My Cheri Amour: A True Heartbreaking Love Story!

By R. W. Pursur

This is a heartbreaking love story, but it's still a true love story. In January of 2013, I discovered papers, journals, diaries, pictures, cards and letters I had never seen before, in several boxes, at the top of my wife's closet and it brought forth a spring of emotions.

However, it did remind me of what true love really is.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Go To Publish
• Release date: Jun 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9781647494926

R. W. Pursur

Robert W. "Bob" Pursur was born in Dallas, Texas in 1952. He graduated from Mountain View College in Dallas with an Associate's Degree in Aviation in 1977. He began flying lessons in 1973, acquiring a Certified Flight Instructor rating for Single/Multi-Engine Instrument Instruction from 1977 to 2001. He also wrote the column "Flight School" for MicroWings Magazine from 1996 to 1999. Bob retired from AT&T after forty years of service (1971 to 2011), as a manager, spending the last eight years of his career as a Certified Technical Instructor and assisting in the writing of Special Services training programs. He still lives in Dallas.

Book preview

Introduction

In January of 2013 I discovered papers, journals, diaries, pictures, cards and letters I had never seen before, within several boxes, at the top of my wife’s closet. I want the reader to better understand where this story came from, how it evolved, and the emotions associated with its writing, which is why the last thing I wrote is this introduction to the story. The title, My Cheri Amour was a suggestion by my daughter, Skye, who helped edit the book. My original title was Regrets, because of the strong regrets that I have had associated with Cheri’s ultimate condition. We all wish we could ‘quantum leap’ back in time and make changes that might have had a better outcome. I’ve had so many regrets, hence my title. However, Skye made note that her name, Cheri, was used several hundred times and her title seemed more appropriate, which the reader will better understand later.

The story, in itself, reveals the events that took place that led up to this story. I had no intentions of writing her life’s story but after finding the items I found, I could see that it had already been written, it just needed to be organized into what follows. Cheri had already written most of her story. Why, I have no idea. What prompted her to write her life’s story is a mystery only to be speculated. I’m not sure if we even owned a computer at the time she wrote what she wrote. Most of it was hand-written. I could tell, because of her reference to me, she wrote some of it after we were married. Most was written before we were married, such as within the journals, diaries and letters.

Most of what you read was written as I read it for the first time myself. It was very emotional, and I express my feelings without reservations at times. Some letters were from boyfriends she had over the years. Reading these was not easy, but was helpful to better understand Cheri and what she had been through. They also helped filled in blanks at times that would otherwise have left questions as to what was happening during certain time periods. I also wrote as it was written by the writers. I did not correct the grammar or spelling so as to leave the reader with the possible intelligence or emotion expressed by said writer. Most of what Cheri wrote is what you will read, in her own words, word for word.

After Cheri became ill and began to display unusual behaviors, I began to write down some of the occurrences. I’m not sure why I did so, other than I knew I would never remember them later. Why I wanted to remember them later, I can’t say. However, they ended up as part of this story. Even though I take credit as the author of this book, Cheri, her boyfriends and others added to the contents. The latter half did come from me, mostly from the written and computer documents, letters and memories I had saved. I also did not include the poems Cheri wrote in the original writing, but added them for those readers who enjoy that sort of thing. They also mean more, and can be better understood by the reader after reading Cheri’s story.

Not a day has gone by, since I began this task, that I haven’t shed a tear for Cheri as I have observed her daily decline. Every morning I wake up to face the reality of her unavoidable demise. The love I have for her has been immeasurable and losing her will be unbearable. Again, this true, yet tragic story about my wife was purely accidental. It was a spontaneous writing I had no intentions of pursuing, yet was inspired to share, due to the emotional state I was pulled into after finding ‘The Boxes’.

1

The Boxes

Today has been one of the most difficult days I have ever had. I have found myself right in the middle of an emotional event that has nearly taken me beyond my ability to function. For the past week I haven’t been able to sleep, eat, think rationally or stop this ache in my stomach that can only come from a broken heart, the loss of a loved one, and not necessarily to death. I’ve always considered myself a telephone man, not a writer, but despite caregiver burnout and depression, I’m compelled to document this story with hopes it might help women everywhere be loved by their fathers and husbands to fullest extent of true love. It could also prevent this from happening to others.

My wife, Cheri Marie, has Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD). She spends her days on the sofa watching television. I feed her, bathe her, and take her for walks when the weather is nice. Her vocabulary is extremely limited, she cannot carry on a normal conversation and she has lost control of normal bodily functions.

I knew Cheri when she was a 15 year old girl, young, beautiful and full of life. We reunited later in life, after my first marriage of twenty-two years, and have been together now over twenty years. These should have been the best years of our lives, but the events of her life before me and the choices she made have led to this story, which has no happy ending. I am caring for her in a way that every spouse is obligated to do, but really never expects.

Less than a year ago, I took an unexpected retirement so I could stay home and take care of Cheri full-time. To fill up my post-retirement days and to stay busy and productive, I painted the inside hallway and spare bedroom. I painted the outside of the house and with help from my brother, Blake, I trimmed some very large limbs from the trees before they fell on the neighbor’s house. One of the toughest chores was to clean out Cheri’s craft room. This was the room where she had spent most of her time painting, stenciling, singing to music, using her computer to e-mail her friends and look for a job. The memories here were so strong they hung in the air, making it difficult to breathe. I could hardly enter the room, much less clean it out. I finally accepted the fact that she was not going to be doing anything in this room again and forced myself to do what needed to be done. There were filing cabinets containing receipts, prescription drug information and instructions to every device we had ever bought to clean out. It seemed she had filed everything about anything. I estimated it would take at least a week to clean the room out. It ended up taking several weeks.

Each morning I would dress Cheri, set her down on the living room couch, serve her breakfast, turn on the television for her and get to work. I boxed up and separated everything that had ever held any material value to her. The past twelve years of her life were in this room and disposing of everything she had worked so hard for was almost impossible. I kept thinking about how absolutely heartbreaking this must be on others in a similar situation such as mine. I knew I couldn’t be alone in this. How do people hold themselves together enough to clean out the belongings of a spouse once they’ve lost them to a disabling disease, in an accident or even an act of war? How long before the recovery cycle begins and when will it end, or will it ever end? One thing for sure is it hurts, tragically.

The top of the closet was packed with dusty boxes that I opened and found contained letters, pictures and cards she had collected going back to the early 1970s. These I set aside to allow her three sisters to rummage through thinking they would appreciate the tokens of their youth and claim most of it. Over time they did go through the boxes but took very little. Other than the boxes, I had to separate and organize jewelry-making material, beads, receipts, paints, stencils and an unbelievable amount of books Cheri had collected over the years. I gave most of the craft-type material to a lady who distributed the items to a variety of local women’s art groups and other organizations.

As I was boxing up her books to take up for resale, I was flipping through the pages to removed personal notes or book markers when I came across ten $20.00 bills scattered throughout the pages of several books. I was baffled and naturally wondered why in the world she would hide money? I looked through the remaining books still on the book shelf and then went back through the ones I had already boxed up. After I had gone through every book twice, I had found a total of $600. I suspected that after a while Cheri had forgotten the money was there. But again, I couldn’t explain to myself why she would feel it necessary to hide money. Every two weeks I would give her $300 for food. It was more than enough at the time, but I always wanted her to have money especially since she had such a hard time finding work. I paid for everything and bought her anything she wanted, so I could not come up with a reason why she would stash money away.

Next, I went through her clothes, reducing her wardrobe down to a manageable level. She had two closets full of clothes; some she had received from her mother, which had very little sentimental value to me. However, most of the dresses, shirts, and blouses summoned up memories associated with each piece. I could remember Cheri wearing a particular dress out on the town, a favorite t-shirt on the beach at Padre Island. I cried for every piece of clothing I placed in the large trash bags, each representing a memory we had shared, now lost to me alone.

I went as far as cleaning out the garage discarding or giving away tools, building materials, furniture, and anything else I knew I just didn’t need anymore. For the first time in my life I had lost all hope for a happy ending to our lives and material items just didn’t have the meaning they did before. Getting rid of everything that I didn’t want or need seemed like the thing to do, as well as get all of my other affairs in order. More on that later.

The last area to tackle was the attic. I had saved almost every toy my son and daughter had as children. I took everything out of the attic, set it in the garage and started to separate it. The memories of their toys brought back images of my children’s childhood. I had always sat in the floor and played with my children just as if I were a child myself. It seems that after your children have grown out of their toys, you have to wait for grandchildren to be able to do it again. However, by then, you may not have the energy level to keep up with them. Eventually my kids came by and looked at their old toys, took what they wanted and left a few items to store in my newly cleaned out garage closet. My grandson had fun playing with the older toys, most of which he had never seen before.

With most major things in order, I walked through our house somewhat sad that such a large part of our lives had passed. A new life was ahead of me, yet I was satisfied with myself for all I had accomplished within just a couple of months since retirement. So I could put this all behind me, I went from room to room seeing if there was anything else I could do, when I came across the dusty boxes that had been at the top of Cheri’s closet. I had been storing the boxes in the garage, waiting for winter, when I could just burn the bundles of items in the fireplace. For some reason I never considered looking at and reading the letters, cards and pictures. They had all belonged to Cheri and were her personal things. It didn’t feel right to just throw everything in the trash. Winter came and after several fires, I figured it was time to start burning the contents. I brought the boxes into the spare bedroom and set them on the bed. For the first time, I opened the boxes and looked at the pictures, negatives of photographs, journals, hand-written letters and greeting cards. I was utterly bewildered. This was almost every letter and card she had ever received from friends, parents, sisters and boyfriends. I made the regretful mistake of reading them.

Within one of the boxes I found several large yellow envelopes. Revealing the contents has changed my world. Inside was Cheri’s life story. Unbeknownst to me, she had spent her days at home documenting her life. It seemed as though I had found a way for her to talk to me through her writing. I knew she often wrote as a form of therapy and within these hundreds of pages, I discovered daily logs in which she wrote to her inner-child. As I admired her familiar handwriting and read her words, it began to consume me. I realized how much I missed the beautiful person I had married over twenty years ago; I missed her to the point that I was unable to think of anything else.

I could sit by her and hold her hand, but she wasn’t the same Cheri, my Cheri. I could no longer talk to her and converse with her like spouses and companions should. My heart broke. It took several days before I could work up enough courage to read more of Cheri’s words but I felt compelled to do it, if only so I could hear her words and her voice in my head. As I was drawn deeper into her life’s story, I became very emotional about what I had found and began to write what you are about the read. Following is the true life story of Cheri.

2

The Happy Years

When she introduced herself, she would say, Cheri, you know, like the Stevie Wonder song, My Cherie Amour.

In describing her early years, Cheri’s writing says she was born in Laramie, Wyoming in December of 1952. Her mother smoked throughout her pregnancy. Nowadays, such social faux pas are expressly looked down upon but in the early 50s, the gruesome facts surrounding cigarette smoking, especially while pregnant, were not well publicized. Cheri believes her mothers’ actions were the reason that after a long and painful labor during a natural childbirth, Cheri was born weighing just over five pounds and was placed in an incubator for several weeks. She points out that she thought it was cool that the doctor who delivered her was female. Throughout her life, it seemed she always preferred a female doctor where ever she was. Cheri was the second of four girls; her older sister Olivia, called Libby, and later her two younger sisters, Beverly (Bev) and then Rebecca (Becky) came along. The one brother she would have had was lost to miscarriage. Cheri recalls that it seemed her mother was always pregnant and that the day Beverly came home, she writes her navel thing was really gross.

Cheri’s parents, Jim and Claire, had originally grown up and went to school in Dallas, Texas; curiously, they graduated from the same high school I did. Jim’s education and employment led the family to Wyoming where he worked for an international company called Geo-Tech which measured earth tremors caused by atomic bomb testing. Not necessarily the United States test. When Cheri was two years old, Jim was attending the University of Wyoming and Claire was a Registered Nurse at the same hospital in which Cheri was born. It was a daily cycle: Jim would come home from work in the evening and Claire would leave to work the night shift at the hospital. As time passed, Cheri found herself helping quite often to take care of her younger sisters in the absence of her parents.

She recalls her mother telling her a story about when she was very young, going down to the nearby creek, returning home totally nude. Cheri even writes my husband accuses me of being an exhibitionist, but I think I just didn’t like the constraints of clothing. She remembers running through the park topless with Ricky, her best friend at the time. She says she used to beg her mother to let her go topless, telling her, Ricky gets to so why can’t I? While going through these boxes, I found several pictures and negatives of her topless or more, all taken by others I can only assume were boyfriends. And, sure enough, I found three pictures of her naked to the world walking around in the woods. She appears to be in her twenties. It wasn’t a good feeling finding these things I was never intended to see. The result was a very uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Cheri remembers going over to a neighbor’s house to watch television. Later when her family got their first TV, she remembers getting up early in the morning before any programs started and just watching the test pattern with the Indian’s head inside a kind of target, the audio being only a high pitch tone. I had forgotten about that test pattern. Today, television programming is non-stop, 24 hours a day. No test patterns needed.

One fond memory Cheri had was playing in the high winds of Laramie. Like most of us, she and her friends found playing with a big cardboard box more fun than any store- bought toy. They took turns getting inside and letting the wind blow them around. Considering she has a less-than twenty-second memory today, it is painful to read her words when she writes I have a clear memory of laughing and laughing and saying out loud, this is the most fun I’ve ever had in my life. She says she would just lean into the wind and let it hold her upright. I wish her life had stayed as happy as playing in that cardboard box, instead of ending up the way it did.

Laramie provided the Rocky Mountains that she remembers climbing, as well as the prairie just outside of town. She says she loved to watch the prairie dogs pop their heads out of their holes, look around and then retreat back inside. One time, her older sister, Libby, once stuck her hand down in a prairie dog hole and was bitten. She also played with her Tiny Tears doll, as well as a dancing doll just her size. The doll was made of stuffed fabric with big painted-on eyes and yellow hair. Sewn to the doll’s feet were loops of elastic that Cheri could strap around her own feet and waltz around the room, face to face with her doll.

Cheri tells of a time at age five when she and Libby got into trouble after getting into what she says was a big truck with no doors. She thought it was a Band-Aid truck. Libby had found a first-aid kit in the cab of the truck and put Band-Aids all over Cheri from head to toe. Her parents got very angry. She says later she was told it was a neighbor’s delivery truck that happened to have a first-aid kit in it. It seems she always loved to get a Band-Aid after that but never got to have one unless she had a pretty severe injury. When she spoke to me of this time in her life, I remember her saying something about never having enough Band-Aids at home. I then went to the drug store and bought her several boxes of Band-Aids, each with pictures or characters on them. To this day, we have never used them all.

She mentions one night at five years old when she was with a boy, Danny, in the back of his parents’ pickup truck in the driveway. It was after dark and they were watching the stars when she received her first kiss. I pause while reading this story and think back to when I was five years old. Girls were the last thing on my mind at that young age. And yet here we are, fifty-five years later I, being her last kiss, reading about her first kiss.

Her other boyfriend, Ricky, had other ideas. She tells of him convincing her to pull up blades of grass and chew on the tender white ends. He told her it was ants’ milk and she believed him. All I can think of after reading this is how she continued to be fooled by every man with whom she ever had a relationship. I would like to consider myself the exception. Believe me, I have regrets when I look back at the twenty-plus years I have shared with Cheri, but I never once deceived, lied to, cheated or fooled her at any time. My greatest regret is that I just wasn’t there when she needed me the most.

One story Cheri tells in her writing I found particularly interesting. She tells of a day when she, and several of her friends, were at the local playground. She and her friends climbed to the top of the slide, intending to make a chain and all slide down together. With all those kids at the top of the slide, Cheri lost her balance and fell from the very top down to the ground below, landing in a mud puddle. She says she wasn’t hurt but she vividly remembers how scared she was at the time. At the present time, I am researching as much of Cheri’s past as possible to better understand why she developed FTD. A few years ago I took Cheri to a neurologist and one of the first questions he asked was if Cheri had ever had a head injury. I answered honestly and said simply, Not that I know of.

In her memoir, Cheri admits she doesn’t remember much from her early school years with the exception of the arts and craft activities. As a six year old, cutting and pasting construction paper was fun but finger painting was something she really enjoyed. She asked her parents to buy some finger-paint for her to have at home but they refused. I can’t say I blame them since this could be a messy pastime and required supervision. However, Cheri writes as if it were the beginning of a life of disappointments she experienced between herself and her parents. Learning of her childhood love for arts and crafts shows me where her artistic abilities originated. Later in life she achieved a degree in Interior Design. The paintings within the home in which we still live is just the result of the years of study, practice and experience she had when we moved in, thanks to her knowledge of interior design. Until this moment, I had never known that these beautiful creations that I see every day in our home began with her love of construction paper and finger paints.

Cheri’s family was not religious or spiritual at all when she was growing up. Her parents went to Catholic schools while growing up in Dallas and would refer to themselves as recovering Catholics. Cheri recalls that during holidays and Christmas, there were no church-related activities. They would gather with friends and concentrate on Santa Claus and toys, never the birth of Jesus Christ. On Christmas Eve, she found it exciting to leave Santa Claus milk and cookies, getting up at the crack of dawn to find the cookies gone and the glass of milk half full. She thought it was magical or wondered if Santa was a ghost. Who cared? she says. He left stockings full of fruit, nuts, toys, dolls and games to play. She does remember it being a beautiful sunny Christmas day the time she rode her first tricycle.

She says of one Christmas, when she was about six years old, she told her parents she wanted Santa to bring her a particular board game. Just before Christmas, she found it under her parents’ bed and then on Christmas morning, it was under the tree with her name on it. She asked her mother if it was from Santa Claus, and even though her mother replied that it was, Cheri knew then that it was not the truth and that the big dark secret was out. Her self-serving, self-preserving mind raced to the conclusion that if she kept this revelation to herself, she would continue to receive Christmas gifts. So she never said a word about her discovery and continued to scan the Sears catalog every year to compile her wish-list. In the era she writes of, Cheri and I are only three months apart in age. I am in Dallas, Texas and she is over a thousand miles away in Wyoming, and yet we both remember the excitement of looking through the Sears catalog looking for Christmas toys. Surely this was common for most kids during this time period because every child knew back then that the Sears catalog is where Santa gets his toys. Today kids can just go online and email their wish-list directly to Santa.

It was less than a year later when another truth finally came out. Libby was talking with Kay and Nancy, sisters who lived nearby. When Cheri approached them they stopped talking and refused to let her in on the conversation. Later, she got Kay alone and told her she had better tell her what the secret was. Kay was very distressed and said she can’t tell. It wasn’t until Cheri said she will never talk to Kay again, or be her friend, if she didn’t tell, so Kay spilled the beans. Kay hesitantly confesses, "There really isn’t an Easter