Lost Without Him

By Carol Scutt

In the summer of 1967, two teenagers from completely opposite kinds of upbringing met in Columbia City, Indiana. They both worked at the local Kroger grocery store. She worked as a cashier, and he worked as a night stocker. She was sixteen, and he was seventeen.

This infatuation grew into a love stronger than the worst storms and more passionate than the words of Shakespeare. The first storm they endured as newlyweds was Paul being drafted and sent to Vietnam for fourteen months. Their journey was one of commitment and determination. Their love for each other and for Christ drew them together during all the difficult times. A time did come when they nearly divorced. How they dealt with the hurt and heartache is an inspiring lesson.

Paul was a brilliant businessman and ended his career as a senior vice president with Kroger. That journey wasn’t without its struggles. He made a vow to Carol in the first year of their marriage that he would see that she have everything she ever dreamed or imagined. He kept that vow even on the last day of his life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 29, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984562104

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Copyright © 2018 by Carol Scutt.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the Holy Bible, King James Version (Authorized Version). First published in 1611. Quoted from the KJV Classic Reference Bible, Copyright © 1983 by The Zondervan Corporation.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 03/19/2019

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 66

Photo Gallery

T

his book is written to honor the memory of my best

friend, lover, and husband, Paul. I pray that it accurately tells the story of our life together and our dedication to our Lord.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T his book would not have been possible without the love and encouragement of friends and family members, especially my daughter, Jennifer, and my dear friend, Mary.

I also want to thank my Pastor Ronnie Arnold, his wife and my friend, Kathy, and his entire family. His contribution to this book and the sweet things he shared about his relationship with Paul touched me in a way impossible to describe.

Friends from my church read the first draft and offered more encouragement than they realize.

I love them all so much and I’m so thankful to

God for the gift of their love and friendship.

Lastly, I would like to thank the many people at

Xlibris who helped me stay on task with kind words and sometimes tears as they shared their reaction to what I had written.

I thank God for my salvation and the promise of seeing Him face to face one day.

PROLOGUE

I could hear the organ playing the last few notes of Joy as I stood outside the double doors leading to the sanctuary. In a matter of seconds the congregation would stand, and I would be led down the aisle on my father’s arm to exchange vows with Paul.

Paul’s father would officiate those vows, as he had for both of Paul’s sisters and all of the other marriages held in this church—his church. He was the pastor. I would soon become his only daughter-in-law.

I could feel my heart racing, and my knees felt like rubber. I smiled at my dad through my veil as I slid my hand under his outstretched arm. His smile was forced and had a worried look about it. I squeezed his hand to reassure him.

Here we go, I whispered.

Dad shook his head ever so slightly, and holding me back, he said, "Honey, are you sure you want to do this? Y’know he never smiles."

CHAPTER 1

We didn’t realize we were making memories. We just knew we were having fun.

Unknown

I ’m not sure what my first real recollection of my father was. A lot of people remember things from their very early childhood. My mother recalls standing in her crib while crying to be let down, but I don’t think I have a true memory of anything before I started school at age five.

In a lot of ways, I was a lucky little girl. My mother was twenty-nine years old when I was born, and she always said that she was completely besotted with me.

Quit picking at her! my aunt Georgia told Mother. You just gave her a bath, so there can’t be anything to pick. That poor child hasn’t had a moment’s peace since she was born.

I’ll pick if I like. Mother didn’t like being scolded and let it be known in her tone.

I just like to watch her. I like the way she works her little tongue while she sleeps. It just makes me happy. I was beginning to wonder if I would ever get pregnant or if I would ever hold a baby of my own. I didn’t know you could feel such love. It’s overpowering. Mother’s voice held that first-time-mother reverence.

She loved babies and continued to have them until she was almost forty-three years old. I was her firstborn and the oldest of her five children. I was Dad’s first child with Mother. Dad had been married before and had two sons and a daughter with that woman.

If anyone asked Dad how many children he had, he always announced the total. And he said it as if we were the zeros in his bank balance. Eight children, Dad loudly and proudly claimed.

The problem with Dad’s devotion was that it was more romantic than practical. He fathered eight children but barely supported any of them. He was something of a deadbeat dad before deadbeat dad was a part of our vocabulary. He did send child support to Kate, his first wife, when he had it—but he hardly ever had it. And the reason he hardly ever had it was because of his larger devotion to the devil in the bottle.

Dad was thirty-seven years old when he had his first major coronary, and he believed he was living on borrowed time every day after that. Looking back, I wonder why that heart attack became such a reference point, since it didn’t alter his life. It didn’t change his drinking habits, it didn’t make him resolve to be a better husband, and it didn’t move him to do better for his children. He had dodged a major bullet, but nothing changed. Actually, that was not true, because now he was unemployed.

This is where I entered my father’s life. In truth, I was just five years old, but now the recollections are mine and not some version of someone else’s truth.

Carol, get your sister and come to lunch, Dad instructed.

What’s for lunch? I asked. I needed to know such things, even though it was irrelevant. You ate what was put in front of you; at least, I did. Suzi, my little sister, was the picky eater and had occasional moments of triumph at the table. I was the peacemaker and didn’t want anything to spoil the moments with Dad when he was sober.

Soup and pie, he announced proudly. I made an apple pie with the apples Carol brought home the other day. I baked the pie in the oven in a paper bag.

How can you put a paper bag in the oven without it catching fire? I wanted to know. I suspected I was having my leg pulled and refused to believe. This was probably the beginning of me needing proof before I accepted his word.

I didn’t believe it myself and imagined I’d have to call the fire department to come put out a pie fire, but lo and behold, the pie baked just fine inside the paper bag. The bag’s just a little bit browner than it was to start. He laughed as he held out the pie and the paper bag.

Wait till Mom hears. Can I tell her when she comes home from work? I pleaded.

Mother worked at General Electric as a secretary. The factory offices were within walking distance, but she mostly rode with a friend named Celia. She’d be home shortly after 5:00 p.m. Celia would drop her off in front of the house, an Insulbrick duplex in a great family neighborhood. Mother would burst through the door, stopping immediately to sit and wiggle on the arm of the overstuffed chair, and getting to the bathroom was always her first order of business. Not wetting her pants was her daily victory.

I want to tell Mom! Suzi insisted.

Tell Mom what? I teased, knowing Suzi hadn’t even been in the room for the pie story.

Tell Mom what you want to tell Mom, she countered.

I insisted that I would tell Mother about the pie. After all, I was the one who had lugged a very large bag of our garden tomatoes down the street to a stranger’s house to see if he would trade me for a bag of apples from his backyard tree. I owned that pie, and no one would tell a pie story except me. Dad agreed and distracted Suzi by telling her that she could have her soup bowl on top of the pink plate, which we both loved. Suzi was inconsolable; she didn’t want any of that pie. She insisted that she only liked cherry pies and would not taste the pie baked in a bag.

Before Dad’s heart attack, Mrs. Welty was our babysitter. We both loved Mrs. Welty, but Suzi seemed to love her more. Mrs. Welty was part Swedish and had a noticeable accent, and she loved to bake. She had cherry trees in her backyard, and Suzi ate the cherries like they were candy. She loved Mrs. Welty’s cherry pies. Most of the time, our afterschool treat was milk and graham crackers, but every now and then, it would be a slice of her homemade cherry pie.

Now the pie in the bag was Dad’s first pie. Dad had a lot of firsts after the heart attack. He planted and tended his first garden. It was a big garden. I remember the tomatoes and rows of pole beans that looked like green tepees. I also remember having to try kohlrabies. I could eat them raw, but I hated them cooked. I hated even the smell of them cooking. I would start gagging before I even got to the kitchen.

Dad was very proud of his garden, but the pie was a real accomplishment. When you are sober for more than a day or two, life regains its texture, color, and flavor. Sobriety challenged Dad, not just to stay sober but to be creative while sober. This pie could have won a blue ribbon at any fair anywhere, and he was satisfied in knowing that—and proving it to his cherry pie–eating daughter was an absolute necessity.

Come here, Suzi, Dad said as he lifted her onto his lap. Did I ever tell you the story about the little girl who loved cherry pies?

She shook her head back and forth as she rested it against Dad’s chest.

"Well, once there was this little girl who loved cherry pies more than anything in the whole wide world. She loved cherry pies more than chocolate candy. She really loved cherry pies.

"One day she wandered into the kitchen because she thought she smelled a cherry pie. She discovered the oven door was open, and it had a great, big cherry pie inside. She knew she should wait until someone took the pie out of the oven, but the temptation was too much for a cherry pie lover like the little girl.

The little girl climbed onto the oven door to get a better look at the pie, and the next thing you know, she was in the oven, eating the cherry pie with her bare hands.

Dad looked into Suzi’s huge, brown eyes and said, Uh oh!

He continued the story. "While the little girl was in the oven, eating pie, in walked the little girl’s daddy. He went over to the oven to close the door, and just as he was about to shut it tight, he saw a pair of shoes sticking out of the pie. ‘I’d better get these out of the oven or my pie is going to taste like a pair of shoes!’ the daddy said.

‘And you’d better get me out of the oven or I’m going to taste like a cherry pie,’ cried the little girl! Dad dramatically exclaimed.

Suzi laughed and laughed, and Dad laughed at Suzi laughing.

I don’t honestly recall if Suzi tried Dad’s pie, but I imagine she did. She was charmed by Dad and mostly wanted to please him, starting at a very early age. When she laughed, she had him in the palm of her hand. Dad always loved an audience, but to this point in his life, Suzi was the best audience for any and all of Dad’s silly stories.

One of the stories Suzi would beg Dad to tell was titled Bloop. It was something Dad would say to make her start laughing. He’d pick her up and pretend she was a little baby needing a bottle. After a few seconds of bottle-sucking sounds, he’d put her over his shoulder and pat her back, until he pretended she would burp the loudest, longest, most body-racking burp ever heard on this planet. Meanwhile he cried out Blooooop! as if it were a seven-syllable word.

Suzi would scream and laugh so hard that she’d soak her shirt with slobber from her open, laughing mouth. Dad would laugh until tears ran down his face.

Laughter in our house was a necessity. It was a distraction from the reality of the circumstances. In a lot of cases, it was how Dad got himself out of a tight, emotionally charged situation. If he could make you laugh, somehow things didn’t look as bleak. I didn’t realize at the time, of course, but Dad was teaching me how to escape any situation that hurt or humiliated the spirit, by pretending it somehow had a lighter side

That winter after Dad’s heart attack was not an easy winter. The house where we lived had a large living room and sunroom at the front of the house, and through a large archway at the end of the living room were the dining room, kitchen, and bathroom. We moved some of the living room furniture into the dining room and closed off the front part of the house by sealing the archway with Visqueen. We couldn’t afford to heat the entire house.

We had a coal furnace in the basement, with a big dirty coal bin opposite the furnace door. When there was enough money to have a load of coal delivered, I would watch as the glittery black cubes tumbled into the bin. A full coal bin was a comfort. It could snow and blow and howl outside all it wanted, but when the bin was full, it didn’t matter. As a child, I didn’t realize what a short-lived comfort a full bin was.

Grab your coat, Carol. Let’s go for a ride, Dad said.

I didn’t like this chore. Something about driving out to the coal company in the dark of the night and putting quarters (some of which we fished out of the cushions of the furniture) into the coal machine made me sad. Much later in my life, and for and entirely different reason, my husband Paul told me that sin loves darkness. In the darkness of the coal company lot, I felt ashamed and dirty before I’d even touched the coal.

The coal came out of a shoot wrapped in brown paper. We would load it into the trunk of the car and drive home with a night or two’s worth of heat. The coal in the trunk never comforted me, even if it warmed me. The trunk was full of the harsh reality of being broke and warned of the probability of being cold. The cold loomed large around the corner.

Daddy, I’m home! I announced one day as I came in the back door into the kitchen. It was cold, and I had walked the five blocks from school. The oven door was open to help heat the kitchen. Dad was still recuperating and in charge of the house.

How was school? he asked. It was a question that didn’t really require an answer, but I would chatter on about something.

It sure is cold outside, isn’t it? he remarked, with a grin that didn’t fit the question.

I nodded in agreement, knowing there was a punch line coming.

It’s pretty cold inside too, he said, still grinning. As a matter of fact, I got to thinking about how cold it gets in this house sometimes and realized that mittens help keep you warm.

Dad was waiting for me to notice something, but I didn’t know where he was headed with the story, so I kept watching him as I removed my boots, coat, scarf, and mittens.

And then I saw it! On the wall, beside the window that gave the view of the blowing snow, was the kitchen clock. On the hands of the clock, under the glass, was a pair of blue mittens cut from construction paper and glued in place. Silly Daddy.

CHAPTER 2

Unhappy is he to whom the memories of childhood bring only fear and sadness.

H.P.Lovecraft

A fter Dad recuperated and returned to work at the United States Rubber Company, life at the Davis house returned to normal—if normal meant driving drunk, wrecking our only car, and landing in jail. I honestly don’t recall how Mother scraped together the money for his bail or if she had to leave him there until he sobered up, got out, and returned home. According to Dad, the accident was not his fault, but then nothing ever was. This overnight in jail was not a common occurrence, but neither was it a one-time event. Who was this man, and from where did he come?

The branch of my father’s family descended from the William Penn Colony of 1682, when Penn came to America with one