For the Betterment of Sarah Williams - Chapter Three

Sarah went about the next few weeks in a daze. She went to work and took care of her children. She tried to live as normal an existence as was possible. She kept thinking about what the moderator said at the meeting she went to. She refused to believe that her husband abandoned his family. His family was the reason he got up in the morning and went to work, and the reason he came home at night. There was no way he would just leave them. Maybe he did just vanish into thin air. Did someone specifically pick him to take away or was he just picked randomly? Why did it have to be him? Why couldn’t it have been somebody that nobody would miss? Why did she have to be the one to suffer because of it? The anger swelled up inside of her to the point where she had to scream. She had passed the denial stage and had entered the anger stage. She realized that she needed to talk to somebody but she didn’t know who that would be. It was at that moment she remembered the older woman from the meeting. She found the woman’s number and decided to send her a text.

They met up for coffee the next day. Sarah explained her anger as well as she could. The perfect life she imagined for herself was gone and there was no one to blame. She didn’t know who to be angry at. There was no drunk driver to direct her rage against. The older women sat quietly and listened to her as she laid out all her complaints. When Sarah was done, the older women gave her own story. She had to come to terms with the fact that she also had no one to be angry at. Her own dreams had been smashed to pieces and so she had to find new dreams. Sarah would also have to find new dreams. Sarah asked her how she kept on living and the women simply said one day at a time.

Even though the older woman understood what Sarah was going through, and probably better than Sarah herself, Sarah didn’t feel any better. The anger and the rage was still there. The fact that there was no one to blame made her even angrier. If there was someone to blame, she could direct her rage in a specific direction, but the way it was, there was nowhere to direct it and everywhere to direct it. The older woman encouraged Sarah to go to the next meeting. Sarah didn’t know what good it would do but she agreed because she had to do something.

The next meeting started and Sarah had a better idea of what to expect. This time instead of sitting by herself, she sat with the older women who had befriended her. This time when her turn came to speak, she talked about what she had done to deserve this thing that had happened to her. Most of her life she had always gotten what she wanted and the fact that most people don’t find someone so amazing was not lost on her. Perhaps she didn’t appreciate her good fortune enough and it had to be taken away from her so she could. Maybe if she just changed her attitude somehow or learned some kind of lesson everything would be restored to her. Without realizing it, Sarah has passed into the bargaining stage. The moderator told Sarah that she didn’t cause her husband’s disappearance and there was nothing she could do to make him come back. The older woman insisted that they meet for coffee in the next few days and Sarah agreed.

When Sarah met the older woman for coffee a few days later, she had a renewed energy about her. She was determined to learn her lesson and for her life to get back to the way it was. The older woman asked her what type of work she wanted to do and suggested that she take classes at the community college. Sarah decided that would be perfect and went about planning for her new education.