I’m Camilla, 42, and I’m writing this story to help me wrap my head around the events of the past twenty-four hours. My husband, Ken has always seemed to take more pride in his work than anything else.
Local bars take up whatever time his high school teaching job leaves. His recent drunkenness and foul mouth were bad, but even they didn’t prepare me for what I discovered yesterday.
We have two girls Amy (9) and Georgina (7), and I quit my job as a lawyer’s clerk when Camilla came along.
Ken supported this decision because he earned much more than I did and we were paying too much to let a nanny watch our kids.
I loved being a stay-at-home mum to my two angels and Ken seemed to appreciate the work I put in. At least he did at first.
Everyday he got home, I had prepared meals for him and every morning he woke up to ready breakfast.
I loved doing it for him because I appreciated what he was doing for our family.
However, our family dynamic flipped on its head in the last one year when Ken started coming home late and drunk.
I tried to get him to talk to me, but he wasn’t interested.
Our romantic life tanked as well and I prayed a lot, hoping that this was just a phase that would pass.
But I couldn’t help the lurking suspicion that Ken was probably cheating on me.
This was how I got to texting with his sister, Kathy to see if she could help get through to him.
Since it was a long time without us meeting and we’ve always been good friends, she accepted my invitation to visit me for a day.
She arrived yesterday and I made us some tea as we chatted the afternoon away.
Noticing that I was not okay, Kathy probed, “Is something wrong, Cammy?”
I didn’t know where to start and I took a little too many seconds to respond, so she nudged some more.
“Does this have something to do with you guys taking out the insurance policy?”
“What insurance policy?” I asked, the surprise yanking me out of my desperation into alarm.
“The life insurance policy in your name?” She responded
I had watched some true crime story in which a woman had taken out life insurance policies in the names of a few of her relatives before having them murdered.
Ken would never do that. Or would he?
Not hearing I rushed to my husband’s home office desk and opened its drawers, rummaging through the papers within.
I almost didn’t notice Kathy joining me in the office as I looked for any document that would corroborate what she had just told me. I was faintly hoping I would find nothing.
This hope was quickly dying as my mind connected the dots; Ken had been showing clear signs of exasperation with me and our girls.
Recently, he had been contributing less and less to the household; I was having to dig into my savings more to buy groceries and other items.
If I hadn’t been in denial, I could have seen that he didn’t really love me or the girls through his harsh words when we talked to him.
But resorting to this? Wanting me dead? This was all too much.
I found the papers that proved Kathy’s words and I was heartbroken beyond words and I cried in her arms for hours.
That evening after Kathy had left, I was planning my exit with the girls when I received the call from my husband’s school principal.
My husband had been involved in a bad laboratory accident at the school and an exploding gas cannister had struck him.
The principal must’ve interpreted my silence for shock, but I was simply numb.
I let his kind words flow over my numbness, doing nothing.
It has been about twenty hours since I received the news that my husband is in hospital and might not make it.
I’m not really sure what do.
I’ve been numbly going through the motions, preparing my kids for school, tucking them into bed, talking to family members; and I still don’t know how to feel.
