If You Must Go, I Wish You Triplets by Virginia Deluca
Virginia DeLuca is a dedicated psychotherapist and writer whose memoir, If You Must Go, I Wish You Triplets, is cathartic and replete with dark humor. The tagline is “Sometimes, we know the least about those we love the most.” Anyone who has gone through a traumatic divorce or relationship break-up is sure to find similarities with their own experiences and may benefit from this arresting work of non-fiction.
She was blindsided, gobsmacked and utterly unprepared for Perry, her husband of 14 happy years, to notify her in an email that he wanted a divorce in order to have children of his own. The previous evening, they had dinner together at home, chattered about their work days and other topics of conversation, with Perry discussing changing their cable TV package to get local baseball games. Only two weeks prior, they had celebrated their anniversary in Maine, laughing, loving and considering their future. They had enjoyed a vacation in Rome and Tuscany a few months earlier with Perry declaiming his love by the Trevi Fountain.
Sixty-year-old men are much too old to be having a mid-life crisis, in Virginia’s learned opinion. More typically, the age is early 40s, as this reviewer can attest. It was during this period when the three dear friends’ respective bored husbands of 20+ years, within the span of a month, abruptly decided it was time for a divorce. Ultimately, these women thrived without their former spouses.
Ill-Timing and Family Drama
For Virginia, friends and family members’ speculations ranged from the obvious ones, including a secret affair, a brain tumor and early-onset dementia, rather than his bizarre declaration of suddenly wanting children. At this juncture in the marriage, Virginia’s two older sons were married with their own children, and the youngest was engaged.
Family gatherings that included her widowed sister-in-law and best friend Louise, with her three children and grandchildren, were fun fests. They consumed tons of food, took long hikes and beach walks with lively conversations interspersed with music, laughter and lots of noise from games and nonstop activities involving the boisterous little ones. Perry disliked the crowds and the disruptions so much he often left home for the duration. Whilst he got along with her children, he seldom engaged with the grandchildren.
Unlike an aging film or rock star who could fund nannies, cooks and housekeepers, Perry was not a man of great wealth with the means to support a late-in-life family. He was a college ESL instructor with plenty of books who lived in a bachelor’s apartment before he met Virginia. He did have health care benefits, sick leave, vacations and a small pension, but this would hardly be sufficient to support a young family. Virginia had supplied the down payment on their home in New Hampshire, where she had moved when they became a committed couple.
The Perry Leaving Journal
Virginia was a divorced mother of three sons when she met Perry, with whom she believed she had “found joy in being alive.” Their 14-year loving, comfortable, and by all accounts stable marriage was one that would last until death do us part; the natural, inevitable end to a solid marriage. She was financially stable from her satisfying work, lived independently, had many close friends and a large extended family with sons already launched and thriving, with the youngest being 20 years old and in college.
Since earning her degree at age 39, Virginia worked helping clients cope with traumatic loss and changes, as well as within the prison system, where she led community therapy groups for violent offenders to help end patterns of abuse. Her work was compensated on an hourly consultancy basis without a benefits package or retirement plan, and her spousal health insurance would end when the divorce with Perry became final.
The abrupt nature of his announcement was followed by a strange series of emails, phone calls and fraught meetings, often culminating with Perry dissolving into tears. This included their meeting with their bank’s account officer to divide their joint accounts when his copious sobbing made Virginia feel like an unwarranted villain.
It was all very strange, prompting her to keep The Perry Leaving Journal, a meticulous documentation of the communications and incidents as they occurred. Perry spun unlikely tales and blatantly lied throughout, even when pointedly questioned, unwilling or unable to tell her what was going on. He would waffle about how he regretted the end of their marriage, yet told her he was no longer attracted to her and how much he deserved to have children. During one such conversation, Virginia, exasperated, encouraged or perhaps, cursed him, with the statement that became the title of this memoir: “If You Must Go, I Wish You Triplets.”
Personal Yet Relatable Story
It was a strange and unsettling time for this emotionally secure woman whose world was now rocked by betrayal and broken trust. The couple was about to place their beautiful hilltop New Hampshire home on the market because the hand shoveling required by the heavy snows in order to reach their car parked down the steep hill was becoming overwhelming.
Earlier in this Annus horribilis, Perry had spent a long vacation solo teaching an ESL course in Vietnam: a mutual decision to allow Virginia time to work on a novel that was a project begun years earlier and set aside. Six weeks before the fateful email, she received a phone call of congratulations: her debut novel, As If Women Mattered, about a 40-year friendship between four women who had met in a consciousness-raising group, had won the 2014 Piscataqua Press Novel Contest and was to be published.
Thus, she was suddenly in full charge of packing up their household and preparing the home for sale as she was poised for a book launch in six weeks’ time while Perry continued his “poor me” pity party and clumsily dodged questions.
In time, Virginia DeLuca solved Perry’s peculiar, mysterious and outlandish behavior, finalized the divorce, sold the house, and has continued to relish a full, satisfying life with the support of many close friends and dear family. If You Must Go, I Wish You Triplets is a deeply personal yet universally relatable memoir about finding clarity, relying on one’s own inner strengths, and ultimately triumphing.
About Virginia DeLuca:
Virginia DeLuca is a writer and psychotherapist and lives in Boston, MA. She’s the award-winning author of the novel As If Women Mattered, and her essays have appeared in the Iowa Review, The Writer, Huffington Post, Self, Glamour and Parenting Magazine. Her memoir, If You Must Go, I Wish You Triplets, will be published by Loyola University/ Apprentice House Press in 2025. When not writing, she is often reading, sharing books, drinking coffee and sharing stories.
