The Gutter Catholic Goes Home: Chapter 19 — Hosanna
Hosanna, Hosanna — Save Us, Save Us
This work documents my return to Florence, Oregon — the place where I began — after decades spent as a military spouse living on someone else’s mission, and after an unexpected and abrupt separation that changed the entire course of my life. It is the story of coming home, of reckoning, and of rebuilding.
As we await formal support orders, the children and I are left in a vulnerable state while the wheels of justice turn slowly. While things are finally progressing thanks to my attorney, it may still be months before we have financial stability.
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The Gutter Catholic Goes Home: Chapter 19 — Hosanna
Hosanna, Hosanna — Save Us, Save Us
“We see deer up there every morning,” she said, to my left, soft and calm.
I looked up.
The apples still on the tree, warming in the sun, their scent drifting around me, awakening something in my mind.
So fragrant. It begins to reach a part of me I had set aside for so long.
Not all at once. It is tapping.
Whispering.
Shannon. Shannon. This is life.
Like a particular scent will take you back in time, the aroma of the apples shook me to a different state in an instant. And right then and there, like jumping for a prize — something in me reached inward and picked up the jar of what I can only describe as terror. As if the terror had been sealed inside this jar, contained. I brought it off of myself and held it at a distance. Now I could see it from the outside. Turn it. Examine it.
The beginning of a thought: this isn’t normal, this terror I’m looking at.
It was no longer inside of me. I was observing it.
Because of that veranda. Because of those apples.
I’m setting down the jar of terror at arms length. Oh, this is terror. This is just in this jar. This is not everything. It is not everywhere.
I set it down, and for a very brief moment imagine a world where I don’t deserve it.
I am sitting at a table with complete strangers, a glass of ice water melting in front of me.
I breathe.
“Would you like a glass of wine?” he says to my right.
The girls are splashing in the pool beyond us. Apple trees on the hill behind the veranda where we’re sitting. A soft breeze. The scent of apples. So quiet. So peaceful.
“No, thank you,” I say.
“Would you like a piece of chocolate cake?” the woman asks. “It’s a Dubai chocolate cake. My daughter made it.”
I breath in the aroma of apples again.
The ice water in front of me is more sustenance than my senses can handle, as I observe the hill with the apple trees, the girls splashing in the pool, the people treating me like I haven’t just been abruptly thrown out of my own life. Shamed. Blamed. Unworthy.
The apples. The stillness. The simple normalcy of this moment.
I start to wonder if I should have come in earlier. I had been sitting in my car researching divorce law for hours — something prior to the blitzkrieg (the time after my husband’s sudden departure), I knew nothing about.
Because of my research, mind is beginning to grasp that in the eyes of the law, I am not a subordinate.
These people are so nice, I think. It feels like a shock.
It is the end of September, and I have been in the blitzkrieg for about three weeks. My husband who abruptly left the home exactly one year to the day after retiring from active duty service — has now set the terms for a foreign divorce, and delivered those terms like a commander to a subordinate. I had no idea it was coming.
The terms were these: there would be no lawyers. There would be no courts. That would be “financial armageddon”. Further, once the mandatory 10 month waiting period, as required by German law, was complete, he would file. What was clear to me was this: After the foreign divorce (where I would have no legal representation) was final — I would be thrust into immigration precarity. I, alone, would be vulnerable for deportation. Not him. Not the children. Just me.
Also, I had recently learned that there was apparently a financial catastrophe.
And yet for years, we had lived under constraint. My children went to Department of Defense schools in Europe and sat beside children just like these—children who, every long weekend, went somewhere. Italy. France. Austria.
That is why families move to Europe. They live there temporarily. They travel. They sit on verandas, breathing in the scent of apples in well-designed German homes.
And every Monday, after a long weekend, after Christmas break, after summer, my children would sit in their classrooms and listen. They would hear about the trips, the trains, the hotels, the meals.
And they would have nothing to say.
It was always blamed on finances.
And now, suddenly, there is a loud and imminent financial catastrophe.
A catastrophe that had never been shown to a financial planner.
Never brought into the light.
Never documented.
Never proven.
It was more lore than anything.
I had never even seen the numbers.
And yet now, without evidence, without warning, without preparation, without oversight, I am told that we are in crisis.
And this—this invisible collapse—is somehow my fault.
There are other quite serious things he says are my fault — but he has yet to show any proof.
The accusations come in emails and texts because he refuses to see me in person, refuses to speak to me at all.
I reply something like: Okay, I can see you want a divorce. But these accusations are not helpful. The children are in crisis. Can we keep the focus on them?
More accusations. The focus seems to be not on transitioning our family to a new way of life, but assigning blame.
In this moment, at this table, with this melting glass of ice water in front of me, and the small, comfortable bubbles of small talk rising above us — I continue to examine the terror with the very corners of my mind. I realize something else.
For 30 years, including the last few weeks, I had been operating largely out of concern for him.
I had not yet considered that this set of circumstances that have placed me on such a back foot, so unaware, so vulnerable—may have been seeded long before this moment.
I quietly excuse myself and walk through this house on my way to the guest bathroom. This house by the orchard, with the little pool.
This well-designed German home, clean, maintained, calm, while my daughter attends a birthday party.
I start to notice things.
Nothing is broken.
Nothing is ignored.
Nothing is left to decay.
And I think about our home.
The large German house we chose because it had enough bedrooms for all of our children. The house whose rent was likely nearly twice as much as this one, with the salary to support it.
And yet—
repairs were never called in.
My son lived in a room where the shade—the Rollladen, the heavy exterior shutter that blocks out the long summer light—had been broken for two years.
Two years.
He lived in darkness.
I had asked. I had insisted. I had protested. I had even become angry.
This is unacceptable.
Please, we need to get this fixed.
But my son was told by his father to look at a YouTube video and try and fix it himself.
It was only after my husband left the family home that I called the landlord myself, and learned that there was no way a child or normal person could fix that Rollladen.
It would require professionals.
On that day, the day of the apples, by that apple orchard, it is three weeks into the blitzkrieg - the period of time between when he left, September 1, 2025, and the day the children and I left for the United States — November 5.
For weeks, I had been not only enduring accusations and condemnations, but I had been doing backbreaking labor.
For two months, I moved through that house, cleaning every inch of it.
And finally, once he left — I was able to bring it to a dignified standard.
Not just inside, but the yard, the terrace—everything.
We stand for the least of these, I told myself. We bully the bully.
Repercussions be damned.
It was all part of my dignity work — a manifesto I had written, as part of my “Gutter Catholic” work. My social justice Catholic faith that I now practiced alone.
I documented it all, as part of my Dignity Work.
I documented it in emails.
At that point, I had started earning a little income from my online work, and I recognized the need to bring the household to a sustainable, livable standard so I could continue working and supporting the family. I thought, at the time, my husband would be thrilled that I was earning, as he had been talking for years about how we were under financial constraints.
I had also come to understand that the condition of the home was not meeting a basic standard of dignity for the children and me.
Because of that, I made the decision to override any wishes or directives set by my husband and take responsibility for restoring order and functioning in the home.
By August 9, 2025, after receiving an email from him that included language about removing the children if I raised my voice to him again, I became concerned about the legal implications of the situation.
That communication prompted me to begin documenting conditions and interactions for my own protection.
The Dignity Work was already doing more for me than I ever imagined I would ever need.
I brought in Donna, a cleaner—after being told we could not afford one.
That’s okay, I said.
I had made a few hundred dollars on Substack.
The first real money I had made in almost thirty years.
And the first thing I planned to do was use it making our home safe.
Clean.
Dignified.
The Dignity Work.
For the children. For myself. Even for him.
And now I see it.
That few hundred dollars —
was a fraction of a fraction of what he was earning.
And yet I had been told we could not afford anything.
We could not even afford to get or dog’s teeth professionally cleaned under anesthesia, he said.
Because I got my nails done. My hair. Because I bought cookbooks. Because I bought face cream. Because I had a subscription to the New York Times.
It was all my fault. My spending.
And something begins to awaken in me.
Because of the apples, and this birthday party my daughter was invited to, and this beautiful but modest shaded veranda—where the warm breeze curled the aroma of apples around me and woke up my senses, I imagined a life where I didn’t deserve what was happening. Because I was able to put the jar of terror across the table from me, a brief fantasy could reach me. I would pretend, just while I sat here, that I didn’t deserve to be blamed for anything at all.
That fantasy, dripping over me like warm honey, made me dare to see that little bit of money I made in a new light. I allowed that fantasy to morph into another one, and my financial mind started to come alive again after so, so long of believing that I was terrible with money.
I considered what I had been learning about assets. Law. My rights.
And I considered that few hundred dollars. To scale. A scope.
In comparison.
And I began to think….
wait.
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