Martie Linn and Pat Dubois share a home with Dubois’ son, Joe White. The following is an edited interview with Dubois.
The story of our generation is the 58,000 names on the Vietnam Wall — all husbands and fathers that we don’t have. The hidden story related to that is the million or so young men who came back with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and have severe relationship problems.
To get to the end of the story before the beginning: At our age looking for a husband is going to be pretty useless. All the good ones are taken, and if they’re single there’s a really good reason why.
I spent 14 years with my college roommate’s brother with whom I’d always had a connection. He was a Vietnam vet with PTSD, and they don’t commit. He went into the VA hospital for open-heart surgery and literally told me to “Get the ... out” before he got home. Martie said, “Just move in with me.”
She had never lived with a woman before, let alone a handicapped young man. I told her, “You don’t have a clue what you’re getting into.” But she just loves Joe. She says Joe gave her her heart back after her husband died.
She works up at the hospital, and she had been living in this big house as a widow after (her husband) Bobby died of pancreatic cancer. They gave him six months and he fought for 18. It’s a very big house when you’re alone, and every year she was pulling money out of the savings account for the taxes.
I moved in here until I could find a new place to live. After the first three months, we looked at each other and said, “You know what? It takes two incomes to run a house like this.” So we pooled our resources. I said, “How much do you need, how much are the taxes, and do you need some help with the heat?” We added it all up, divided it by the month, and I said, “This is how much I’ll pay you to stay here.”
We formed a legal financial partnership and changed our wills to protect each other if something happens. If she dies, I can stay in the house; and I put her on as co-trustee and co-guardian for Joe.
We act like we’re married. It’s like every other household when one of you comes home from work and there’s tension in the house and the kids are screaming. That happens here. She’s always picking at me to turn out the lights, for leaving piles of my stuff around, and for being late. She just hates it. There’s a point where she’ll just go sit in the john and close the door because she just can’t deal with it. It’s the same thing couples go through. If you laugh about it, it’s not a problem.
On the flip side, she doesn’t have to worry about dinner, and I make her lunch every day. I don’t have to worry about coffee in the morning because the coffee’s made and my cup is sitting out. We complement each other and we take care of each other.
As far as we can see, this is a permanent arrangement. If something happened, like if somebody fell in love, things could change. But we’ve made a kind of family, and it works. The question, really, is: Who dies first?