Kind words exchanged — 50 years after the divorce

I went to see my ex-husband (E.H.) in the hospital Sunday. I’ve had as little interaction with him as possible since our divorce in 1965, considering that we share two children.

But last Sunday, I was having breakfast with my son Mark, who was visiting from his neck of the Greater L.A.-Orange County woods, and he mentioned that his father was in Hoag Hospital.

That’s my neck of the woods! E.H. lives in Huntington Beach.

“Hey,” I said. “Shall we go see him?”

Mark had been closer to Lee, his stepfather, than to his own father, but Mark has been dutiful in E.H.’s later years.

“Sure,” he said.

I had last seen E.H. several years ago, at my sons’ stepmother’s home. My son Tim and I picked up Mark there for a trip to a family Christmas gathering.

“Who’s that old man?” I asked Edna.

“The boys’ father,” she said.

Wow. E.H. had looked older than Lee, who was 15 years older than both of us. Maybe having an older husband made me forget what men my age look like, but I don’t think so.

Clearly E.H. had some health issues, and they ultimately landed him in Hoag this week.

I greeted E.H. with, “What are you doing in my neighborhood?”

He actually had a funny retort. Wish I could remember it, but I was more focused on thinking he looked better than he had a few years earlier. Lost weight. Not so pasty.

He asked, “How are you getting along since Lee ... ?”

Died. He meant died but didn’t say it.

“I am doing OK,” I said. “I’ve accepted it. Lee wasn’t going to get better when he was here, like you will.”

A nurse came in then and said E.H. would be moved shortly to a rehabilitation hospital. He’d have physical therapy and be going home in a few days. I wrote the address down on the inside cover of a crossword puzzles book, using a pen that had nearly run out of ink.

The phone rang, and E.H. had a conversation with his daughter, my sons’ half-sister. I heard him tell her he would be at Hoag for several more days, not that he was about to be transferred to rehab.

Mark called Kathleen back and gave her the address, which I’d written over with a pen I had with me. I told E.H. I’d leave him the pen for his puzzles, but I wondered if he was able to do them if he wasn’t able to grasp that he was about to leave Hoag.

When the nurse was gone, it occurred to me that I might not have another chance to see E.H. again. Yes, he would recover.

But still the odds of my seeing him again were slim, and it suddenly popped into my head that I had something to say to him.

“I want to thank you for Tim and Mark,” I said.

He paused for a while for that to sink in. Then he said the kindest words he ever spoke to me: “I thank you.”

Some spontaneous actions seem almost inspired, and I will always be glad that I went to see him and that we were able to thank each other for the goodness that came from our brief, unhappy marriage.

LIZ SWIERTZ NEWMAN lives in Corona del Mar.