Happy Birthday Daddy!

My father died just 5 days before what would have been his 73^rd birthday.  I had already purchased a birthday card for him, so I made it out anyway and asked the funeral home director to put it in his casket.  I remember tears streaming down my face as I wrote my message in the card.  I did not keep a copy but I know that I wrote something about being happy for him that he did not have to spend another birthday wondering about how many more days were allotted to him on this earth, or how many more special occasions he would spend with his family obligated for our sakes to appear light hearted and celebratory even though his failing health caused him such discomfort.  I remember writing that in fact this birthday was even more glorious than the original one on which he emerged from his mother’s body into the world.  On this birthday – Feb 27, 2007 – he had been re-born into a new life that lasted for eternity rather than only 73 short years.  I told him that I would miss him terribly but that we could celebrate his birthday together again before long and that I’d appreciate him meeting me (one step behind Jesus) when my time came.  I told him that as I was writing I was imagining him celebrating his birthday in heaven with his parents, his brother, his mother-in-law, his brother-in-law and even my own beloved ones : Linda R. And Stephanie G. whose deaths proceeded his by mere days. 

I made a video* in the weeks after my father died.  It is 30 minutes long and includes photos spanning his entire lifetime and a sound track with all his favourite songs.  For the first three years after he died, I loaded the DVD into the player and watched it on the anniversary of his death.  This year I decided to watch it instead on his birthday so that I could view it through the lens of celebrating his life rather than mourning his absence from mine.  There are faces in the video of people who have disappeared from my life through death, divorce or simply a dividing of paths. Regardless they are faces of laughing people in happier times, enjoying my father’s company... and they make me smile to see them. Next year my mother and I think it would be a great idea to hold a giant birthday bash for my dad ... five years after he left us, long enough to ensure that it will be a celebration and not a crying-fest.  What a great way to bring people we love together for a meal and a party and a tribute to my father.  Mark the date on your calendar if you plan to be there:  Feb 27, 2012!
*I have uploaded the video to a file sharing site and will post the link on Facebook for family members and friends who may wish to view it.

The Ballad of the Sad Café

Recently I read “The Ballad of the Sad Café”.  It was not a particularly great story, but I was taken with a little essay contained within the plot in which the author (Carson McCullers) presents her interpretation (or else that of the narrator) of what is going on when two people are ‘in love’.  She believed that in any love relationship between 2 people, there was always one who did more of the loving, while the other person- the beloved- eventually grew contemptuous of the one who was so shamelessly adoring to the point of disappearing within the devotion.  It struck me as a painful truth.  While most married couples would not likely describe their relationships this way (in fact long-term marriages from the outside look disturbingly like resignation, settling, apathy),  there is probably one person of the two who considers him/herself  less likely to fully recover from the demise of the union.  I would venture that fear about surviving a break-up often serves to keep people together through rough patches in their relationship.

Perhaps a little fear can be healthy or at least productive if it serves the purpose of getting lovers over the “did I sign up for all of this?” hurdle.  In my marriage, my husband was the beloved.  I don’t think that he worried for one minute about how hard it might be to live without me.  When the marriage ended, there was no doubt some sadness, some nostalgia – certainly, but mostly I think there was just a concern about how to maintain the mortgage on the house without my salary.  Two very odd things were asked of me after I’d moved out.  In spite of declaring our relationship as ‘toxic’ and the end of our marriage as being ‘freed from a cage’ (these are direct quotes), my husband made two requests of me: one was to keep his children on my benefit plan, and the second was to arrange for a university scholarship for his son from my place of employment.  At the time I could not fathom how he could ask this of me in the same breath that he declared our marriage irrevocably finished.  Briefly I considered the idea that he was looking for ways to keep us connected.  After all, there would be pharmacy receipts and dental invoices to exchange- all of which might lead to monthly meetings over coffee.  Mercifully my backbone re-appeared and I told him that I did not believe that he was entitled to my benefits if he didn’t want me along with them.  In retrospect, I think I see Carson McCullers’ theory at work here.  Only someone whose sense of entitlement was utterly entrenched could show so little respect for someone who loved him.  I think his requests were indicative of a level of contempt for me.  He must have imagined I’d disappeared so thoroughly into the marriage that I had no proprietary sense left at all.

He didn’t ask just once, but three times.  I can’t wrap my head around that.  I truly can’t.  It just doesn’t fit with the man who claimed to love me so deeply.  I don’t know how to reconcile that with the man who agonized over the choice of music at our wedding because he so badly wanted the songs to represent our love story.  Carson McCullers may be on to something here...

Chastity and the City

Last night I awoke, as I have many times in the past months, mid-way through a dream in which my husband and I are making love.  I wake up to find myself lifting my hips off the bed to meet the thrusts of my phantom lover.  It’s embarrassing (my dog looks at me strangely) and I generally feel pathetic and sheepish. (I was going to add the word ‘sad’ here as well, but perhaps the sad motif in my blog overall goes without saying, d'ya think?)  I’m pretty much resigned to living out the remainder of my days as a born-again virgin.  Marriage (except a restoration of the one I had) is out of the question.  A relationship is impossible because relationships either end in marriage (which is out of the question, see above) or they just end, period (which I am not likely to survive again).  Casual sex is not for me.  Dating that doesn’t go anywhere seems pointless and potentially hurtful, so there you have it: my sexless future.

I wish I could remember the last time my husband and I  made love, given that it was likely the last time I’ll ever engage in that particular activity.  It was probably Valentine’s Day a year ago- obligatory on his part I’m sure, because he’d already begun the separation in his mind.  It must not have been remarkable in any way, but that happens when couples have been together for many years.  If I’d known it would be our last time, I’d have concentrated more.  I’d have memorized the sight of those ridiculously boyish legs that had escaped aging.  I’d have enjoyed the sight of the cornuto horn (given to him by an Italian friend) resting in the fine silver hairs at the base of this throat.  I’d have kissed his face and inhaled his scent to take with me when I left about 6 weeks later.

I knew there was a growing distance between us.  I knew he had pulled away from me.   I knew something had changed but I didn’t know it was unfixable. I knew that the tensions of raising three teenagers in a blended family bordered on unbearable.  But I kept reading articles describing the enormity of the task we’d undertaken and I took courage from the fact that I’d chosen such a solid man for a husband.  If anybody could survive it, we could.  Clearly I was wrong.

It’s taken me all of these months to relinquish the hope that we could resurrect our affection for each other... that we could call upon the years of friendship to see us through the bad patch.  It has been so hard to accept that he gave up on us, that he could move on to another relationship so readily.  If I could close that chapter of my life as easily as he has, I might be able to imagine trusting in love again.  But it was for life for me.  It was supposed to last forever.

See the pyramids along the Nile

I slipped back into my hole (aka ‘the pit of despair’) for a day or two, but thanks to a great pep talk from a beloved sister in faith (preach it girl), I’ve crawled back out.    I will try not to be discouraged at how quickly I spiralled downwards back into self doubt.  It seemed that it took only a couple of people (or the same person twice? hmmm?) suggesting I look inward for answers to my marriage problems to momentarily derail me.  I was not derailed by the thought of looking inward, but rather by the presumption that I’d not already thought of that. In fact I’ve done nothing BUT look inward for 10 months... and I have the therapist bills to show for it.  One does not pay $160 per hour (Damn you SunLife for deeming this expense ineligible!) to have a counsellor tell you that your husband is a big meanie.  We have sisters, friends and mothers to do that for us.  We go to counsellors to help us understand our part in the breakdown, to determine what we could have/should have done differently and to figure out whether our insistence on hope is delusion or faith.  I have gone virtually every week for 10 months.  That’s the equivalent of a luxury cruise through the Mediterranean, or a trip to see the pyramids in Egypt. So instead of going on the vacation of a lifetime, I’ve spent countless dollars and hours becoming intimately acquainted with every crack, blemish and defect in my character.  I’ve also taken a weekly divorce class (twice!) to understand my false expectations and mythologies around marriage, and I’ve experimented with antidepressants to see if the real me was buried beneath some mountain of anger, trauma or bitterness. (It wasn’t!)  Without exception, every doctor and counsellor with whom I have consulted since my marriage ended has stated that I have taken on far more than my share of the blame for the marriage breakdown and that it is past time for my husband to step up to the plate and (and I quote) ‘be a man’.  There is so much more I could say about my husband bailing on the marriage, but I’d prefer to take the moral high ground and let my quiet words convict him gently as he reads this.  G'nite all. 

I'll fly away

Four years ago this morning, my father took his last breath.  My mother and I were standing beside him, sipping tea that the nurse had kindly brought in for us.  The doctor had just been in moments before.  She examined him and said that it seemed as though death was not imminent after all.  My heart sank when I heard that.  I wanted him to let go.  He’d been fighting for so long- seven years! His poor dear body had been through so much, his chest opened up twice, his chin stitched to his collar bone, his veins filled monthly with someone else’s blood.  I imagined him lingering for weeks in this condition somewhere between death and life.  It was time for him to rest.  If I were to be completely honest, I’d have to admit to some self-interest (self-preservation) in my reaction.  I couldn’t stay forever in this home-town hospital.  I had a life in Toronto, 400 kilometres away. My mother would need me more when he was gone.  I couldn’t expend my emotions and my strength on a protracted death when more would be required when it finally came.  I couldn’t ask for more favours, more special considerations at work.  I couldn’t be absent from my marriage when it was still getting off the ground.  And I needed sleep, badly.  Did he hear my thoughts?  Did he feel betrayed by them?  I heard one long exhale and then silence.  He did not inhale again.  I turned my ear to his lips, fully expecting to hear him breathe in as he had been doing all night, a rattling sound- like a tailpipe dragging on the road.  I looked at my mother.  She told me to get the nurse.  “I think my father has stopped breathing”, I said to a woman whose face I do not even remember.

In the years since, I have wondered what it would take to be allowed to see him one more time, to pull into my parents’ driveway and see him come out the door to help with my luggage, to wrap my arms around him and press my face into his chest where I would encounter, in his shirt pocket, a pen and the  case for his glasses, these 2 items stored there for as long as I can remember.  What I would give to sit in the same room with him again, to ask those probing questions about his youth and childhood, the replies to which were always prefaced with “Times were different then, honey.”  Though I wished him a quick journey to his Maker on this day four years ago, I ache now for having done so.  I want him back, God, just for a while longer at least.   I ache for the sound of his voice, but I cannot yet watch the home videos he made with such care.  I am afraid of the grief that would catch me up and drag me under if I were to hear him narrate our family stories again.  We are not a family anymore without you Dad.  I am happy that you are free of that treacherous body that failed you too often, too soon.  But I miss you terribly.  I wish you could be here to give me advice on my marriage, on the rest of my life.  Not a day goes by...

Times have changed

Things I can no longer enjoy since my husband decided I was no longer the girl for him

·         Muenster cheese

·         Etta James

·         The phrase: ‘I’m keeping you forever’

·         Cubist art

·         The Toronto Film Festival

·         Saturday mornings reading the Star in bed

·         The Sopranos

·         Paris, France

·         St Lawrence Market

·         The smell of a cigar

·         Pretty much any declaration of love

·         Ellicottville, New York

·         Vanity Fair Magazine

·         Tibetan restaurants

·         Rolling Stone Magazine

·         The late night snack

·         The company of his family

·         Candles

·         Coffee in bed

·         Wine in bed

·         Pusateri’s Fine Food Store

·         Cayne’s Houseware store

·         Ambrosia Natural Food Store

·         Yonge Street between Lawrence and Steeles

·         North York Public Library

·         City politics

·         Promises

The Frenchman in my Head

Last night I was reading Guy de Maupassant again (19^th century French writer who went mad after contracting syphilis) for the first time since undergrad days, and I came upon the following line in “The Horla”

“Where do these mysterious influences come from that change our happiness into despondency and our confidence into distress?... I wake up full of joy with songs welling up in my throat.  I go down to the water; and suddenly, after a short walk, I come back disheartened...?

And the first thing I think is that de Maupassant must live in my head and be describing my current state of mind.  I can wake up on any given day feeling optimistic, certain that I can survive the rejection and the loss of my husband’s love, feeling that I am stronger, better, more alive now that I have crawled out from under the weight of believing I was a failure.  I will think to myself “I must call my mother later and let her hear life in my voice again.  It’s been too long since we’ve had a telephone conversation that did not include my tears at some point.”  And then I’ll grab a coat I haven’t worn for a while to take the dog for some exercise.  I walk taller, my legs feel stronger, my feet navigate with certainty, I’ll have a smile on my face... until I reach my hand into a coat pocket for a Kleenex and stumble on a movie stub from the film festival 2 years ago, or a credit card receipt from a dinner we had somewhere, or most recently: the tear-off section of a ticket to the last play we saw together (The Overwhelming at Berkeley Street Theatre) just 2 weeks before we separated. I replay the tapes in my head.  Walking from the parking lot to the theatre, did we hold hands?  Did we talk about the play on the drive home?  Was he already planning then to end it?  Was he counting the days? Biding his time?  How could I have imagined that within a week I’d be packing up my belongings, scanning the internet for apartment rentals, booking a mover, rocking back and forth on the laundry room floor in tears while he looked at me and said “I have to go to work now.” Poof! With the theatre ticket in my hand, my earlier optimism will have vaporized and I will suddenly be sucked back through the vortex into a depression.  There are no tears when this happens,  just a heavy ache- square in the middle of my chest, that feels like a cardiac arrest.  I return home from my walk with my dog, thinking how welcome death would be, how blessed would be the freedom from that terrible ache.  And then I put the dog in the crate, put on a different coat and drive to work.

1,069 hits! Thanks readers!

I am posting early today, because I have plans for later this evening, and may not get to it.  I guess the agony of divorce is fairly universal since according to my blog stats, I have readers in Canada, the U.S., France, Italy, Jersey, South Korea, Argentina, the U.K. and Australia.  I did however receive a phone call from a family member this morning who reminded me that there ARE good marriages. She has one of them.  I thought I had one of them too. I suppose it doesn’t count unless both parties think they’ve got a good thing going.  The caller this morning said she could tell from reading my blog that I was doing so much better now.  That was ironic because when the phone rang I was lying in bed thinking about the reasons why I loved my husband.  That doesn’t seem like progress to me, but perhaps that I can speak about my marriage now without choking on tears means I’ve made some gains.   So here goes: a bunch of reasons why I loved my husband.

·         He always made sure we had a supply of my favourite wine in the house

·         When my father died, he rushed home from out of the country and brought a week’s worth of food to my mother’s house

·         He loved shopping at St. Lawrence Market and cooking together

·         He was a great writer

·         He respected my religious faith

·         He engaged in thoughtful intellectual conversations

·         He never worried about the fact that I earned less and contributed less than he did to running the household

·         He was kind to fragile people: children, the elderly, the sick

·         He believed in making a difference in the world

·         He loved music and introduced me to artists I’d never heard before

·         He spent all of one New Year’s Eve editing my doctoral dissertation and knows more about where commas belong than I do

Another day, I will make a list of what’s been ruined for me because of my marriage (i.e. the phrase “I’m keeping you forever” because it turned out not to be true); but today I am feeling at peace with the world, so I will stop there and try simply to be thankful that for a short while I enjoyed the company and affections of a good man.

Depression: The Refiner's Fire?

Depression has been a chicken and egg thing with me.   Was my depression triggered by my marriage challenges or were my marriage troubles triggered by my depression?  My default position has always been to assume that when there’s a problem, it must originate with some deficiency on my part. It hasn’t helped that I’ve typically hooked up with men who were happy to let me see it that way.  I am not sure where that self deprecation comes from.  I’ve got 4 university degrees, speak a smattering of half a dozen languages, and travelled throughout both the developed and developing world.  I’ve had dinner with dignitaries and influential people; I’ve spoken at conferences on three continents.  You’d think that I’d consider myself a woman worth fighting for. Yet when my husband seemed to think that I should be able to do more, I instantly bought into that. In fairness, I should probably present the case my husband would make against me.  Here’s what he would say about me (that I could probably agree with):

I did not take to step-parenting like a fish to water (statistics say 2 out of 3 marriages with blended families end in divorce)

I had high expectations of teenagers (they don’t lose their keys, they don’t skip school, they don’t speak to me disrespectfully)

I was a score-keeper (my child had chores, his didn’t)

I liked a lot of ‘couple’ time for intimacy, for feeling connected (two nights per week would have been  nice)

I liked to be able to depend on some uninterrupted face time (Can you at least turn your cell phone off during sex?)

I refused to absorb all his friends into my life and schedule, regardless of how nice they were (he had not ever met any of my friends more than once)

I was inconsistent with his children (if you define inconsistent as giving 150% some of the time and only 75% the rest of the time)

I was insanely busy trying to be all that he needed, all that his children needed, and all that my job required while at the same time, trying to ease my daughter into our new reality- it wasn’t just the two of us in our own lovely little home any more; now she had step-siblings who’d been raised with a very different value system.  No matter how generous I tried to be with my time, my affection, my energy, I always had the impression that it wasn’t quite enough, that it wasn’t remarkable enough to warrant his approval, that I couldn’t do enough to impress my husband.  My feelings of deficiency manifested in a depression that fed into those same feelings of failure and voilà – a lethal cycle was born.

As for depression turning out a better ‘me’ than I was before, I’m still wrestling with that one.  I am not so sure that sinking in those depths of despair was worth whatever measurable improvement in my character might exist now.  I do think that I am probably more certain of my rights now and if I had to do it all again, I’d be less conciliatory, less apologetic, less tentative.  I think I’d say  “Sorry but I can’t tolerate this” instead of trying to stretch and bend to make myself fit a mould someone else created.

And now after 10 months, and a blessed reprieve from the depression and stress that came with the marriage, I am actually not so sure if I want HIM back, or if I just want to live to see the day when he acknowledges that he gave up a good woman.

Not tonight - I have a headache!

A few months ago, I signed up for a free daily inspirational email message about recovery from divorce*. It arrives overnight and is the first message I read when I awake in the morning.  It serves as a pleasant distraction from the pain of scanning my inbox for a message each day from my husband indicating that he’d been abducted by aliens who’d reprogrammed his brain, and that’s why he’d behaved the way he had, but now government scientists have restored his true personality, and he loves me so very much and is wondering if it is too late for us to return to the lives we had before the abduction.)  That email has of course never arrived.  It has various incarnations in my imagination.  There’s the alien abduction of course, but there was also the behaviour altering brain tumour or stroke, the  bizarre side-effect of his blood-pressure medication, a nervous breakdown, a mid-life crisis, a terrible malicious rumour about me selling heroin to toddlers or sleeping with his best friend (Othello: grade 10 English class)... Whatever the source of the problem was,  there would eventually be that moment at which we’d both leap to our feet with joy, declare ourselves victims of the whims of fortune, and cling to each other tightly, determined to stay so close together in the future that the tentacles of adversity could never again wriggle their way between us.

I confess that I have not stopped watching for that email from my husband, but until it comes,  I do however get tremendous insight and value from my daily divorce recovery messages which arrive without fail.  For the past several days, the theme has been depression, and recently the message said that you will come out of a depression a better person than you were previously, the reason being that during the depression, you were investigating what you held to be true, what was of value to you and from where you drew your own sense of worth and purpose, or as they put it “"Depressions tell you something about yourself, like a mirror to the inner values that you hold.”

Tomorrow I am going to take that up at some length.  If I am a better person for every bout of depression, then by now I must certainly be a role model for Mother Teresa .  I am taking me and my crushing headache to bed now- my eyes are crossing and I’m unable to write well at this moment.

* http://dailyemails.divorcecare.org

Helga's question

Helga, you’ve asked what I was holding on to in my marriage.  So I will try to answer that now.

I believe I was holding on to the belief that I could have  a partner who would be my friend for the rest of my days.  My husband always seemed like such a ‘steady Eddy’ guy- no dark side- no skeleton in the closet, no wandering eye.  He was dependable, honest, and good and seemed to think everything in his life prior to knowing me was all meant to direct him on the path which would cross with mine.  He was so good, so normal and so even tempered that I would not have been attracted to him as a younger woman- too safe, too easy, too boring. But by my late 30’s and early 40’s, I’d had it with volatility and men who ran hot and cold with their affection.  I was looking for Mr. Nice Guy.... sure we’d never have ‘make up’ sex with wild abandon (sorry mom if this is too much information), but neither would we have those desperate ugly arguments that used to make me feel like that character in the Alice Munro story who pulled up clumps of grass from the lawn in the backyard with tears streaming down her face.  I was finished with Mr. Dark and Complex, and ready for Mr Straight-forward with No Surprises.  Ironic, huh? I thought I’d found him.  I thought he would be the one I’d grow old with, create photo albums with: of travels, and children and friends and birthday parties and Christmases.

 Just before my father went into surgery to have a lung removed, the nurse came in to give him a sponge bath.  My  mother took the things from the nurse’s hands and said “Let me do it.”  I excused myself and stood outside the room, thinking “what must it be like for my mother to bathe my father whose body she’d known since she was 19?”  Every freckle, scar, each little skin tag.  I imagined her lovingly bathing my father and savouring each  portion of him, committing it to memory in case he did not survive the surgery, as they’d been warned could happen.  I remember thinking right then and there that I wanted that depth of love with a man.  I wanted that depth of commitment. I wanted to know a man’s body as well as I knew my own, to know it over decades as it changed, softened, aged.  I wanted to try “in sickness and in health” again.  I wanted that absolute assurance that when I needed a friend, there would be someone whose top priority would be to be there for me.  It seemed at that moment that the world was a sad and scary place and that it was best navigated in pairs.

I married my husband a few years after that day.  (My father survived the surgery and against all odds continued to fight his cancer for 7 more years!)  I thought I’d found that person to grow old with, to take care of and to be cared for by, to build a life, grow a family, establish traditions.  But he jumped ship, and here’s a sad but true story.  At Christmas time, I was cleaning out a desk drawer - about 8 months after we’d split; about one month after I’d learned he was with someone else, and about a week after the failed seduction scene.  I found an unused address book.  I recognized it as a gift my husband had given me several years before, but I’d somehow lost track of it without ever making any entries.  Idly, I flipped through the pages and my eyes landed with great surprise on his words written in pencil.  How had I never seen this when he’d first given me the book as a gift? Next to Name, he’d written his first and last name.  Next to Address, he’d written “Anywhere in the world as long as my wife is there too”.

I wanted to call him and say “You’re not allowed to change your mind about that.  You’re my best friend.”  But I didn’t, of course.  Not after everything .  I just sat on the floor and wept, grieving the loss of  growing old with my friend.

My vital statistics

At midnight, I checked my stats tab on my blog and here’s what it says: I’ve had 471 hits from 4 different continents and 8 different countries. Very encouraging after only 5 days online.  I am beyond grateful for the generous and kind comments I have received in personal emails, and Facebook wall posts from relatives, old friends, new friends and people who don’t know me well at all.  Your compassion and your words of support are more touching than you can possibly know.  Please feel free to pass along my blog address to whomever you see fit... particularly to someone going through the agony of divorce (http://dreamer62.blogspot.com).  I’ve made it easier for you post your comments right on my blog if you choose.  If you tried to do so previously you may have noticed that you were required to have a g-mail account or your own blog in order to comment.  That was the default setting, but I’ve changed it now so that anyone can comment on any blog entry, and you even have the option to remain anonymous or identify yourself by initials, first name only etc.  Unless your comment is particularly unkind or vulgar, I’ll leave it up there ...even if your remarks are not appreciative of my attempts to be humorous, wise and articulate.  Besides -  by posting a comment on my blog, you will ensure your own words are immortalized  when Oprah approaches me about publishing my blog as a bestselling book and then wants to buy screenplay rights for a big budget Hollywood film.  Move over Elizabeth Gilbert- you may know how to Eat, Pray, and Love but I know how to Beg, Cry and Self-Flagellate.

I realize in retrospect that my blog entry from yesterday (Valentine’s Day) may have been a tad on the depressing side and judging by some of the email I received I think I may have left the impression that I am poised on the brink of succumbing to overwhelming despair.  So let me say that I most certainly have been at that point in the past 10 months, but if I was still there, I could not have begun this little writing project.  My pain was far too raw and intense until very recently to step outside it long enough to ascribe words to the hurting.  Writing is therapeutic and your comments have been life-affirming, so to borrow lines from 2 of my favourite poets:  While I certainly have “been one acquainted with the night”, I have also been given the ability to recognize that “kindness glides about my house.”

Valentine Schmalentine

Okay I did it!  I made it through the day for lovers without a lover.  A lot of dear friends must have been worried about me. Thank you for the virtual roses (S.P.), the chocolates (F.L.), heart lollipop (K.M.), the heart candies (J.H.) and the twelve long-stemmed yellow roses (??).  I am not sure who to thank for the roses and the marriage proposal (on the accompanying card) but I have a sneaking suspicion there’s a female friend or female relative behind the anonymous delivery to my office today.  For one heart-stopping moment, OneRepublic’s song Come Home started playing in my head and I imagined my husband as the mysterious benefactor, but that quickly passed when I remembered that he doesn’t even know where my office is because he’d never been there even when we were together.  Besides the card said “If it were possible, I’d marry you”, and my husband is... well he is already married to me (as I informed him last fall when he said he was involved with someone else).  So Mom? Sister? Girlfriend?  Thank you for the amazing roses- your generosity  and thoughtfulness are extremely touching.

So on this day of love,  let me tell you what I’ve done for love in the past 10 months. I believed with all my heart that the power of love (I know... nauseating isn’t it?) could conquer the barrier my husband erected on each occasion that I asked if we could meet to talk, or go to a therapist together, or even just go on a date.  I figured I just had to determine what angle to take, what words to use, what part of his history with me to appeal to.  So I made a list and set out to try them all one by one.  I began with an appeal to his integrity.  “But you love me, you said you love me.  You married me.”  Those pleas were met with “I am not going to discuss this with you now” – the old passive aggressive response to emotional displays.  So I tried to appeal to his logic.  “We’ve invested a lot of years in this relationship.  We’ve been through so much. We can’t just write it all off as a bad investment.”  That got me a statement that went something like “How do you think I feel?  I’ve wasted a lot of years too and I’m older than you.”  Crossing those off the list, I attempted to jog his memory about how highly he’d always regarded me. “Remember I spent the night on a chair next to your mother’s bed in the hospital so you could go home and rest!  Remember I advocated for your daughter to get an IEP so her teachers would cut her some slack!  Remember I got your son a scholarship.  I made your mother’s chilli sauce recipe for you every fall.”  But his selective amnesia kicked in and the response was “You are not the woman I thought you were.”  My appeals to fairness “I gave you the last of my fertile years and you didn’t want more children” went nowhere.  I tried suggesting dates, conjugal visits, plays, movies... anything to keep us connected, and the answer was- and I quote- “I can’t be your boyfriend.”  (NO THAT’S RIGHT... YOU CAN’T BE MY BOYFRIEND BECAUSE YOU’RE MY HUSBAND!!!!)  So sheepish as I am to admit it, I did what every red-blooded woman does when faced with rejection. I tried appealing to his baser instincts. I reminded him how much he’d enjoyed our intimate life, and how generous I had been in that domain.  I gave the best rendition of a seduction scene that I knew how, pulled out all the stops and left myself absurdly vulnerable.  He pushed me away, physically pushed me away!  Try to imagine how much that hurt.  Can you sink much lower on the self-esteem scale than offering yourself up in that way and being told to stop?  Oh well, if I can survive that, it will take a herd of rampaging elephants to kill me now.  So here’s what I’ve learned.  If I hadn’t tried everything on my list, I’d still be wondering now as I write this, whether it was okay to give up on this marriage.  If I hadn’t given every last ounce of dignity in an effort to save our marriage, I’d still feel bound by my vows, my integrity, my love for him.  But I’d have to be pretty thick to still be thinking there was any affection left in his heart for me after all this... so now I pray for release and the restoration of lost years.  Feel free to pray for me if you like.

And for those of you with partners on this Valentine’s Day, be kind to each other and be grateful.

Fat-ish, Fit-ish and Fifty-ish

I wanted to go with the alliteration (the 3 F’s) so I had to add the “ish” since I am not quite fat, not quite fit and not quite fifty.  I am actually rubenesque, in reasonably good shape and forty-eight years old.  When my marriage to my daughter’s father ended, I promptly lost forty pounds.  I threw up daily for several months and could not convince my stomach to see the value in holding onto its contents long enough for the digestion process to begin.  Such was my internal anguish over denying my pre-schooler the privilege of growing up in a family with a mommy and a daddy living under the same roof.  Her father and I tried and tried but we could not be happy together.  Staying together “for the sake of the child(ren)” as so many unhappy people nobly informed they’d chosen to do,  (as though I took off my wedding rings the first time my spouse mildly inconvenienced me) would have been the worst possible thing we could do.  We are great friends now.  We’ve loaned each other substantial sums of money, gone for a beer, shared a vehicle and attended every single school event for our daughter together for 14 years, always making an evening of it with dinner beforehand and cheesecake afterwards. But we couldn’t be married.  We were a disaster together.

Then I remarried and told everyone I knew that I’d gotten it right this time- that I’d voluntarily enter a convent if this one didn’t work. To this day I still think I got it right.  I still think I found my true love. When this marriage ended 10 months ago, I put on 30 pounds.  You know the theory about your body hanging onto fat when you are under stress because it senses impending doom and wants to be prepared for the famine?!  Well that’s what happened.  I was hoping for a repeat of the last time – a quick drop of 40 pounds so I’d be pencil thin for the summer (surely there has to be an up side to being dumped).  But no... this time around my body was hanging on to every calorie no doubt predicting that my 72 hour fetal position bouts buried under my bedsheets might require an injection of fuel from time to time. 

So I did it!  In January, as a new year’s gift to myself I hired a personal trainer.  She comes to my house three times per week and makes me do things I would never agree to willingly if I hadn’t already paid the money up front.  Push Ups, Dead Bugs, Belgian Squats, Side Planks, Shoulder Presses, and then some.  I am feeling lighter on my feet, if not lighter on my bathroom scales, and my pants are loosening up a bit.  Funny how feeling like you have more authority over your body can make you feel like you have more authority to take charge of your life.  I’m starting to have the tiniest glimpse at the pride that comes from pushing your body far past the point at which you once would have collapsed in agony. I hope this translates into emotional and spiritual endurance, as I have a ways to go yet before I can say I’ve survived- but there is a light at the end of the tunnel and now I can sprint towards that light without my knees and thighs aching!

There oughta be a law

This sounds naive, I am sure, but reneging on declarations of love should not be allowed.  I am not talking here about what is said between teenagers,  or even what is said between adults - if it is said when clothes are being removed or when emotions are heightened for any reason.  I am talking about voluntary, unprompted declarations that are offered up like gifts in moments of relative calm, declarations that are made again and again with a sense of wonder in one’s voice as though the impact of the realization could never grow old. “You are everything I ever dreamed about in a wife.”  “I knew the moment I first met you that you were my soul-mate.” “You are such a good person, a truly good person.  I’ve never known anyone so good.” “All my life I was looking for a G****** girl (insert his mother’s maiden name), a solid woman, a dependable woman...and I’ve found her – I’ve finally found  her.” “We will always be together.  Why wouldn’t we be? We’ve chosen each other, now we choose to stay together always.”

It seems to me that when these declarations are made for more than a decade, they should not be retractable.  Integrity alarm bells should go off. Lights should flash and the offender should be subjected to electric shocks located in the floor boards under his feet.  You can’t take back these declarations.  There should be a law against this.  You should not be allowed to say “I know I said that, but now I know I was wrong.” You shouldn’t be allowed to say “You are NOT a G****** girl.”  Who made you judge and jury of my character?  If you were wrong about someone for ten years, then aren’t you the one with the problem, not the person whom you voluntarily declared perfect time and again?  Besides when you realize your partner is not perfect, don’t you just kind of re-think your own need for perfection in a partner? Is that even feasible?  Oh and then there’s always the question “Since I’m faced with the reality that my wife  is not the perfect blend of Mrs. Cleaver and Kim Basinger, I wonder if I’ve fallen short of my wife’s ideal man in any way?”  In what kind of world, does a husband get to say “you’ve disappointed me and therefore I cannot be with you”? 

I wish I could be angry about this.  Instead I am just sad.

For the record

Having invited a number of friends and family members to read my blog,  I should make it clear here that my husband did not end our marriage because of another woman (or at least I don’t think that’s the case).  So my blog is not in any way, shape or form an attempt to seek revenge, or ‘out’ anybody.  I am no scorned woman seeking to ruin my husband’s career, or bash the homewrecker.  On the contrary, one of the most gut-wrenching things about this whole awful mess is that my (former) husband is a really good man, a kind and caring man, a man with tremendous integrity.  Like all of us, he carries with him the scars and the mythologies of his childhood and youth.  Like all of us, he wanted to recreate the family he grew up in, keeping some things, fixing others.  For a decade, he thought he could do that with me, and then he changed his mind.  His disappointment with me, his growing list of my shortcomings transformed I suppose into something like aversion, and now he has moved on (albeit remarkably quickly) to try again with someone else.

Women who claim to know about these things call it midlife crisis, and say he will be back within 3 years to admit he was wrong.  I don’t think I will be waiting that long.  I’ve decided a year is all I can offer and that year is up in 2 months.  So that’s what this blog is about: documenting my coming to terms with being utterly and brutally rejected on every level.  It has been a kick in the head, a punch in the stomach, a crippling of the knees.  But I am not dead yet, though I’ve wished for that many times when feeling so beaten down, that I couldn’t imagine getting back up. 

I’m peeking up from out of my hole, and slowly... ever so slowly.... beginning to be able to imagine that I could be happy again.  That’s what this blog is for!

Fem-o-pause

My period started unexpectedly on the day I moved out of the matrimonial home ("Why was it me who moved out", you ask "when it was him who no longer wished to be together?"  I've asked myself that question a thousand times, especially at the prompting of dozens of friends who've chided me.  Perhaps I thought being so agreeable would endear me to him, and he'd beg me to come back, or more likely, I left because I never really felt the house was mine to begin with.  It was a million dollar home, and I grew up in 600 square feet.  I contributed far less to the downpayment than he did - although to his credit, he never seemed worried about that.  There were three of them and only two of us. My daughter and I often felt like we were living in their hotel.  Their furniture, their pictures on their wall.  I must have known on some level it was a temporary arrangement.)

But I digress.., back to all things menstrual.  My period was not due on April 1st, 2010.  It should not have come for 2 more weeks. I woke up at 6:30 am (from my self imposed exile to the couch in the basement) to be ready for the movers who were due in an hour.  I raised my face to the heavens and asked "God did you really think I needed this on my last day in this house?"  I had no "feminine hygene products".  They were packed away in a box marked "BATHROOM" in blue marker.  I would have to make due with the resources available to me. (I will spare you the details).  I bled for several weeks, long after I'd unpacked the BATHROOM box in my new apartment.  Convinced my entire body was in mourning, I envisioned my uterus grieving over the loss of even the most remote possibility of welcoming my husband's sperm into a freshly released ovum.  When my previous marriage had ended, I'd been only 35 with a uterus that was still young enough to be optmisitic that there would be half-siblings for my daughter.  This time its fate was clear.

By May 1st, the bleeding stopped ... no tapering off, no winding down, no diminishing flow... just an abrupt cut-off (like the cut-off I'd received from my husband!).  Ten months later my period has never returned.  After 30 years of worrying about unplanned pregnancy, I am now infertile with no husband to share the emancipation from birth control. 

No migraines, no mood swings, no cramps, no bloating, no aching breasts.  I am now the perfect partner 7 days per week, 4 weeks per month. God is nothing if not ironic!

My ten new BFF's

Divorce brings a lot of new people into one's life.  Sleepless, I lay in bed last night counting all the people whose presence in my life I can attribute directly to my marriage ending.  Today I'll list the professionals only.  Another day, I will pay tribute to the wonderful new friendships I have developed since becoming single again. There are many of those... and the blessed thing is that they are not friendships with women who seek to bash their husbands, or lament their single state.  Some are even happily married (Hard to believe I know, but it's true!)
So for now - a la David Letterman - here are the top ten new BFF's you'll meet when your marriage ends:


1) a Marriage and Family Therapist
2) a Real Estate Agent
3) a Mortgage Broker
4) a Personal Trainer (see upcoming blog called "Fat-ish, Fit-ish and Fifty-ish")
5) a Dog Trainer (don't get me started)
6) a Psychiatrist (yes, I confess I've dabbled in anti-depressants)
7) a Parish Nurse (she runs the Divorce Care program at my church)
8) a Home Reno man
9) a Travel Agent (can't bring myself to use the one who arranged all our trips together, including our   honeymoon)


.... and the number 10 person who enters your life when your husband no longer wants you (drum roll, please):


.... the man who works at the post office who twice will help you fill out those forwarding mail service forms- once from the matrimonial home to the temporary apartment in which you will take refuge for a couple of months,  and once from the apartment to the home you will buy for the very first time all by yourself.


Honourable Mentions

• the tankless water heater company whose installer had to come several times to get it right (and still hasn't)
• the paper boy who is really a man and who gave me my first Christmas card (without knowing I used to get more of them)
• the property manager to whom I reported being threatened by a fellow resident while out walking my dog late at night
• the neurologist who is trying to figure out why my hands and feet ache and tingle
• the vet with whom I spent Christmas eve when  my dog ate a toxic amount of Purdy's chocolates and then went into convulsions
• the lawyer through whom I will file for divorce in April

I'm donne with yeats

Valentine's Day is around the corner.  Cheesy as it sounds, my husband and I actually did read poetry to each other every February 14th.  I probably started the tradition ten years ago.  We'd each hold a book of collected love poems and take turns reading our favourites to each other.  John Donne for me. William Butler Yeats for him.


" ...one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,  And loved the sorrows of your changing face", he would read and I would feel that familiar ache that comes with encountering words that are so wondrously strung together.


"Busy old fool, unruly Sun, Why dost thou thus through windows, and through curtains, call on us ?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run ? Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide late school-boys and sour prentices..." I would read and anticipate how afterwards we'd delight in rolling our tongues around the words saucy pedantic wretch over and over.


No love poetry for me this year.  Time to start a new tradition on the day for lovers.  Get a pedicure? A bikini wax?  But then, when the beautician asked what my plans were, I'd have to confess that I had no one to have soft elbows for,  or freshly shaved armpits.  No one for whom to deny my dog permission to share my bed or worry about the dog smell on my duvet.


This is not self pity, just a statement of my new reality.  He will be having a romantic dinner somewhere with her.  I will be trying hard to prevent my daughter from seeing that I know what day it is.  I will lose myself in my work - a strategy that seems to work for men.

Groundhog Day 2011

When my husband dumped me in April 2010, my 16 year old daughter gave me a book about learning to be single again.  The author optimistically claimed that most dumpees came around after about 6 months, peaking their heads up from out of the pit of despair, daring to take a look at the world they'd been hiding from for a half-year.  I on the other hand remained hidden in my underground refuge for 10 months, and my emergence corresponded with that of the world's most famous rodent- Punxsutawney Phil - on Groundhog Day.  So here I am, ten months and ten days after my heart and my spirit were wrenched out of my body, trying to articulate the pain and the lessons of the past and the blindness with which I approach the rest of my life. 


I should say that I did consider starting a blog about replacing my husband with a dog and finding unexpected love in the arms of a stinky drooling 60 pound orphan from the animal shelter.  It was going to be clever and include all kinds of double entendres about how a dog is a better than a husband (a dog doesn't care where he licks you) and provide searing commentary on my husband's character (a dog is faithful, loyal and keeps his promises).  I abandoned that idea however, figuring I'd run out of clever ideas and feel demoralized.


My daughter heads off to university in the fall.  My step children are 18 and 20.  This was supposed to be the beginning of the best years... no empty nest syndrome for me.  My husband and I would travel. We would be adventurers, socialites, activists, foodies, bookclub junkies and ecotourists.  We would spend weekends making brunches, eating European cheeses and sampling wines from countries whose borders we'd not yet traversed.  And as for those countries we had explored, they were already marked on the wall sized world map I'd given my husband for his birthday: green thumbtacks for the countries we'd visited only and white thumbtacks for the places in which we'd made love.  White for surrender; waving the white flag; white for the ultimate capitulation.  I wonder if he still has that map on the wall in his office.  If so, did he remove the white tacks out of deference to the  new woman in his life?  I wish I could tell her: there was Canada, the U.S., Mexico, France, Germany, Switzerland, Korea, China, Thailand, St. Lucia, Grenada.  This year we could have added England, Greece and New Zealand if he'd stuck it out.  Why does it feel that the loss is mine instead of his?  People who love me say that he was lucky to have me.  Even he called me his Nola Crew - a reference to a woman he once knew who famously loved her husband for reasons no one could  determine.  Even he once thought he'd done nothing to deserve my love.  Now he claims he was wrong about loving me, that I am not the good woman he thought I was.  Justification maybe for his own actions?  Even in my moments of most intense self-recrimination (which range from self-hatred to self-loathing) I cannot remember what I did that could have warranted the utter repudiation of his love, his marriage vows, his optimism about us, his commitment to our marriage.  After 10 months of spinning my wheels trying to decide which one of us has the brain tumour, I am embarking on a new path.  I am conceding defeat.  I cannot fight the battle alone.  He has won.  The marriage is dead: a different kind of white flag.