Transcript for the Piece Audio version of Sealed

THIS STORY BEGINS IN 1972 WHEN THE PEOPLE WHO WOULD BECOME MY PARENTS MET AT RICKS COLLEGE, A TINY SCHOOL IN REXBURG, IDAHO.

DAD
So we went to a school dance…we saw these two young ladies so we figured we’d go over and talk to them…

MOM
He just walked up to me and said, “Where are you from?” He didn’t even ask my name or anything.

DAD
And as we talked to them we found out they were from Texas as well so we kind of hit it off…

MOM
I said Texas and he said, “OH! That’s good for me” and then it just went from there…

DAD
And then I went on my mission…

MOM
And I wrote him letters while he was gone…

MY DAD LEFT MY MOM FOR TWO YEARS TO SERVE A MISSION IN SPAIN FOR THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS. THEY STAYED TOGETHER—SENDING LETTERS AND CASSETTE TAPES TO KEEP THEIR RELATIONSHIP ALIVE. THE LAST TIME I WAS HOME, I DISCOVERED A BOX FULL OF LOVE LETTERS, ANNIVERSARY CARDS, AND WEDDING ANNOUNCEMENTS. AT THE VERY BOTTOM, I FOUND FOUR CASSETTE TAPES—FROM RICHARD TO DEBBIE WITH LOVE. I HAD NO IDEA THESE STILL EXISTED, AND IN ALL LIKELIHOOD, THEY HADN’T EVEN BEEN PLAYED IN OVER THIRTY YEARS.

DAD (MISSION TAPE)
Then I got to Ricks and started dating around and, wow, there… pblh. There wasn’t jack there you know… they’re just like the same ol’ girls back home. But then that dance came. I’ll never forget that one. That was kinda strange. Kinda like it was planned or something like that? I sure am glad we found each other.

HE CAME HOME AND PROPOSED ALMOST IMMEDIATELY.

MOM
He put his arms around me and he said, “I bought these pearls in Malaga”… and I said “Oh, they’re beautiful!” and I was looking at ‘em… and he said, “And I made up my mind when I bought ‘em that whoever I gave them to would be my wife” and he said, “I’m asking you to be my wife.”

MY PARENTS GOT MARRIED IN DECEMBER OF 1975. THEY HAD MY BROTHER DAVID NINE MONTHS LATER. MY SISTER CRYS WAS BORN IN ’78. MY BROTHER DEREK IN ’79. FIVE YEARS LATER, I ARRIVED. COLLEEN, THE BABY OF THE FAMILY.

DEREK
Mom was so great during the daytime when I was young.

DAVID
I remember Mom especially teaching us how to read out of that little grammar book that Dad used when he was a kid.

CRYS
We’d wrestle and dad would play the piano and we’d dance around…

DAVID
One of the really fun things that Dad used to do with us was build little rockets.

SIBLINGS
All you had to do was press go and any other father would have just pressed go but no dad wanted it to be fun for us so he put 17 switches series,
I thought you had to
It was like Ignition
We’re good dad
Start the engines ok that’s good
Are we all clear? Is everything clear? No obstacles? Check!
DAD (MISSION TAPE)
Sounds kinda funny. Having a bunch of little brats running around. But that’ll be fine; I enjoy… I dig on playin’ with them. I just hope that I’ll have plenty of time so that I can play with ‘em.

CRYS
I don’t remember a lot of interaction with my parents. They weren’t that interactive with us.

DAVID
You know, if there were issues, I wasn’t aware of them. Maybe they didn’t kiss as much as normal parents do or something.

DEREK
I think I’d put dishwashing soap rather than detergent in the dishwasher, right. So then soap bubbles, you know how these things go, they bubble out of the dishwasher. And I remember Dad finding out about it and running into the room and finding me and then asking me, using the word, “What the ‘f’ were you thinking?!” and I was shocked to the core. “Who is this beast, and what did you do with my Dad?” That’s the first time I realized… strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.

DAD (MISSION TAPE)
And I’ve been thinking about what I was gonna do in the future and I have no idea. You know, as far as work. But I’m sure I got time to figure that one out.

DAD
You know I was working an awful lot and so I wasn’t home. I was on an upwardly mobile career and that takes a lot of energy for both spouses…

MOM
And I called him at midnight and he didn’t answer the phone.

DAD
It cost us more a month to live than what I was making and so no matter what I made we were getting deeper deeper in debt.

MOM
I just knew that it wasn’t right. He was lying. I knew it.

DAD
You know, I knew that if I ever put my foot down that it would be the end, and that’s pretty much what it got to.

ITS BEEN SAID THAT THE TWO THINGS THAT’LL BREAK UP A MARRIAGE MOST EASILY ARE SEX AND MONEY. MY PARENTS OPTED FOR THE COMBO PACK. I HAD NEVER HEARD ABOUT THE MONEY ISSUES, BUT I’M NOT PARTICULARLY SURPRISED BY THAT. I HEARD MORE THAN ENOUGH ABOUT INFIDELITY.

CRYS
My very first journal entry is in 1989 and it’s the day that dad was going to church court or something to get excommunicated.

DAVID
He had “committed a sin,” is what he said. He didn’t tell us what it was, but he said that he would probably be excommunicated. Derek asked what that was... “What’s excommunicated?” And we kind of talked about it. And then Mom, when this revelation was coming out, she was realizing what he was telling us, although none of us knew. She looked at him and she said, “Did you do that? Did you do that?” And we were like, “what?” I didn’t know what she was referring to. And she started screaming. It’s like, insane. She’s just screaming insane. And she runs to the bedroom.

CRYS
David remembers so much about that moment that I don’t at all. I remember laying on the bed thinking in my brain “Yeah, okay, I can kind of get that.” I don’t know how I thought that way as an 11 year old.

MOM
And I had been taking Lithium for two years when he finally told me that everything I thought and everything I believed was true. Thinking I was crazy all that time and taking that medicine for something I didn’t even need when I was right. Any normal person would have been upset. Any normal person would have been sad and worried about her family.

DAD
There were other issues along the way. I don’t deny those, you know, there were mistakes made.

DAD (MISSION TAPE)
Well, hon, it’s getting very very close to the end, so I just figure I’d tell you how much I really do love you and how much you really mean to me. All the many times I’ve tried… the many times I tell you… words just cannot express what I feel for you.

DEREK
I heard my mom screaming and throwing things in the hall. Dad was throwing his personal effects into a cardboard box and not talking to us and obviously angry and then tossed them in the car and drove off and that was it. He was gone. It was 45 seconds.

SIBLINGS
Mom was mad after church and all I remember was cabinets. I remember her in the kitchen and there was cabinets and there was pans underneath and she pulled them out and was doing something and said, “Get out of here!”
That’s all I remember.

DAD
She asked me if I loved her, and I said, “Well, I do love you but right now I’m not in love with you” is the exact words I said. So when I said that, at that point, she kinda blew up and told me, she said “get out of the house, I’m leaving you” or “you’re leaving me” or something like that, you know, and I said “well… wait a second… I wanted to discuss this” and she said, “Nope, I’m finished.” And so that was pretty much it. So I left the house at that point.

DEREK
In our home in Kilgore there was a little hallway between the master bedroom and the living room. So whatever dad and mom were saying at the time would just reverberate down that hallway. We’re put on high alert because we heard this uncomfortable obviously high-intensity conversation. So we just froze like deer in the headlights and that’s when they said “well then, we’re gonna get divorced and what are we going to do with the kids?” and this kind of thing. And so, instead of crying or beating on the door, we tiptoed back to our room. And the first decision is… whatever happens you and I are staying together. We decided that if mom was going to take one of us then we were going to stick together. And if dad was going to take one of us then we were going to stick together as kids.

CRYS
I remember we drove to a Bealls or some crappy department store and we were walking out and she’s like, “well, I think I’m gonna divorce your father.” And I was like Whhaaaat? So then I was stuck as a 14-year-old girl with the knowledge of my parents being ripped asunder and I wasn’t supposed to tell anybody.

DEREK
We then began to think about what would life be like if we were living with mom and how would that impact us and what would life be we like living with dad? Because dad already had a career and was already established and mom was going to have to start from scratch that argued in favor of staying with dad. Mom was also in a deep, deep depression at that time and once we started thinking about that in kind of a practical way we realized that mom wasn’t going to be an option even though we loved her dearly.

DAD
I had gone to a psychiatrist by myself and he pretty much told me, “Here’s exactly what’s gonna happen. The three children, the three oldest children, are gonna be old enough; they’re gonna choose to stay with you. She can’t stop it and she’ll take the baby.”

DEREK
And I was given the impression that some judge was going to say “And you, Derek. Who will you live with?” So, at that point I was really torn and I just basically made a tearful plea to both my parents you guys decide because I can’t decide. That is kind of how it ended for me before they decided who I was gonna live with.

MOM
The judge said that everybody twelve and under goes with Mom. And Derek was 12, and he cried. He told me “Mama, please, let me stay with my brother.” So I couldn’t take him even though I wanted to with all my heart.

DEREK
How do you cope at twelve or thirteen years old with the concept that you’re going to make a decision that breaks the heart of one of your parents and you’re gonna do it for a practical reason? It just seems so cold hearted.

CRYS
I remember telling my mom that I wanted to stay with dad. This was after she’d kicked him out of the house and whatever. And I was like, “I wanna stay with Dad.” And I was so nervous about telling her because I thought, oh she’s gonna be so mad, she’s gonna be sad, whatever. Nothing. She just goes, “well, whatever. “ And that was the answer I got.

MOM
I’m gonna be happy for them. I’m gonna smile and say “that’ll be fine. Everything will be fine.” I didn’t want them to feel bad about choosing between their parents because they loved us both. And so when they told me they wanted to stay with their Daddy, I said “okay, good. It’ll be fine. I’ll still see you. It’ll be good.” And it was tearing my heart out.

DAD
She didn’t want all four of you, but she didn’t want to not have any of you. I’ll want one child and you can have the other three.

CRYS
Our parents decided, you know, tear the children apart. No big deal. Yeah, let’s just send Colleen off across the state and that’ll be good. And then they tell me this and I was devastated. I remember those last few days of living with you crystal clear.

DAD
And so I rented a U-haul and loaded up everything in the house that she wanted.

CRYS
You were leaving...forever. I think you just thought, man cool! I’m gonna go in this big ol’ crazy van and we’re gonna drive and this is gonna be fun. And then you had no idea what you were going to. You were 8 years old.

DEREK
You were cheerful and you thought you were about to embark on a great adventure. They tossed you up in the middle seat of the U-Haul. You were looking around, “we got snacks, we got toys, let’s do this thing!”

I THINK I KNEW I WAS GOING TO GRANDMA’S, BUT I DIDN’T REALIZE I WAS GOING TO BE STAYING THERE. I REMEMBER THINKING THAT I WAS GOING ON VACATION. ONE OF MY BROTHERS HAD GIVEN ME THIS PLASTIC TOY SNAKE THAT I HAD ALWAYS COVETED. ALL OF A SUDDEN, HE WAS WILLING TO PART WITH IT. AND MY SISTER WOULDN’T LEAVE MY SIDE. THEY WERE ALL BEING SO WONDERFUL.

DAVID
Dad drove the U-Haul and Mom drove the van and you were gone.

DEREK
It wasn’t until I saw you guys cruise past on the main road getting out of Kilgore that I realized “Oh, crap, that was the last time that we were together as a family and that’s the last time I’ll see Colleen” in my mind. Then I thought what have we got ourselves into.

DAD (MISSION TAPE)
Well, ‘til the next time that you hear from me, goodbye my love.

CRYS
I remember I sat in this room. Here I am by myself. I slept next to you for 8 years.

DAVID
I also think it was selfish to want to have the one kid with her. She could have had you but she could’ve stuck around. She often said, “My kids were taken away from me.” I’m like well no, you left. We stayed there.

MOM
After I moved over here, he said I was selfish that I was keeping you away from your brothers and sisters. That he would let me have you. Maybe that was true that you were being separated from your brothers and sisters but I refused to give away the only one that was gonna really know me. I wouldn’t give up the only child I had left. And if he called that selfish, go ahead. Because I was keeping her. Whether I had to get a lawyer and spend every dime I had, but I was keeping my baby. And that was it. You have three-fourths of my children. You are not taking the last one.

AND SO IT WENT. MY MOM KEPT ME AND MY DAD KEPT THEM. MY PARENTS DIDN’T SPEAK AGAIN FOR OVER A DECADE, COMMUNICATING ONLY THROUGH LETTERS AND LAWYERS.

CRYS
The divorce is not the entire issue. It’s the crap afterwards and how he handled it and how mom handled it. That is the issue.

DAVID
It was just hard, I mean, we were left alone a lot. Crys, and Derek, and I. Dad went on business trips, and he had to, to keep his job. I did some things that were wrong, like, I drank beer with my friends once, and I remember Crys smoked a cigarette once. And it wasn’t that bad by normal teenager standards, but by Mormon teenager standards we felt really guilty about all the things we were doing.

DEREK
Boy, if we hadn’t learned to be independent before, we sure did then.

CRYS
We were such good kids. We took care of everything by ourselves and made perfect grades… we were such good kids and we were treated like we were like these hooligans.

DAVID
And maybe Dad was there, but I just felt like he wasn’t emotionally available. There were times where I attempted to talk to him about what I was feeling, and it was often dismissed in the sense that, well, “This time will pass” or “You’ll get over it” kind of things, and not really sitting down with me and trying to listen to my issues.

CRYS
I didn’t know how to handle my emotions and nobody taught me how to do that.

DAVID
It’s always been, “You guys have had enough time to mourn. Get over it.”

CRYS
No one ever helped us! We were just left out there to flounder!

DEREK
Unlike the older sibs, I never felt like I was so abandoned that I had to really get involved with other people outside of the family, or girlfriends or whatever, because I didn’t have that sense of abandonment.

WELL, I DID.

CRYS
He didn’t try that hard to stay in touch with you. In looking back it was almost like a grief period for him and then he . . . I don’t want to say got over it, but there’s no other word.

DAVID
Put myself in your shoes. I’ve got three siblings that live 300, 400 miles away or whatever and I am by myself with no siblings. Whereas Crys, Derek and I had our support system in each other, all you had was your friends… where I almost feel jealous of your friends because I don’t have a relationship with you like your friends have with you.

DEREK
And you didn’t have any siblings there to commiserate with; we did a lot of that for healing. So I can’t imagine what that was like.

DAVID
You lived with a whole different set of people… cousins who didn’t really care about you as much as we cared about you. Who didn’t understand you like we understood you. Who didn’t love you like we loved you. Grandparents who didn’t love you like we loved you.

DEREK
Your extended family was intolerant of anybody that was a little bit different and you were so creative and so bubbly and so not like the rest of the extended family that any time that you were trying to have your own personality that was aggressively attacked.

CRYS
I felt like I lost you so completely with the divorce and that was totally out of my control and I hated it and looking back I felt like I should have done more. I should have done this and I should have done that… I was 14. I was a little kid. I didn’t know what to do. But after moving around all our life we were taught just to let people go.

DAVID
I think my relationship with you obviously suffered by you moving away. But I don’t see how parents can do that to their children. I think Mom made a mistake moving away. I’m divorced now and I don’t have any inkling of moving away from my children. She needed to be around family or a support system or whatever. But she left her children so, I mean, but that’s a mistake that she made in my opinion.

I GUESS I NEVER FELT LIKE MY RELATIONSHIP WITH MY SIBLINGS WAS AFFECTED, BUT APPARENTLY I JUST HAVE NOTHING TO COMPARE IT TO. AS I WAS SITTING THERE LISTENING TO THEM ALL TALK… I FELT LIKE SUCH AN OUTSIDER.

CRYS
I hate our parents’ generation. They suck. Because every single one of them, “It was the best thing I did for ME. It was the best thing for me.” YES—you’re right. It was the best thing. For YOU. And guess what that involved? YOU. You you you. It was always YOU.

DEREK
Mom has unconditional love for her children. Just the fact that she was grumpy…I don’t hold that against her. I totally get it. It didn’t impact me that negatively. As far as Dad goes, it’s a little more complicated because it’s not as obvious that he would have an unconditional love for us. I truly believe that he does have an unconditional love for all of us but I don’t believe that he expresses that well at all.

DAVID
We don’t have the closeness with our parents that we could have. Everything is defined by what has happened in our lives, our past. Every time we get together we end up talking about Dad. We’re talking about what crappy thing he did this time and that time, just continuing to process it and rehash it. Whether it’s healthy or not, it’s what we do.

DEREK
Dad has learned to forgive but Dad has not learned how to apologize.

CRYS
All you have to say is “I understand.” You affected four people’s lives. We’re people. We’re not just your children. We are people. Every divorced person, “oh, it was the best thing I did.” Well, good for you! Pat yourself on the back as you kicked your kid in the butt.

OUR PARENTS DIVORCED IN 1992. ITS BEEN ALMOST TWENTY YEARS AND WE CAN STILL GET PRETTY RILED UP. I WAS HAPPY TO LEARN, THOUGH, THAT ALL THIS DRAMA COULD HAVE SOME UP SIDES.

CRYS
I’m a better wife and mother because of the crap I went through. Not because they taught me, but just because I had to teach myself.

DEREK
You know, if you come from a family that got divorced, you see divorce as a more convenient option and it makes you more likely to get divorced because when the times get tough you bolt rather than tough it out. My counter to that argument is that if the divorce that we went through as children, our parent’s divorce, hurt my ability to be a husband and father in some ways, it conversely strengthened my ability to be a husband and father in many other ways. And I think the pros outweigh the cons.

DAVID
Dawson and River, my two boys, are basically the family I have right now. They are everything to me. And one thing I’ll definitely never do is leave them. I don’t want to repeat what Dad did, by sort of telling them to get over it. They have their little six-year-old and two or three-year-old issues and I try to listen to what they tell me. I don’t want those two to ever feel like their Dad left them or that their parents hated each other. Sometimes you kind of get ingrained with the patterns of your parents. But, I’m gonna try my best.

DEREK
I will do whatever it takes to let my wife know that I love her and let my children know that I love them. That determination arises from the divorce and contributes to the fact that we have a very happy family.

MOST DAYS, I FEEL PRETTY CONFIDENT THAT I TOO COULD BE HAPPILY MARRIED… THAT MY FUTURE CHILDREN WON’T EVER KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE TO MISS THEIR DAD. OR THEIR MOM. OR THEIR BROTHERS. OR THEIR SISTER. EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE, THOUGH, I’M TERRIFIED… LIKE I’D ALWAYS BE WAITING FOR THE OTHER SHOE TO DROP.

DAD (MISSION TAPES)
It gets to the point to where, you know, there’s really not much else to add on to something. When you’ve said it all, the best thing is to just kind of quit and close right there.

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