One of the most basic parts of being a parent is trying to sort through a bunch of options and figure out what is going to be best for your kids-- everything from what foods they should eat to where you're going to live so they'll have decent schools.

This next story is about a father trying to do that-- trying to figure out what's best for his children, and having some regrets about how things worked out. His name is Will Ream. And the choices Will has had to make have been pretty dramatic ones. And to tell this story, we're going to try something that we have never attempted before. We asked a songwriter-- a great songwriter, Stephin Merritt, from the band The Magnetic Fields and other bands, also-- to collaborate with us.

And mostly, as you'll hear, Stephin has composed music that's going to run underneath the narration of the quotes, like we always have in our stories, like the music that we had written for Act 1 of our show today. Though, in a couple of places-- and really, it's just a few places-- Stephin wrote songs, like real songs, with words, that he'll sing.

Stephin Merritt
[SINGING] I'll sing something that sounds like this.

Ira Glass
So during this story that you're about to hear, when Stephin is singing, he's going to be singing things that the dad in the story, Will Ream, actually said. The lyrics are all verbatim quotes or, you know, they're as close to it as Stephin could get within the structure of a song.

One of our producers, Miki Meek, first encountered Will Ream when Will Ream had just left everything he had ever known. He had grown up in this incredibly isolated town called Colorado City in the deserts of Northern Arizona. He'd been raised inside this religious group there, a fundamentalist group, a whole community of people that had split off from the mainstream Mormon church over a century ago, and has lived out there in Colorado City, in the desert, since.

So here is the story. Here's Miki.

Miki Meek
So when I first met Will in 2012, he was living in a rundown house outside of Salt Lake City, sleeping on a mattress on the floor, and just trying to figure out how to start his life over. He wasn't even sure how he'd gotten to this point. Because three years earlier, he'd been a happily married man living in Colorado City. He and his wife had four girls and a little boy. And they were surrounded by family and people he'd gone to church with his whole life.

But then things started getting strange at church. Church leaders went into this weird paranoid mode, seeing outside threats everywhere and in everything. And they began to ask Will and some other men to do all sorts of stuff they hadn't asked for before.

The church leadership had people it wanted to intimidate. These were former church members and people who were questioning them. So they'd send Will and these other guys from church out in the middle of the night to vandalize these people's stuff-- disable farm equipment, change locks on gates. And the church told Will and the other men, you can't tell your wives.

Will Ream
My gut reaction was, if I am married to her, then we are supposed to be as one. So why am I supposed to keep secrets from her? Because it seems to me like that would be detrimental to our relationship.

Miki Meek
Did you ask that? Did you feel like you could ask that?

Will Ream
I couldn't ask that.

Miki Meek
That's just not something that was done?

Will Ream
No. That wasn't something we did.

Miki Meek
Will says he and his wife had a good marriage. They were close. And now here he was, leaving in the middle of the night and staying out for hours and not telling her why. Church leaders told Will, you don't owe her an explanation. If she wants answers, she should pray harder. Even for a young religious wife, who was used to a man being the final word, this was too much. It dragged on for almost a year.

Will Ream
She would say like, what were you guys doing last night, you know? And I would say, I can't tell you. Or a man doesn't need to tell his wife everything. And I would use that line that they told me, which now, even just now, when I said it, it makes me go tense. That's something that hurts, that I was that stupid.

And there were quite a few nights where I remember she would be really distraught, and she would go into the bathroom, into the shower and just weep it out. And I would turn my back on her, and force myself to not feel. If there's anything I could ever do to take that back, I would have-- that I drove her to a place where she was very depressed and very hurt, because she loved me with all her heart.

If I'd had known at that point what I was choosing at that point, if I was choosing her or the church, I would have chosen her. But I didn't even realize it was really that big of a problem at that point.

Miki Meek
One day Will came home from work, and his wife was gone. She left him a note saying she needed to think. He tried to work it out with her for more than a year after that. But in the end, she wouldn't come back.

She and Will had gotten married when she was 15. And since then, her whole identity had been wrapped up in the church. She'd been an obedient wife and mom who homeschooled their five kids. And when she left, she was still in her early 20s. She had never experienced anything outside the church. Now she started seeing other men and drinking. And she basically checked out on Will and the kids.

Will was devastated, and he resented the church for causing their breakup. And things were getting even weirder at church. Will's particular branch of fundamentalist Mormonism is headed by the prophet Warren Jeffs. You may have heard of him. He got investigated in Utah, Arizona, and Texas for sexual assault and marrying underage girls. He was sentenced to life in prison.

Will and the other followers were told if they had enough faith, God would release Jeffs from prison. And so to test their faith, lots of strange new rules came down. Don't eat sugar. Only wear homemade clothing, and it can't be the color red. Will remembers one Sunday, a new set of rules came down specifically aimed at everyone's kids.

Will Ream
They talked about how the kids weren't supposed to play. I think that was probably one of the biggest things for me-- was they weren't supposed to play just to have fun anymore. And they were asking the people to get rid of their children's toys and to not allow them to ride their bicycles.

They basically were saying that we needed to sacrifice everything that meant anything to us-- everything from our desires to our physical belongings to our homes to our families to everything we needed to be willing to sacrifice everything for the prophet. I just remember leaving that place feeling like shit, thinking, is this really what I want? You know? Is this really what I want for my kids?

Miki Meek
Will got desperate. He reached out to his bishop at church.

Will Ream
I told him, I says, I need some help, here. I'm losing it. And he just says, you need to pray more. You need to get over it. That was all he said-- you need to pray anymore. And I just-- I thought about that. And I thought, you're giving me what I used to give my wife.

You know? And there was no life left in me at that point. I would walk at 2, 3, 4 o'clock in the morning, all through the night, just pace-- walk up in the canyons, walk just everywhere, just trying to get some kind of clarity.

Stephin Merritt
I had this big, blank sheet of paper where I was going to write my reasons to live or why not end it all today. And kids was the only reason I could give. I felt betrayed by my religion and by the only person I had ever loved and opened up to. You bet I felt betrayed.

They all said pray. Yeah, well, I prayed. I've had the knife sitting in front of me. I've had the pills sitting in front of me. And I've been sitting right up on the cliff's edge, with one foot dangling off the ledge. And kids was the only reason I could give. They all said pray. Yeah, well, I prayed.

Miki Meek
When the church told kids they weren't allowed to play, that was the last straw for Will. He'd already lost his wife, and now his whole life was about trying to make things OK for his kids again. He had a radical thought. Maybe they just had to get out and start over. So on his 33rd birthday, Will loaded his kids into a van and they headed north. Once they got 20 miles away, he stopped the car and explained to his kids what he was doing.

Will Ream
I says, we're going to go and make a life for ourselves somewhere else. I asked them how they felt about that. And they all said that they wanted to come and build a new life.

Miki Meek
Were you scared at all at that time? You know, did you doubt yourself at all?

Will Ream
I wondered-- oh yeah. I really did. I wondered if we were all going to be destroyed tomorrow and I screwed up. Maybe a week from now. But I actually felt like hope. It was genuine hope for the first time in a long time, that I could give them another shot at life. It was like taking a breath of air after you've had your head underwater.

Miki Meek
Will ended up way north, in a city called Ogden, not far from Salt Lake. He and his kids moved into a small apartment and started living among regular people for the first time, doing stuff regular people do, like going to the movies.

Will Ream
We went and saw Despicable Me, and it was in 3D. And it was the first movie they'd ever seen in their life. And I was watching them jump, bouncing in their seats, and giggling and laughing, and jumping backwards when it looked like stuff was coming out of the screen.

And, I mean, it just-- I watched them more than I watched the movie. And I got to see them be genuinely happy and not get put in check, and to just be a child. It was amazing.

Miki Meek
The four girls all cut their hair. They painted their nails and got their ears pierced. All of that was forbidden back where they used to live. And for the first time in their lives, they played with kids who weren't fundamentalists. Back in their old lives, they had names for people like that-- gentiles, apostates, wicked.

Will Ream
Well, we were at a park in Ogden one time. And they were playing on the swings, and there was some other children there. And one of the other children's mother came up, and was helping them and stuff. And I came walking up.

And my oldest daughter was like, Dad, you know, the wicked people are pretty nice. And the other lady just glared at me. And I was just like, oh, you know, I'm sorry. I didn't really know what to say, but--

Miki Meek
You're like shrugging your shoulders.

Will Ream
Yeah. I didn't really know what to say. And I just says, hon, these people aren't wicked. They're just like us. And they would ask me all of the time, so, are we apostates now? Are we gentiles now? So they were concerned about being able to go to Heaven.

Like, you'd hear them talking about it between themselves. They would be like, we went to a movie, and movies are wicked. So we're wicked people. And one of the other ones would say, no, we're not wicked people. That was fun. Dad said it was OK.

Stephin Merritt
Back in Colorado City, we did not associate with colored people. But in Ogden it's OK. These two kids who spoke Swahili-- we all had this barbecue, and my girls loved them. It was just like night and day seeing my kids play.

Back in Colorado City, wearing shorts is like rebelling before God. But in Ogden, they don't care, so we wore just what we wanted. Girls went shopping, skirts and dresses, and played music.

We could never do that there. Everyone would stare. We couldn't wear red, 'cause maybe that's what Jesus would wear. We couldn't wear anything bought in a store.

We couldn't eat sugar, play games. The kids couldn't have toys or do anything fun anymore. But in Ogden, we had parties. And the older kids went on a roller coaster. And they went and got their hair done.

Miki Meek
They had a good summer-- a fun summer. But when fall came, it was like reality hit. The kids were going to public school for the first time in their lives. They had been homeschooled before that. And Will decided to go to school too.

He only had an eighth grade education, so he got his GED and then enrolled as a freshman at the local college. It was incredibly tough for Will, trying to hold everything together with five kids by himself.

When he left the restrictions of their old life, he also left behind all the love and support that came with it. For the first time in Will's life, he had no family members, no church members, nobody to come over and watch his kids for a night, or to bring a meal. He had been living in this tightly knit small town where everybody looked out for each other, where everybody had known him since he was a kid. And now he was far away, and they'd all completely cut him off. One of his sisters called him up one day just to tell him that she'd never talk to them again.

Will got increasingly overwhelmed. He couldn't see how things were going to work out. He had no long-term plan for how to support himself and these five children. They were living off his savings because he was in school. All his energy had gone into figuring out how to get out. And they got out, but now what? One day in class, Will lost it.

Will Ream
Just something snapped. I just-- I broke down. I started weeping and I couldn't stop. It was really hard and incredibly lonely, when you're 33 years old, to learn how to live again, to basically start from square one.

Miki Meek
Will went home and curled up on the couch for three or four hours, crying. Then he went and picked up his kids from school.

Will Ream
And then I started making dinner, and then I kind of-- it was like I was kind of out of it. And when I came back to, I just started kind of looking around. And I asked my oldest daughter, did you check on the food in the oven? And she's like, uh, we already ate, Dad.

I looked around and my oldest daughter had gotten the dinner out of the oven and served the children and fed them, and they were done. And she'd cleared the dishes off the table, and they were sitting in the sink. And I realized it was three hours later. It freaked me out.

Miki Meek
Will thinks that for three hours he was just standing in one spot in the kitchen as his kids walked around him and served themselves dinner. In those three hours, Will could have set fire to the casserole or the apartment. A lot could have gone wrong.

Will's only goal, at this point in his life, was to be a good dad to these kids. Now he felt like he was putting them in real danger. His five kids were all young. The oldest was 11 and the youngest was four. I am not stable, he thought.

So Will started talking to some counselors. They told him that his situation was serious. He needed to let someone help him care for his kids. So he started looking for help. And within a week, Will's friends, families he was just getting to know, agreed to let his kids live with them, just for a little while, just until Will got back on his feet.

Will tried to explain this to his kids-- that he wasn't doing so well, that he needed someone to help with them. And then his 11-year-old piped up.

Will Ream
And that's when she says, well, I can, Dad. And it just made me feel worse. And I just told her, I says, I can't allow you to do that. I can't. I says, you need to be a kid.

They didn't understand. I mean, they were just like, well, what, a week? Do we get to come home next weekend? And it was hard, because I couldn't give them a period of time. I didn't know. And I was just hoping that somehow, some way that I would just grow back, that I would be able to, that I would be able to stand up and take care of it.

Miki Meek
That's not what happened, though. What was supposed to be temporary turned into two years. That's when I first talked to Will. He was living in a house with a beat up couch and a mattress, not a lot more, and doing pretty badly. He'd dropped out of school and taken a construction job to support the family, but it just wasn't enough. He'd spiraled into a depression where all he could do was work and sleep. This is from that first interview.

Will Ream
I'll still have some pretty bad lows, some pretty bad days sometimes, where I just need to just kind of disappear into the ether and think about things. And I just-- it's really hard, really hard for me to deal with. I feel like I've failed kind of, where I'm not taking care of my kids anymore. My family's not together anymore-- stuff like that.

It feels like I've had to admit failure, which is hard. But I always identified myself as their dad. But hopefully I can get into a place where I'd really like to be Dad again.

Miki Meek
His daughters were only 20 minutes away, but it was hard for Will to see them. He'd go over and read books and play games with them. And then when he had to leave, they'd always ask, when do we get to come home? Will never had an answer for them. His life was still a mess. And so he'd drive away feeling totally wrecked that he let them down.

Will started going to see them less often because it was so painful, and because it seemed like the more he stayed away, the better they did. Seeing him raised upsetting questions. And when he stayed away, they thrived, settled into their new lives, and made friends. They played soccer, which the girls never would have done back in their old community in Colorado City. They got to be kids.

And so Will came to a hard, awful conclusion. He needed to let them move on without the question of coming home always hanging over their heads. And so after they'd been living with their new families for three years, Will waived his parental rights. He let the families adopt his kids.

Miki Meek
Giving up your kids, you gave them a better life. But it didn't necessarily do that exact thing for you.

Will Ream
It didn't do that exact thing for me, but that's OK. I'm fine with that. Because they have what I wanted them to have now. They have what I couldn't give them otherwise.

Miki Meek
Will had done what he originally wanted to do when he left Colorado City-- he'd given his kids a better life. The girls' adopted mom told me that his daughters understand this now, that when Will gave them up, he did it for them, not for himself. But it took them a while to see it that way.

It's gotten easier for Will to visit his kids and Skype with them. He used to keep all their photos boxed up. It was too hard to look at them. But now his bedroom shelves are lined with their pictures. The kids' adopted families live farther away now. That's hard.

His son is now in Southern Utah, and his four daughters are in another state. And so Will took a job driving oil trucks in Texas and North Dakota. The pay was better, and he no longer had a reason to stick around Salt Lake full time. At each point since leaving Colorado City, Will made what seemed like the best choice for his family. But as a result, he doesn't have a family anymore.

Will Ream
You know, I miss them all day, every day. They've never left my mind. I think about the way they used to laugh, their little oddities, the weird little things they would say, they way they would walk, when they learned to walk, how long their mom was in labor with them, the way they looked when they were born.

Miki Meek
If you could somehow go back in time, would you?

Will Ream
If I could go back and have everything that I've experienced been removed from my plate, and just drop straight back into that, into the same mindset? I might. It was a good life. I refer to that point in my life as having everything-- back when I had everything. And that was the pinnacle of my life. That was when everything made sense and I had everything I ever wanted.

Stephin Merritt
I've lost hope and I've lost my youth-- lost my church and my hold on truth. I've lost my health. I can't do 9:00 to 5:00. But I can still drive.

I started life again at 33. I hauled my ass to Texas to be me, to save my sanity. I lost my family. All the doors slammed shut.

I know who I am, but I'm not sure what. I did what I had to do to survive. I don't sleep too well, but I can still drive.

 

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