It's not just my marriage that is gone. It is also my best friend. It's the shared memories. The stories. The nuances of a life together.
It's history. Everything I thought was real and true is now in question.
It's the couples we hang out with that carry on with other couples and find another pair to take our place, because a newly single woman doesn't fit the mold.
It's the dreams, the plans, the promise.
It's having to willingly give up my kids every other weekend and feeling a stab of envy at how eager and desperate they are to spend time with their dad. It's the empty house that echoes only the sounds of a distant train or an occasional scratch of a tree branch on glass.
It's wandering over to the men's section and browsing the clearance racks, finding a couple of shirts, and then realizing that I don't need to - nor should I - buy shirts for my husband anymore.
It's hearing a song on the radio that used to be for other people. It's hearing a song on the radio that used to be about us.
It's the absence of comfort, of familiarity, of warmth. It's the empty expanse of mattress where once, not long ago, were warm feet that wrapped up around my own.
It's reading a Facebook post that says "We got bunnies! -the annual tradition to buy the first chocolate Easter bunnies we see." Wait. That's MY tradition. I'm the one who buys Darren the chocolate bunny every year. He gets the first one, and then later, I buy them for the boys. It's such a silly, stupid thing, that tradition, but it ripped my heart out that I've lost even THAT. And it royally pissed me off that he claims it as his tradition now.
I know that I'm still cycling through the stages of grief. I know it. I sometimes wonder if it wouldn't be easier to just get pissed off and try to make him miserable, too. No, that's not true. I *know* it would be easier to get pissed and make him miserable. But it would also be death. I will not fall victim to that mentality.
One of the hardest things for me - no, THE hardest thing for me is that he seems to feel so FREE and HAPPY. He was absolutely giddy about his new place. He doesn't seem to be missing anything about our old life. It's killing me, the loss, but I think the loss is lost on him.
I wanted to meet my HeartQuest gals for breakfast last Saturday, but I stayed in bed instead. When Tink mentioned later that she'd hoped to see me there, I replied that of all the times in my life that I should've dragged my butt out of bed it was then, she replied with this:
Do not confuse genuine grief with anything else. Darren left. It is a deep and terrible pain.
Horizontal is as perfect a response as there is. While we would have loved on you big, one of us would have said something stupid in an effort to keep you moving forward or had an agenda for how you should be and you needed horizontal in a familiar room. Your choice was perfect.
In my thought there are 3 things that we can not reconcile. Suicide, abortion, and divorce. We can be made redeemed, but we never are able to make it make sense. I think it's because God has no file in his make up for incomplete journeys. We are made in his image and so we aren't built to know what to do with such severe and unnatural separation.
These things aren't like a regular course of life where our kids grow up and move out, or our parents grow old and leave to meet the King. They are a ripping without compare and to discount that truth will alter the course of healing. It will thwart the miracle.
Don't rush the Real Dad or yourself. You are watching from the inside as the Real Dad takes a tragedy and builds a glory. Hardest seat in the house.
You are a David with a heart after God. In the meantime, wait, rest, get busy, have your mantra indelibly written and ready to remember all day every day. This is a multi faceted diamond you and The Trio are cutting.
Pray for dreams to comfort you and reveal to you. Vision begats purpose. Purpose begats energy. Change the color of your strong. It's not what you thought it was. Rest first and most in the Holding Spirit.
Almost as importantly....call Tink for that margarita.
Do not thwart the miracle. Watch for her. Document her. Wait for her.
You are so loved and so easy to love.
Tink
LOVE that e-mail! Would so enjoy meeting Tink someday. :)
ReplyDeleteStace, I think the chocolate bunnies is just the beginning. Your brain is a well-spring of fun and creative ideas - things you've thought of out of the blue, things you've absorbed from the world around you, and things that you've seen that somehow spark that magic inside and come out of your head as completely new and different ideas. You are naturally fun and creative. I suspect that Darren's personality naturally has very little of the same type of fun and creativity. I'm not meaning that as an insult to him (though it's tempting given recent events). It's probably one of the things that made your relationship complentary for so long. Now that he's on his own trying to be a fun and creative parent, all he's got is ideas he learned from you. Which has probably always the case, but what used to be joyful sharing now feels like stealing. Though I don't think he will be able to stop doing things influenced by you (how could he after all this time?), I pray he recognizes how much of the beauty in his life comes from you.
On grief -- the thing is you're going to grieve not just the marriage/relationship, you're going to grieve each part of it as loosing that part becomes real. You know anger is part of the cycle, process it, its real, its necessary, but don't let it rule you.
ReplyDeleteOn Darren's reaction -- he's the one dealing with something new which helps mask (temporarily) some of the loss. Of course he'll be more excited than you, you are dealing with only loss. Men's single focus nature lets it seem like that's all that's going on, but its only a phase he'll go through. As the new becomes normal he should start visibly noticing and reacting to the loss more.
On stealing the bunnies -- that's because he values it (and thus you). He's also trying to minimize the sense of loss, for himself and for the boys.
On Tink's note -- Wow, you have a wise and good friend there.
Just an FYI on Darren's creativity, he has loads of it, or he did as a kid. He wrote some of the craziest stories as a young kid and set up all kinds of scenarios while playing -- by himself. He's extremely private, always has been and that masks his creativity. If you walked in on him playing, it'd pretty much end what he was doing (or he'd wait until you left). Our mom tells the story of how he was slow to talk, or so she thought until she heard him practicing in his room one day. He wasn't going to talk publicly (and by that I mean just the family) until he could do it well. He's creative, just highly guarded about sharing it (and may be out of practice by now).
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