Yesterday would have been 22 years of a marriage that, like most, had good days and bad.
In the years as the children got older, we began to refer to the date as our family's birthday and would often take a trip to celebrate the anniversary together. This picture is from one such trip, ten years ago this week.
As I have embarked on this decade challenge prompt, I have been accused of not being over the marriage, nor the man that I was married to. I've been told to take my memories down and stop writing about anything where he was involved. But to do that, I would have to erase my life til now and cease to exist myself.
And so- February's entry is simply a reminder that this was the time of year we decided to involve ourselves with one another, inseparably for the rest of our breathing lives. There was actually terminology to the same effect: 'two becoming one til death do us part'. And we stayed in that knot for the next two decades. Memories from our fracture point forward may never involve each other again, but the memories leading up to that point are not so easily subtracted. I can be a quiet, observing, stand-out-of-the-way type, but I generally resist any instruction to erase myself or to become invisible.
Every day I wake up is a day I am granted the same right of all living beings: to not apologize for existing.
Understand, dear reader, that my entire life - almost all of my twenty four hours, for the better part of two decades, was spent inhaling and exhaling this family, now dispersed. There were defined roles and job descriptions. There were births and shared losses, countless moves from here to yon. There were times of plenty and times without very much at all. I was in whatever circumstance we were calling home, all day, full time, all the way along. There were times I worked outside the home to help our ends have a better chance of meeting, but even then, my schedule was built around being out of the home when they were all least likely to need me.
... if you are here, curious about me and what I have to say...if you are trying to get to know me from afar...or maybe justifying choices you have made... if you are here to see how I remember the way things were when I was your mom... if you are comparing notes or taking them...here is a point worth considering: what does it look like when someone's twenty year old child dies? What seems healthy to you: a shopping spree or time spent mourning? Acknowledging the loss and properly grieving or adopting a new child right away?
You must judge according to your own standards, I suppose.
What must be grieved properly is not a person - or people- who belonged to me. We are born with a destiny that allows only one's self to inhabit body, mind and grave. I possess governance of myself alone, and that is all I desire, (except when I am conducting a class... then, I want others to sit down, speak softly and do as I say.)
I grieved being sent away and maligned.
Yes, I packed the car and extended our stay beyond his reach.
The first and last, boundary I ever held fast to, and the locks were changed behind me.
I grieved that the choice had to be made.
What I am not :
Seeking resurrection
Keeping the ventilator on
Going to disappear
And so.
In February, we were in the Keys again. Enjoying sunsets and the rise and fall of mangrove roots looping through the sand.
We liked each other enough then.
That was then, a different time than now.
Our lives were enmeshed - for better, and eventually worse.
I can't rewrite history... I won't.
The sun sets, but also rises.
“Surely there is the handful of nursery marchen that start, ‘Once in the middle of a forest lived an old witch’ or ‘The devil was out walking one day and met a child,’ " Said Oatsie, who was showing that she had some education as well as grit. "To the grim poor there need be no pour quoi tale about where evil arises; it always is. One never learns how the witch became wicked, or whether that was the right choice for her - is it ever the right choice? Does the devil ever struggle to be good again, or if so is he not the devil? It is at the very least a question of definitions.” ― Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
