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"I'm not ready for you to die," she said.
That turned out to be just the first of John's seizures. When he got out of the hospital, Karen told him he could no longer live at her house. He would come by for Christmas and birthdays -- and when Karen was at work, just to see his boys. He slept at his brother's house, on the streets and in grim hotels.
Karen got her associate's degree, earned a bachelor's degree in business management from the University of Redlands and then started a master's in organizational leadership at Chapman University in Orange.
She bought a cabin in Running Springs, and she took the family to the mountains as often as she could. Sometimes, she took John.
One day the two of them decided to trek to an old fire watchtower on a ridge.
They came upon an anthill on the side of the dirt road. They both squatted down to inspect the giant black ants.
Where are they going? Who is the leader? What do they eat?
They did not disturb the colony, simply stood watching it and talking for nearly an hour.
Karen thought how much she missed these moments. She felt so comfortable with him. Who else would just stand there with her like that and contemplate the world?
And then on a night of torrential rain, Feb. 12, 2003, John walked out of a flophouse in old Torrance to get a pint of Smirnoff at the liquor store and was hit by a car.
The nurses in the trauma ward didn't let Karen see John right away. By the time they did, he was unconscious, hooked up to oxygen and IV tubes. They said he was dying.
"Please stay with us until Kevin can get here," she said to John.
Karen asked to be alone with him.
She grabbed his hand. His body looked so small and pale. She had so much to say. She bore this shard of guilt: Perhaps she marginalized him by taking over the household, emasculated him in a sense, accelerating his slide into oblivion.
She whispered in his ear.
"You are the love of my life," she said. "I owe you so much. Please forgive me for the mean things I have said to you. Please forgive me for not doing more to understand your pain, and to help you. I love you. I will miss you every day of the rest of my life."
That night last spring, when Karen got home from Hemet, she pulled out her laptop, got on her bed and started filling out the application to join the Peace Corps.
The agency is trying to enlist more baby boomers -- to draw from their life experience.
Writing an essay about herself, she thought more about her mother, whose intensity boiled over in frustration as a housewife. Karen would have been her mother if it were not for John's failings. She would have been the sidekick to the charismatic husband, staying home to raise children.
Instead, McCarthy not only got her master's but was also teaching business management at Harbor College. And before she retired from Raytheon in 2005, she founded a women's network -- to address women's concerns and needs in a company and industry where they were historically isolated. Giving them a voice became her proudest professional achievement.
"I was married for 32 years," she wrote. "My husband, now deceased, was an alcoholic. He wasn't just an ordinary alcoholic. He was the kind of alcoholic that people see panhandling at the freeway entrance. . . . He was the person who is invisible to the public, who smelled, and was shooed away from business establishments."
She felt, in a way, that John had sacrificed himself for her to rise.
Of course, he did not drink for her sake. But she believed in a certain harmonic equilibrium to the universe. Energy cannot be destroyed or created, just transferred from one object to another. Watching him waste his life sent her caroming in the opposite direction, out of the muddled middle she was in.
"I learned far more from my husband than I learned from my formal education, my career, or anything else in life," she wrote.
"I'm not just looking for a couple years in the Peace Corps. I'm looking for that couple of years to jump-start a new life and open up opportunities for me to build my vision of meaningful volunteer work. Passion drives me forward. I believe the Peace Corps experience would keep the fire burning within."
And so, like some fresh college grad with a limitless future, McCarthy, 58, will embark today for two years in an impoverished neighborhood on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia -- before she figures out what she wants to do with the rest of her life.
That turned out to be just the first of John's seizures. When he got out of the hospital, Karen told him he could no longer live at her house. He would come by for Christmas and birthdays -- and when Karen was at work, just to see his boys. He slept at his brother's house, on the streets and in grim hotels.
Karen got her associate's degree, earned a bachelor's degree in business management from the University of Redlands and then started a master's in organizational leadership at Chapman University in Orange.
She bought a cabin in Running Springs, and she took the family to the mountains as often as she could. Sometimes, she took John.
One day the two of them decided to trek to an old fire watchtower on a ridge.
They came upon an anthill on the side of the dirt road. They both squatted down to inspect the giant black ants.
Where are they going? Who is the leader? What do they eat?
They did not disturb the colony, simply stood watching it and talking for nearly an hour.
Karen thought how much she missed these moments. She felt so comfortable with him. Who else would just stand there with her like that and contemplate the world?
And then on a night of torrential rain, Feb. 12, 2003, John walked out of a flophouse in old Torrance to get a pint of Smirnoff at the liquor store and was hit by a car.
The nurses in the trauma ward didn't let Karen see John right away. By the time they did, he was unconscious, hooked up to oxygen and IV tubes. They said he was dying.
"Please stay with us until Kevin can get here," she said to John.
Karen asked to be alone with him.
She grabbed his hand. His body looked so small and pale. She had so much to say. She bore this shard of guilt: Perhaps she marginalized him by taking over the household, emasculated him in a sense, accelerating his slide into oblivion.
She whispered in his ear.
"You are the love of my life," she said. "I owe you so much. Please forgive me for the mean things I have said to you. Please forgive me for not doing more to understand your pain, and to help you. I love you. I will miss you every day of the rest of my life."
That night last spring, when Karen got home from Hemet, she pulled out her laptop, got on her bed and started filling out the application to join the Peace Corps.
The agency is trying to enlist more baby boomers -- to draw from their life experience.
Writing an essay about herself, she thought more about her mother, whose intensity boiled over in frustration as a housewife. Karen would have been her mother if it were not for John's failings. She would have been the sidekick to the charismatic husband, staying home to raise children.
Instead, McCarthy not only got her master's but was also teaching business management at Harbor College. And before she retired from Raytheon in 2005, she founded a women's network -- to address women's concerns and needs in a company and industry where they were historically isolated. Giving them a voice became her proudest professional achievement.
"I was married for 32 years," she wrote. "My husband, now deceased, was an alcoholic. He wasn't just an ordinary alcoholic. He was the kind of alcoholic that people see panhandling at the freeway entrance. . . . He was the person who is invisible to the public, who smelled, and was shooed away from business establishments."
She felt, in a way, that John had sacrificed himself for her to rise.
Of course, he did not drink for her sake. But she believed in a certain harmonic equilibrium to the universe. Energy cannot be destroyed or created, just transferred from one object to another. Watching him waste his life sent her caroming in the opposite direction, out of the muddled middle she was in.
"I learned far more from my husband than I learned from my formal education, my career, or anything else in life," she wrote.
"I'm not just looking for a couple years in the Peace Corps. I'm looking for that couple of years to jump-start a new life and open up opportunities for me to build my vision of meaningful volunteer work. Passion drives me forward. I believe the Peace Corps experience would keep the fire burning within."
And so, like some fresh college grad with a limitless future, McCarthy, 58, will embark today for two years in an impoverished neighborhood on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia -- before she figures out what she wants to do with the rest of her life.
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