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My Mom Quit Bacon and Her 40-Year Marriage on the Same Day
It took leaving my father to find herself
“Your father is doing it again.”
The “again” referred to cheating. My mother was tired. This was a movie she’d seen one too many times in their decades-long marriage.
In the past, she did as so many women of the Silent Generation did and stayed, well, silent.
She was good at that. Silence. Submission to her husband. I had never seen her raise her voice to my father. Never fought back. Never stood her ground.
He was a man, after all. On our family ladder, he stood on the top rung.
And kept his foot on top of her to stay there.
But this time was different. My mom was 72 and my advice over the years had been sinking in.
Maybe most kids hope their parents stay together, but I’d been urging her for years to make a run for it.
You deserve better, I’d tell her. He’s not going to change. He’s just getting worse.
And you’re miserable.
My father could be an asshole to me and my brother as well, but my mom always got the brunt of his anger, sarcasm, and all-around assholery.
