Abby

My relationship with Abby turned out to be the most complex of all the relationships before and after Catie's death, particularly as it pertained to her father and brothers.

During the first weeks after Catie's death and throughout her final semester of high school, we spoke often on the phone, even as I was "playing with" some of Catie's friends in the first month after her sister's death. Looking back, I can see that, in addition to curiosity, it was an attempt to fill the sense of loss and create some physical comfort that compensated for the emotional loss of Catie. I did have strong feelings about Abby and didn't really know how or where things would go. I certainly didn't want her to feel that I had abandoned or discarded her. At the time, I just didn't see how the 14 year age difference between the two of us could work. Maybe if I was in my mid-forties and she was in her early thirties. But not me being 32 years old and her being 18. As mature as she was at some levels, she had to learn some new coping skills that came with her loss of her mother and with Catie.

It was tough for her and her dad to suddenly be in that big house together with her mom gone. Her brothers came home on many weekends which both helped and hindered. The family could afford and sought counseling which, for them, seemed to help, particularly for Abby and her dad since her brothers were mostly "on their own." In time, in addressing their grief together, their relationships grew stronger and the bond of family became stronger. I was an advocate for good counseling then and now.

A complicating, though not insurmountable, factor was the sexual relationship between Abby and I.

A couple of weeks after her brothers came back from Chicago with the small amount of Catie's stuff, there was some sort of argument during one weekend about what to do about certain physical items in that household. Clearly, much of that house was now a "temple" to two dead people and the house with all the mementos and memories, quickly stressed a challenging situation. But it was an argument about "stuff." Now, I understood that everyone was grieving (as I was dealing with my own grief). They had a lifetime of memories to deal with. I had four months. Everyone in that home had lost two family members. And they each had their own unique relationships and memories in addition to the shared ones. But, in a moment of anger, her oldest brother said something about Abby sleeping with her sister's boyfriend, referring to me. He said this in front of his younger brother, Abby, and their dad. Once said, he couldn't unsay it.

It's easy to say "I don't know why he did that." I do know. One reason was he felt he was losing an argument to Abby and he brought out something that he thought could steal that power in the moment. And he probably thought that she would deny or shrink away from the sexual nature of our relationship. If you recall, I had told Abby what he had asked me and told her my reply when we were cleaning out Catie's apartment in Chicago. So, Abby had a chance to think about this for several weeks and wasn't unprepared for this. I didn't deny the sexual nature with my "yes and no" answer and it turned out that my comment about the not knowing the complexities of Catie's view on life and relationships was quite prescient on my part as I further delved into Catie's diaries. It became clear to me (and to Abby) why he wanted them back because Catie had included details about some things that had happened with he and his friends after they graduated from high school and Catie was back from her university studies for the summer. He didn't know what Catie had included. He was fearful of what she had written and with her death, her side of the story couldn't be shared except through her diaries. By this time, Abby knew this, too. Abby chose not to respond to his comment by revealing what she had read.

Instead, Abby said to him "Who I sleep with and who I choose to have sex with is my business! Not yours! IS THAT CLEAR?" It was a message that was not only delivered to her brother, it was one for her dad, too. Okay, now that was out there for everyone to hear. She told me that he probably didn't expect that from her. She didn't admit to our sexual relationship and didn't deny it either with that response. But now that the accusation was out there in front of her dad and her other brother, she had responded.

She told me that it was her dad that calmly asked the question "Abigail, were both you and Catie having sex with Gary?"

Abby could have very easily thrown Catie and/or I "under the bus." But she stood her ground, making it clear that while both she and Catie were sexually involved with me, she was an adult and made the choices to join in for herself.

And in response to the accusations, she told me that she was rather defiant and glad of the choice that she made with and about me. She made it clear to her dad and to her brothers that I didn't take advantage of her, that I offered her every opportunity to change her mind and back out, and afterward I didn't treat her, as she told me she put it, "like a piece of fuckmeat." She told them that I treated her with loving, caring, and respect. The other thing she pointed out to them was that I recognized being her first lover wasn't "a trophy of conquest." I think the most shocking thing to them was finding out that her older sister was right there with us as she surrendered her virginity with me. Suddenly, counseling was going to be much more complicated.

Of course, our relationships were more complex than any single event or occurrence, but she wasn't going to let anyone take away how good it felt to her. She didn't tell them how much time we had spent in bed together (with or without Catie or with or without sex).

Anyone could question both Catie's and my judgment in maintaining certain boundaries when it came to Abby. Catie's boundaries were a lot more fluid than I had initially discovered or imagined. But Abby also defended us (her and I) with the realization that without her sister, her first lover probably would not have been me and the fact that I was her first lover meant something special to Abby. Besides, she told them, wasn't it possible that she was taking advantage of Catie and I and not the other way around? That's what she told me she said to them.

According to Abby, her dad was disappointed in her, at first, for being sexually involved with me (or anyone else for that matter), if not just angry at me because I "took her innocence away." I can understand that. His view on that changed over time as they went to counseling together and one aspect was dealing with choices as she moved into adulthood. She emphasized that she made the choices and that I treated her (and Catie) the way that he'd want his daughters to be treated (as if they were precious). If he ever wanted to have them be happy and respected (even if it was this threesome), I certainly made both of them feel that way.

After her brother's accusation and addressing it directly, Abby called me immediately. Unfortunately, I was not at home when she called and she left me a message saying it was important for me to call her back. I was out walking around a nearby lake thinking about a series of passages that Catie had written about Abby and I being together and, thus, the timing for all of this was "perfect." They were beautifully written passages of what Catie hoped Abby was experiencing for the first time(s) using what she (Catie) felt when we were together. Catie apparently had written some of this as Abby and I were in the next room furthering our sexual exploration of each other. They were erotic prose expressing the depth of feeling that Catie had for both of us. She concluded "I hope that one day Abby will appreciate and understand the sharing of my love with her."

Over the next couple of months, as I read through Catie's journals, I read about a complex life of the incredibly smart young woman I had fallen in love with. As she grew up and became an adult her view of the world and the sophistication in how and what she wrote changed over time. Generally, as I finished each journal, I put it in the mail to Abby so she could have it and read it. Ultimately, this allowed Abby to be the keeper of her journals until she (Abby) decided what to do with them. Abby and I did discuss them at length as it was a way for both of us to process our grief. While much of the content was new to me, not all of it was new to Abby.

There were some important milestone events that Catie wrote about that gave me a glimpse of who this person was. There many that involved her mom and dad and family; like places they went and things they did. Others were more personal; her first crush, her first kiss, her first menstrual period, the guys she liked in some of her grades or classes as she moved out of elementary into junior and then senior high school. She wrote about her first sexual experience (with a boy she knew in the neighborhood and that she had grown up with), when it occurred and what she thought about it. And then her other sexual experiences as she grew older and more "sophisticated" in the ways of sex.

Outwardly, there were clues, if you read between the lines, to her underlying bisexual nature. She was careful not to outwardly and overtly express too much affection in other girls. As she got older, though, she was more direct in her writings while recognizing the "danger" of the close and closed environment that junior and senior high school. I would say that she wasn't confused about her feelings. Rather, she knew that they just weren't acceptable in the broader society that she was part of. It was when she got into a university in the girls dorms where she had some opportunity to (carefully) explore those feelings and sensations with some other women in the dormitories.

It wasn't until she took her job in Chicago when she started to more freely explore her interests in women. Dating that jerk of a control freak in Glenview may have driven her more into the arms of the likes of Jody. Somewhere in her writings in that time span she wrote, and I paraphrase, that it's difficult to find a guy that gets what women need in the way that women understand what women need. And then there was me. After reading about me, the way that Catie saw me and felt about me, and in the ways those insights and feelings grew over those four months still brings tears to my eyes.

Some other things in her past were troubling and I don't know how they might have turned up in our relationship. What was clear to me was that Catie quickly felt very safe with me and the way we accepted each other. While Catie loved and adored her family, there were interesting entries about specific incidents that were also included in the journals (e.g., things that happened with her brother and his friends). Those were internal family matters that would have to be worked out without my participation.

I mentioned in a previous post that if I had known I was going back to Colorado in April, I might have planned things differently. I was trying to sort out if and how to see Abby again. The hours on the phone together gave us space and time to sort out what we wanted to do. I did go with our local ski group (along with 164 others) to Keystone Colorado and skied Keystone, A-Basin and Vail again. In addition, I added Copper Mountain to my list of ski areas.

Two weeks before going to Colorado, I fulfilled the promise to my son and took him skiing with me in West Virginia. He got very frustrated with falling during the morning of the first day but had a breakthrough in the afternoon that made skiing a lifelong hobby and sport for him to participate in.

It was between these two ski trips that Abby called me with her dad on the line to talk. I knew this call was coming because it had come up in my conversations with Abby. It was important to Abby for a number of reasons including the fact that she had invited me to come to her graduation. She wanted to have, at a minimum, a truce within her family. At one level, I could see that she was taking on the role of her mother as the mediator/arbitrator of family issues.

It was an hour long conversation and he was still unhappy about it and the prospect of his youngest daughter being with someone nearly twice her age. He didn't ask me not to sleep with her again. I knew that Abby had told him that if he even tried that, she would be certain that she slept with me again even if she had to fly to North Carolina routinely to do it. But I reminded him that in just a few months she would be on the campus in Corvallis and on her own to make those decisions for herself. All in all, it was a positive call and I was glad that we had it to clear the air.

After the accident, when I told Abby that Catie was pregnant, that news shook Abby; that even with birth control pills pregnancy could occur. Later, her doctor told her that the type of pill that Catie was taking (since Abby could take in the remaining pill pack to show her doctor) was sensitive to being taken at the same time everyday. Catie may have missed several pills or created an irregular timing during the stressed times of her dad's stroke that had the chances of getting pregnant be much higher.

In 1986, I didn't realize that there were different types of birth control pills because I thought all of them would stop ovulation. Abby was relieved to find that the type of pill she used was less sensitive to a creating a potential pregnancy issue because of a pill being missed or not being consistently at the same time of day. That seemed to be the most plausible explanation for Catie's pregnancy.

Did I think Catie had gotten pregnant intentionally Abby once asked? I told her that I didn't think so and that I accepted that it was an accidental pregnancy even though she indicated our knowledge of her "biological clock." But I also pointed out that her sister and I already had plans around having children in the future. We had talked about and had a vision of that future (and she could read about that in her sister's journals). Abby also asked me what would have happened if she (Abby) had gotten pregnant. I told her that, even though it would have been more challenging than the situation with her sister, that we would have the same sort of conversations that Catie and I had and we would have made whatever decisions after those conversations.

And I pointed out that, generally speaking, the use of birth control (in whatever form) was a step meant to avoid pregnancy if you were going to be sexually involved with someone. I shared that my ex-wife had been on birth control pills until we started planning on having our first child. She was off birth control for a number of months to allow her natural hormone levels return and be restored before we attempted to have our first child. Abby asked what we used instead and I told her that we used condoms and foam.

"The foam tastes horrible!" I told her, regarding oral sex.

I told her what that was like for my ex-wife once we went to "babymaking mode" and I and that I expected her sister and I to follow a similar path. Sex while trying to get pregnant and then pregnant sex can be so very wonderful," I told Abby. "Our timetable changed," I told her. That is before it came to an abrupt end.

As the two of us read through Catie's journals, Abby asked if I had known all about the various experiences that she had written about. I told her that I did not know. I told Abby that she just hadn't gotten around to it yet. "She could have been scared to tell you," Abby once said. That could have been true. I pointed out that given what Catie wrote about me there was another possibility; that it simply wasn't important any longer because I accepted Catie for who she was (including that past that I didn't know about) and that I allowed her to be her true self in a way that she had never experienced.

I pointed out that was the reason why I used the passage I read at her funeral.

Over this period of time, our conversations were a pathway to healing and some level of closure. It wasn't all serious or depressing and Abby and I had some level of fun with our relationship while we were closing it out and moving into different phases of our lives. It wasn't the end for Abby and I, quite yet.