I often said to her mother, “I’m so glad when you come, because nice things get done to the house when you are around.”

Lt. Col. Keri Manchester Villemarette, and some of her Mississippi Air National Guard enlisted men from the 172nd, completed a ruthless and cunningly planned mission two days before my birthday that utterly adulterated the sanctity of our home . . . a home that we had lovingly built together over a decade before.

All of these actions, while quite unbecoming, followed many months of me being rejected by Keri at every turn. While she gladly allowed me to take her to dinner sometimes, and took advantage of my time, income, and generosity regularly, Keri refused to attend any events with me where couples would normally be seen together. She refused to join me for funerals (I had two aunts, a close friend, and one other funeral during that time), she refused to come to weddings with me, and she refused many other events that we had planned to go to together, but she’d drop out at the last minute. Just a week before my birthday and the class reunion, she led me to believe she would come with me to Louisiana for these occasions, but was actually planning the execution of her and her men’s mission to drain our bank accounts and empty our home of most of its belongings. She recently made me give away a pair of concert tickets one night because her mother was coming to town and she wanted me to join her and her mother for dinner after we picked her up from the airport. I didn’t know her mother was coming to town when I bought the tickets, because like many other pertinent things couples should share, I had not been told about this particular visit. Whenever we would have a weekend during which we were finally able to both be home and spend some time together alone, she’d give me the choice of her going to her girlfriend’s house for the weekend, or having her girlfriend come stay with us at our house for the weekend. I was not happy being given these type ultimatums more and more often, but . . . just as when any or all members of her family were there, I played host, I cooked, I served, and I engaged as graciously as I could, considering everything. It was becoming increasingly clear that Keri wanted nothing to do with me. She was constantly trying to pick a fight with me it seemed. She tried to provoke me into physical altercations a couple of times. She never called or text anymore to tell me where she was or if she was coming home. She was often very late returning home from work after I had prepared a meal for dinner and then she would make various excuses about where she had been and why she was not hungry. She sometimes falsified the calendar she shared with me to show her returning from a trip on a certain day, when she was actually back in town one or two days prior (yes, I began to track her). Her love and energy has been increasingly focused elsewhere. Her affection for me has been completely alienated. The near two decades of us being around each other and around our respective family and friends was being erased little by little, as though none of it ever happened.