Thirty Four: 2005
31 December 2005- Excerpt from Diana’s journal entry entitled: 2005 Summary
“… but unfortunately, it feels like the bad outweigh the good this year as much as I hate to say that.
Let me brief the good news. Zac and Kate did get engaged last February, although he was too nervous to ask on Valentines Day and waited until a few weeks after. It’s been a lot of fun to actually have time to plan the wedding- picking out dresses, looking at reception halls, trying out cakes… Also, Taylor and Natalie’s second child- Penelope Anne Hanson- was born on April 19th. She is adorable. She’s 8 months now and even more active than Ezra was at her age and if you can believe it, even more laid back.
Walker is always telling me that I give Taylor more attention than the rest of my kids these days. In the past I never used to be like this… I split my concern up over all seven of my children. But lately Taylor is just weighing on my mind. He is such a wreck right now. Where to begin… where to begin…
He’s a mess! My baby is a mess and I don’t know what to do about it. Bad went to worse and I just don’t know where it can go from here. I don’t know what happened! It happened so fast! After Christmas last year the boys stayed home until March before they left to do more international concerts. It was so good to have them home and to just be able to catch up with them. In fact, they all seemed to love being home. Zac slept until noon everyday just enjoying getting sleep, Isaac spent a lot of time with friends going to concerts, and Taylor spent the winter being the father I knew he had in him. They all seemed to be recuperating from a really long and stressful year of touring. It was really hard for me to say goodbye to them as they drove off to the airport to go back overseas. This time though, Natalie stayed at home since she was 8 months pregnant and I basically got to enjoy Ezra all to myself.
Taylor made it home three days before Penelope was born and seemed thrilled to hold his new baby girl in his arms. The boys promised me they were taking care and stayed home for a whole month before they flew out to Australia at the end of May. They even did Mayfest and their fans came from all around the country to support them. Sure, it was annoying to have girls driving past our house all weekend but what we tried to focus on was their outpouring of love and support for Isaac, Taylor, and Zac. After they finished with Australia they came home for awhile. Taylor wanted to spend the summer getting to know his daughter and Kate booked a flight to fly out to stay with us for two months during her summer break. Everything seemed to be going fine… until August. Suddenly in August something in Taylor snapped. I think it started all because of a fight he had with Gabrielle. Gabrielle hinted at a big argument between the two of them, but despite how much I pushed for details I received none. You know you have a big family when rumors, actual rumors, circulate around your household. But rumor has it that one afternoon Taylor went to see Gabrielle at her work (the same inner-city job she had the year before too) and when they returned that evening for dinner they weren’t on speaking terms. All of a sudden something just changed in Taylor.
He started to show almost zero interest in the children. If the kids were crying he’d cover his eyes and lock himself in his bedroom to work on his music- dark, sad music. He began to treat Natalie as if she was just a stranger to him- a babysitter to his children. I don’t think I’ve seen him kiss or hug his wife since before August. He stopped coming to family dinners yet again, started only talking to Isaac and Zac when it involved the band… when I asked him what was wrong he got defensive and stormed away. It was like the Taylor that existed the summer before Ezra was born… only he was worse. He had this cloud of anger looming over him at all times. I knew things were bad when Natalie told me that Taylor had started sleeping in the living room… except he wasn’t really sleeping at all. She said one night she found him at 5 a.m. just sitting up with a mixed drink staring at the wall speechless.
None of us knew what to do. We could all see Taylor drowning- suffocating in his own pain. The problem is none of us really knew where the pain was coming from. It was obvious there had been a falling out between him and Gabrielle because they took to never talking. They avoided each other completely. If Gabrielle was on the phone in the kitchen and Taylor walked in, she’d walk out immediately. They tried to hide their animosity to the rest of us, but we could see right through them.
One of the most painful things was one day I was sitting outside by the pool with Ezra as he did some watercolor paints at the picnic table. It was a nice warm August day and so Taylor decided to leave the house and get some sunlight for once. He jumped into the pool and began to swim- completely ignoring Ezra and me. Once Ezra had water color paints all over his arms and hands he ran over to the side of the pool and started yelling, “Daddy, look at me! Look at my paint hands!” I watched as Ezra climbed down the steps of the pool and reached his arms out to his father. Taylor just got out of the pool, walked right past him, and went inside. I ran after him and confronted him- said the things to him that everyone else had been too scared to say. I asked him how he could isolate himself from his own children- how he could float through the summer acting like he didn’t gave a damn towards the people who meant the most to him. I didn’t explain, he didn’t apologize… he didn’t even yell back at me. He just stood there, waited until I was done talking, and then told me he had some music to work on. When he can’t handle reality, he drowns himself in expensive liquor and desperate melodies.
I was scared to let him leave with Isaac and Zac for their third tour in a row- their Live and Electric tour. It was amazing though how Taylor could whip himself into shape for the public. Natalie told me over the phone that on tour Taylor continued to be distant, but as soon as he stepped out of the bus he’d pick Ezra up and carry him- pretending to be the model father. She said that he only talked to her when he needed something or when people were watching. Taylor gave up pretending to his family, but he was continuing to fake his happiness to his fans. I only saw a few shows during that tour but the shows I did see lacked a certain energy that Taylor used to have. He was even more sluggish than he was on the Underneath electric tour. Something was off and it seemed like even the fans could tell. They waited for him to jump around the stage, grab their hands, grin at their screams… but he never did. He did his job, bowed, piled boxes and bags into his arms on the walk out to the bus so he didn’t have to sign a single autograph, and then isolated himself in his bunk.
The family all went to Chicago to see them play and while we were visiting Ezra threw a fit when we were leaving because he wanted to come home with us. The fact that my 3-year-old grandson didn’t want to stay with his own parents scared me. He cried and clung to me as got out of the cab for the airport. Taylor did nothing but sit there stoically reading the cab fare while Natalie held Ezra back.
Bea died in November. It was horrible. Walker was a wreck, the kids were completely devastated, and we never even got to say goodbye to her. One day she was leaving our house promising to be back the next week with her world famous Shepherds Pie and the next thing we knew we received a call saying God had knocked on her door. Her time was up. I don’t think I can imagine worse timing on God’s part, although I know everything has a purpose and one day I will look back and understand. Taylor stopped talking and Zac actually called me up crying because he said things were getting so bad on tour. One of the boys’ opening bands tried to lighten the mood on tour by starting a prank war during the concerts, and Taylor laughed about it on stage, but off stage he told everyone to grow up. Zac said that everyone felt desperate. Taylor was controlling the entire vibe of the tour and everyone had become miserable from his attitude.
The boys intended to add another leg onto the tour that would include Texas, western states, and a few more California tour dates. But it was clear when they returned home to Tulsa for the funeral that I simply could not send them back on tour. As their mother, I put my foot down and told them I wouldn’t have it. I have respectful sons and so they relented and agreed to stay home to begin the recording of the album instead of continuing to tour.
I signed Taylor up for therapy immediately. In fact, I signed all three of them up. Isaac had recently broken up with Nikki and so he seemed shaken by that, Zac was feeling a lot of anxiety from the coming wedding and miserable tour because he is sensitive like that… and well, Taylor almost seemed suicidal. When he gave his favorite guitar away to Avery I knew that was the first scary sign that he might be considering taking his own life so I dragged him to the car myself and forced him inside the therapist’s office. He resented me so much for it but he didn’t want to cause a scene and so he went.
I’m not sure if I expected it to really help so I think I was surprised when he started to get better. He was making baby steps. The boys had decided to enter the studio on January 1st- tomorrow. But Taylor’s therapist advised him to push the date off until March so that he can take some time to recover the stress of touring before they start a stressful album process. Taylor keeps warning us that his fans aren’t going to be happy, but right now he really needs to put his mental health first. He has taken part of November and all of us December now to try and find himself again. He is so lost.
He’s getting better- he really is. He’s joined us again for family dinners and he has started to come to church again with the family on Sunday. I think it’s helping… he seems a bit more at peace lately. I actually noticed that he and Gabrielle started talking again, but when they do talk it’s usually only negative. It’s so strange to see them so angry towards each other because for so long they’d been good friends- close even. I pray everyday Taylor can put the pieces of his life back together. We’ve all been helping him. Everyone is a bit more careful around him, Natalie’s very loving towards him, and we’ve been warning the kids not to overwhelm him. But in the end, we can only do too much. This is Taylor’s battle. I don’t know what started this sudden and terrible change in him, but I just hope he gains control of this soon.
Gabrielle, who used to show so much concern about Taylor’s hurt, dodges the topic completely these days. She doesn’t seem to care how he’s doing. She is always telling me that we can only worry about him for so long until we drive ourselves crazy. Maybe she’s right. Sometimes I think she is far wiser than I am despite how much younger she is than me.
She graduates college this May. Can you believe that she is 22 years old? I can remember the day the 18-year-old little girl walked into our house for left-over stuffed shells. And now she’s 22, graduating from college, and looking for her first full-time job. She doesn’t come home quite as much as she used to. She says it’s nothing personal- it’s just that she has so many commitments at school and she can never seem to study at home on weekends. She promised me though that she’ll be home all summer. I’m paranoid that she’s going to get some job offer in New York or California or somewhere far away like that. I’ve already lost some children temporarily to New York City. It was not fun.
She is such her own person. She is so strong in her philosophies. Despite what Taylor accused her of last year about not being about to be a liberal Christian, she is very firm in her faith in God. She says she feels too blessed to not believe in God. At the same time, she’s still very natural, liberal, and as much of a feminist as ever. But that is what I love about her. I think that’s what we all love about her. When Gabrielle commits to something- she commits 100 percent. She realized how important civil rights are to her and helping the poor and so she’s not going to just put 70 percent of herself into it, but a full 100 percent… 110 in fact. She’s got such a fiery spirit and she doesn’t care what anyone else thinks of her. She makes her decisions because she thinks they’re right- not because she wants something or someone else wants something of her. I’m always encouraging her to look for a boyfriend, but she says she doesn’t have interest in dating right now. She says she’s too busy with school and career goals. She’s considering getting an apartment after the summer is over, but I don’t think I’m ready to let her go and so I’ve been asking her not to just yet.
Sometimes I blame Taylor a lot. I blame him for hurting Gabrielle and for keeping her away from home because I know part of the reason she doesn’t like to come home every weekend is because of his attitude towards her. He always has some snotty insult about her outfit or her beliefs. I blame Taylor for standing by watching his wife give him so much love and for not returning any of it. Thankfully, he’s spending more time again with Ezra and Penny but even still- I blame him for not being the father those children deserve. I blame him for starting to tear this family apart. Fortunately, we’ll never break. We’re all too stubborn to break that easily. But Taylor contributes such a negative vibe to the house that it makes all of us feel that much weaker. We’ll be fine and we’ll get through this. I know that. But I still blame him for making it so much harder on the people who love him most. I’ve never considered my son to be selfish… until lately. He’s improving and slowly returning to him old self again. I don’t know if he’ll ever be the Taylor I knew before he got married, but he’s at least becoming more like the Taylor that was at least civil and loving. I just hope he improves enough to stop hurting all of us and to stop hurting himself.
It’s amazing how in the past few years Taylor has practically crumbled, and Zac has just risen to be this even-tempered, mature, and virtuous man. I always worried about Zac…”