In Defense of Elizabeth Edwards

I knew when I heard the phone ring that my mother was dead. No one calls at 4:30 a.m. I was sleeping in my parents’ house because, though the doctors had thought she had months longer to live, my sister just had a feeling. And so the phone rang and I let it ring and ring until I heard my father’s voice answer from the other room and then I picked up. The woman on the other end said, “Dr. Walker. This is the hospital. I’m am sorry to inform you, but your wife, Mary Walker, has passed away.”  

Elizabeth Edwards' new book will be released May 8

My mind moved with my body in tow through the distance of two rooms, to the open doorway of the bedroom where my mother used to sleep. The bed was empty and I heard my father through the bathroom door. He was retching. It was an awful sound, low and monotone, and I sobbed there, like a baby, on the hallway floor because life was supposed to be different for us.  

(My father tells me now he did not throw up. He was brushing his teeth and sometimes when he brushes his tongue he gags himself and makes that horrible retching sound. I’d rather believe the news of Mom’s death made him sick to his stomach because it’s more endearing that way. But, whatever.)

As idiotic as it sounds, when I read the reports of Elizabeth Edward’s interview on Oprah (scheduled for Thursday), and how she spoke about her husband’s affair, I understood when she said her reaction to her husband’s confession was to cry, scream and vomit. It brought me back to that day, when my mother died and my father threw up, because life had changed forever and ever.

And sometimes you just don’t want it to change. 

John Edwards broke my heart, too. He was supposed to be my president. I had chosen him before 2004, before he played second fiddle to John Kerry. And I was a bigger supporter when he ran again in 2008. I read a story in the New York Times magazine how he would serve as a champion to the underprivileged because, though he is insanely wealthy now, he hails from a humble background. I saw visions of Robert Kennedy in him. He was my candidate; (although my son was determined Obama would win). When Edwards withdrew just before Super Tuesday, so did I, temporarily.

I respected his love for his wife. And she won me over by being solid and loyal. There is no denying he is the more attractive of the two, but he seemed to look beyond that. And when the rumors began to circulate that John was having an affair, I refused to believe them because the John I know is good and honest and loves his wife with a passion – his cancer-survivor wife. The one who hid the lump in her breast as Kerry gave his concession speech to the world.

I don’t blame her for sticking with him, for trying to hold tight to that life she knew before the affair. But life is changed forever for her, like it changed more than a decade ago when her oldest son tragically died, and again in 2004, when she discovered she had breast cancer. Life rarely goes as expected. It sends you to great highs and treacherous lows. How one manages to hold on during those times and keep her sanity says a lot about a person.

I think that must be the value of being Resilient.

Photo, Barnes & Noble