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.