People with Money

A friend once told me the story of the end of his marriage. He had been a high-flying senior executive with a world-wide conglomerate. After decades of travel, and wining and dining, he decided to retire and buy an estate out in Ottawa’s west end.

Retirement didn’t come easy to John and he decided to spend most of his time with his new girlfriend, Pinot Grigio. For months, he wandered around the third floor of his house while his wife moved on with her new boyfriend, Yoga.

One day, he came down stairs and found his wife sitting at the table. She looked up from her phone and regarded him with a stone cold smile.

“What are you still doing here?’ she asked.

It was the end of a love affair that had last two decades but it was over. At 66 years-old, John was a bachelor again. He sobered up and struck out in the world to find a new wife, a new life, but nothing worked. No amount of money in the world could have bought him what he once had with Julie. And all the cars and toys in the world couldn’t fill the vacuum.

Fifteen years later, John is still single. He still lives in a McMansion, has private health care, and a gym in an opulent hotel nearby. Julie lives close, they break bread together weekly, and they text daily.

They still love in each other but they don’t love each other. They never got divorced, and probably never will — especially at his advanced age (she is at least 10 years younger and doesn’t seem interested in losing what they worked so hard to create). But she isn’t there for him in ways that other couples are, and it can result in some dire consequences.

About five years ago, John was taking out the garbage and fell. His country estate was pretty far from the neighbors, and despite him shouting, he lay on the sidewalk for nearly a day. When he finally crawled into the house, he looked up and saw his phone on the counter. John couldn’t reach it, and passed out for many hours. Eventually, he made his way to the bedroom where he had a land line and manage to pull it down from the dresser. It was a total of two and a half days before John finally called Julie who called the hospital where he spent months in rehab for a severely broken hip.

A couple of years later, he got a call from Julie whose neighbors found her on the side walk unconscious. She recovered from her injuries and returned to her abode alone with a fall-down monitor.

Just this past winter, John took another header in his McMansion and landed on his shoulder breaking it and severely damaging his rotator cuff. Again, he laid there for two and a half days because his Apple Watch was sitting on the counter.

This whole situation made me wonder why the two of them just didn’t get another McMansion together with three floors and an intercom. Like Andrew and Fergie.

People confuse me on a regular basis. Especially people with money.