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John Edwards To Marry the Woman He Impregnated While His Wife Was Dying?


John Edwards Healthcare Forum

For some reason, the hot rumor of the day is that former Democratic presidential hopeful, John Edwards,  proposed to Rielle Hunter, the woman he had an affair with during the 2008 election campaign. He allegedly popped the question over the Christmas holidays – which incidentally followed hard on the heels of his estranged wife Elizabeth’s slow death from cancer.

It might be a good time to point out that Edwards and Hunter share a two-year old daughter from their liaison and that Edwards and his wife had been separated for some time before her death. Whatever the state of their relationship may have been, she did allow him back in her house during her final days for the sake of the three children – two of them quite young.

The other day, the press made a semi-big-purely speculative-to-do over the fact that Elizabeth didn’t mention her almost former husband in her will.

Ah-ha! They crowed. She gave John the big FUCK YOU, YOU CHEATING ON ME WHILE I DIE SLOWLY BASTARD!!

To which I say – huh? Who includes her soon-to-be ex-husband in her will? And kudos to her*, by the way, for jumping on the will revision so quickly. Most Americans with children don’t even have a will let alone think to revise it when their circumstances change.

But there was no reason for her to include him unless he was in need of funding to support their children and, clearly, he isn’t.

The world is so keen on retribution. As if going from “golden boy” to has-been probably hasn’t shattered enough someone who’s spent his life being praised, gloried and handed goodies that most of us can’t even begin to imagine. Attention-whores on his wave-length don’t function on the same “any publicity is good” level that the Snooki’s and Lindsay Lohan’s of the world do.

In any case, using her will, or their children, to strike out at him wouldn’t have been worthy of praise. Only stunted, selfish people make pawns of their kids, and I applaud her for not being like most people in this regard.

But much more, it seems, will be made of whatever Edwards decides to do about his relationship with Hunter. As he is kind of in ambiguous widower territory – being separated and a cheater and already a media pariah – his future actions are sure to be a series of lose-lose-lose.

Even if he were to don sackcloth and smear his exposed flesh with ashes to make a knee-scraping pilgrimage to whatever passes for a holy place in his world, the public will still find his actions wanting.

That’s to be expected when one has lied to and humiliated his family, friends and supporters. But though his douche baggery is plain in my opinion, I am not a bit surprised by what he did.

Factor out the reality that men in power positions often succumb to the temptation that they are “all that ” and “entitled”, he was the spouse of  someone who was terminally ill. Having been in those shoes, I can say that it changes the relationship and sometimes the people involved.

My experience is coloured by the fact that my late husband also had dementia, and our not being able to connect on a mental and spiritual level was very isolating for me. I shouldered all the burden for decisions on every conceivable level and I often resented the fact that he wasn’t “available” to bounce off anything of import. But that aside, when you suddenly find yourself more and more caretaker and less and less partners that is a serious relationship imbalance. Add to that the fact that very often, the well-spouse is treated by others as someone whose problems are not serious enough – in comparison to the ill-spouse – to be worthy of empathy, sympathy or even acknowledging, well, disaster recipes have started with fewer ingredients.

Elizabeth’s cancer went super-nova during the 2008 Democratic primaries. Managing a terminal illness and running for office can’t be all that compatible – though the two swore they were up to it. We all think we are up to it.

Hubris is a universal affliction of those stricken and their loved ones. It’s an odd warrior mentality coupled with high school team boosterism. A weird American thing? North American thing?

When the news of his affair with the obligatory “love child” broke, I shrugged. Caretaking spouse cheats. There is no news in this. When one knows that his/her widowhood is inevitable thoughts of the future creep in. They just do though no one would admit to that out loud. Some people will act out and on those thoughts.

As Will deteriorated, all I had left was a choice between living in my memories or planning for the future. I chose to spend most of my inner-space time on the future because the past just seemed like some sort of hell dimension that pulled me towards self-pity and pointless mourning. I did think a lot about whether I would fall in love again someday and towards the very end – when it looked like he might rally and live a while longer in his vegetative state – I began to wonder if I could put my own needs on hold for another year.

It’s not that I had plans to take out an ad on Craigslist or put up a profile on Match.com, but I’d been wandering about the world obviously alone for nearly two years and men were beginning to take notice. And I noticed them noticing.

In the end though, Will had little time left. Just a month and not long into 2006, I was really a widow instead of just sort of one.

But I can understand where men like John Edwards or Terry Schiavo’s husband might have been in their thought processes because I think most people with partners who are dying have let themselves, at the very least, think about loving again.

However, Edwards’ reality is one of a barely married guy who hadn’t been with his wife in a couple of years and was involved with someone else when she died. It’s not heinous that he might be thinking about remarriage because he probably already was.

It doesn’t diminish his grief, which is likely considerable. He and Elizabeth were married a long time and there are children and history involved. He might be a douche, but it doesn’t preclude genuine feelings of loss and regret.

But it doesn’t mean that he won’t move on quickly. Men, generally, and some women, move on quickly. I don’t have patience with folks who are appalled by this because mostly, the outrage centers on artificial etiquette rules and their own personal preferences that refuse to allow the widowed person to be the best judge of their own best interest.

The children though? What of them?

Children have always been appendages of the adult lives they are attached to. They have never had input and that’s probably best. Adults who run their families by majority rule based on the assumption that children are wise and mature as opposed to self-interested, autocratic know-nothings deserve any misery that results, and that includes being saddled one day with adult children who will rule their lives like Russian oligarchs.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the rumors pan out, and so what if they do? It’s hardly anyone’s business outside the immediate Edwards family. If people can’t offer congratulations on the heels of their condolences, they aren’t worth having in your life, in my opinion.

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*I am not generally an admirer of Elizabeth Edwards. I feel she got off way to easy for her part in covering up his affair during the primaries. She went out and stumped for him, knowing he was a liar and that his participation in the Democratic bid that year – in any way – could have cost the Dems the White House. Can you imagine Pres. McCain right now?

A Cup of Tea


A cup of masala chai

Image via Wikipedia

When I was a little girl tea was Lipton.  Scalding, flavorless and punishment for being ill.  The only people I knew who drank tea willingly were my aunties.  Neither of whom believed that the vile steaming concoction should be sullied in any way by anything flavorful – like milk or, god forbid, sugar.

Like any good Midwestern girl, coffee was my anticipated beverage of choice, but though both of my parents drank it by the pot full – not one of their children developed a taste. Even twenty years of teaching failed to coerce me to take more than a sip.

So it was a surprise to all when I became a tea drinker.

It began rather innocently with my late husband who cajoled me into sampling a vanilla chai latte at that coffee shop in the mall. He was a Mocha man himself and we couldn’t go a Sunday without making a stop. He loved coffee. He bought one of those coffee makers that could make anything and taught himself to steam milk and make espresso and lattes.

Then, of course, Starbucks arrived and chai became my vice of choice. The only drive through in the entire city for a goodly while was right on the way to the high school where I taught. A convenience I was sure that the universe placed there just to make it up to me for recent slights and injuries.

Rob is the one though who taught me to make a cup of tea after coddling me first with chai latte from a mix. Although he swears he had as little idea as I about chai in the beginning. He, at least, knew how to make a simple cup of tea.

There is, though, a proper way to make tea. American people do not make tea of any kind properly from hot to iced*;  it’s an epic fail.

Christopher Hitchens wrote a piece recently on the proper way to make tea. He was inspired, or incited, by a quote by Yoko Ono relating her tea tutelage under her late husband,

It was Dec. 8, and Yoko Ono had written a tribute to mark the 30th anniversary of the murder of her husband. In her New York Times op-ed, she recalled how the two of them would sometimes make tea together. He used to correct her method of doing so, saying, “Yoko, Yoko, you’re supposed to first put the tea bags in, and then the hot water.” (This she represented as his Englishness speaking, in two senses, though I am sure he would actually have varied the word order and said “put the tea bags in first.”) This was fine, indeed excellent, and I was nodding appreciatively, but then the blow fell. One evening, he told her that an aunt had corrected him. The water should indeed precede the bags. “So all this time, we were doing it wrong?” she inquired. “Yeah,” replied our hero, becoming in that moment a turncoat to more than a century of sturdy Liverpool tradition.

I simply hate to think of the harm that might result from this. It is already virtually impossible in the United States, unless you undertake the job yourself, to get a cup or pot of tea that tastes remotely as it ought to.

I think he should cut Ono a bit of slack. Thirty years on one’s memories of one’s deceased partner are shiny and yellowed with age after all. And she’s allowed to paraphrase. My version of my live husband is often disputed by him. I can only imagine how far off the mark I do on the dead one and he’s only been gone five years now.

Hitchens goes on to outline proper tea making procedures according to some ancient rules dreamed up by George Orwell:

If you use a pot at all, make sure it is pre-warmed. (I would add that you should do the same thing even if you are only using a cup or a mug.) Stir the tea before letting it steep. But this above all: “[O]ne should take the teapot to the kettle, and not the other way about. The water should be actually boiling at the moment of impact, which means that one should keep it on the flame while one pours.” This isn’t hard to do, even if you are using electricity rather than gas, once you have brought all the makings to the same scene of operations right next to the kettle.

It’s not quite over yet. If you use milk, use the least creamy type or the tea will acquire a sickly taste. And do not put the milk in the cup first—family feuds have lasted generations over this—because you will almost certainly put in too much. Add it later, and be very careful when you pour. Finally, a decent cylindrical mug will preserve the needful heat and flavor for longer than will a shallow and wide-mouthed—how often those attributes seem to go together—teacup. Orwell thought that sugar overwhelmed the taste, but brown sugar or honey are, I believe, permissible and sometimes necessary.

Mostly, I agree. Though Rob thinks there is nothing wrong with the milk going in first and I think the non-sweetener people are a bit daft and maybe show-offy to boot.

Can’t imagine a reality without a cup of tea anymore. Such a place would be dystopian.

*Most places in the States have sugar-free iced tea. They bring it to you in restaurants too cold really to add any sugar to it when it should just be sweetened already. The horror. I had no idea though actually that ice tea should be sweet to begin with until I moved to Canada. Civilization where tea is concerned really.

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Ow! My Ear Hurts!


Ear Infection

Image by clappstar via Flickr

Ear infections were the bane of my early childhood. I vividly remember having my ear drum lanced when I was about 4 years old. Easily one of the most painful medical procedures ever and remember, I’ve given birth and had my tonsils out as an adult – among other things, so I have a vast base for comparison.

Ear aches are common for me again because of the whole sinus issues thing. I had hoped the recent allergy testing would prove revelatory and provide a basis for relief.

No such luck.

I am allergic to nothing though I am having histamine over-reactions. Blood is off somewhere being micro-analyzed but the allergist doesn’t hold out much hope of finding a concrete cause because my irritants are man-made/chemical in nature.

“Well,” Rob said, ” at least we know that earth isn’t rejecting you. You are rejecting the earth.”

Only the man dominated parts of it.

The last couple of nights, as I also battle a mutant cold, my eyes have puffed like and itched and I couldn’t figure out why until it occurred to me that the blanket we’d brought up from the living room for extra warmth smelled like Rob’s mother.

The perfume was the culprit and the offending blanket is now in the wash.

But it’s frustrating not knowing what will trigger a reaction and I am tired of taking allergy medicine daily when the reality is that I don’t come into contact with triggers daily.

An allergic reaction to sawdust right before the holiday laid the foundation for sinus issues which triggered my ear trouble and set me up for a hard fall with this cold I now have – courtesy, we believe, of the soon to be FIL.

Years of allergic reactions have damaged my Eustachian tubes until the weenies clamp closed at the slightest provocation.

Going to the doctor in the old days of my American life meant antibiotics and a swift return to the land of the tolerably living, but in the Canadian wilds, I am told to use OTC’s and suck it up, which – unsurprisingly takes longer and about half the time lands me back in the doctor’s office with a “take to my bed” kind of infection.

What to do? What indeed.

Personally, I loathe taking Rx drugs because I am the kind of person for whom side-effects are a given. And though life is flexible enough that I can take to my bed – bed is boring.

Home remedies only take a person so far but so far so good in my case. Without a fever (and I pretty much have to be consumed with disease to run a fever at any rate), I can expect little action from the medical profession.

Yoga starts up again tonight. It might be a seated posture class. Just saying.

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