Maryallyn Fisher

Ugly men could not have gotten away with what Dennis got away with. That's the truth-I would never have taken it, none of his women would have, and he had a lot of women. I was Mrs. Fisher the third. I've never seen such a handsome man in my whole entire life. He used to take my breath away.

There was never a doubt in my mind that he loved me, but there was the really good Dennis and then there was the really bad Dennis. He would go out on these binges and he would write bad checks. I would say, "Okay, don't worry about the bad checks; I'll go down in the morning and pay for them. Oh, you stole from your mother? I'll go down and deal with your mother and, yes, I'll make sure that she doesn't call the police. Here's something to eat." I mean, I just took care of everything, and nothing I was doing was working. When I took care of all the problems for him, that didn't work. When I threw him out, that didn't work. Screaming and going to therapy, that didn't work. When I let him take the medication in the house, that didn't work; he just abused the medication. Nothing I was doing was working, but I didn't think it was his destiny to die. I thought that God had a different plan or he would've been dead a long time ago. Dennis was a dope fiend. You don't use dope the way Dennis used dope and stay alive, so I always thought that he was going to stop, that he was going to get clean. I just believed that in my heart, that it wasn't his destiny; that it wasn't our daughter Jean-Marie's or my destiny either. I didn't know what it was going to take, but something was going to have to happen, and then he was going to get better and we were going to be okay.

So what was he doing? Drinking. He worked as a carpenter, and at an oil refinery, but those were short stretches, like two-three months. He was never able to hold a long-term job. Authority issues, for sure. And his anxiety level was too high. He would go into rages over nothing. He wouldn't sleep for like three days, and then he would be crazy. The holidays were a nightmare; planes, helicopters, everything was a nightmare. He couldn't handle anything. I didn't know what his problem was, but I wanted that shit to stop. I was the one that was starting to lose it, because he was doing weird stuff that nobody else would understand. Nobody else does understand unless they're married to a PTSD vet.

Dennis didn't talk about Vietnam at all, so I don't know all the details. But I know he got blown up over in Vietnam. He was in something like a tank, and there were, I think, six of them, and a hand grenade flew in there. They all died except for Dennis. I know that that was one of the traumas. There was a little girl that he befriended that one of the officers raped, and that upset him. Also, he was in a helicopter, and the guy who had the machine gun got shot to death, and Dennis had to move him and take over the machine gun. Shrapnel went through his shoulder and through his neck, about an inch away from the base of his spine. His disability was 110 percent. They only gave him 10 percent for the PTSD.

We didn't even talk about PTSD until we had been married for a few years, Jean-Marie had been born, and he was in therapy. He'd been living with symptoms for years, but nobody knew what it was. A diagnosis of posttraumatic stress? From the V.A.? Forget it! We had to fight for that. This was the '80s and nobody I talked to had any understanding of PTSD. They just wanted to get him out. They came to my house every night with a big padded envelope of medications, all types: Vicodin, Methodone cocktail, Paxil. Take this, go away. Towards the end when he got really bad, he would go to bed in November and wouldn't get out of bed until March. And that's the truth.

It was a big thing in therapy when we finally understood that it was PTSD. It took six months, just working on that one thing. He would be screaming and telling me it was all me, and I would say, "Dennis, it's your PTSD," and instead of saying, "No it's not, you fucking bitch, it's you!" he would finally say, "Okay, I'll think about that," and he would go out to the garage and do it. We had gotten to that point, but he just couldn't go through to the other side. He'd have to hit the bar.

I gave up the last two years. Actually, I should have left two or three years before I did. Nothing was working. He didn't need to go out and drink, he didn't need to do cocaine. We had a whole cabinet filled with different types of medication from the V.A. He just started abusing the medication like he did the other drugs.