It was nine years ago today that my life as I knew it and envisioned it came to an end.
It was the day my husband became my ex-husband. It was the day he packed up his stuff and left home.
When these life-changing events happen, like death, we can hardly process them they’re so immense. It’s only after the fact as we live and relive them that they begin to make sense.
The indelible image engraved on my mind is this: he took our daughter for the weekend, so he wouldn’t be alone. She was three; she had no idea what was happening, bless her innocent, trusting heart. They left, taking the elevator to the street while I went out on the balcony, invisible to them, to witness the final departure. They crossed the street, holding hands, a man with a tiny, tow-headed girl, and I watched them walk away until they were out of sight. My life and everything I had imagined it would be vanished with them.
When my mother died, I remember my father walking down the stairs at home in his suit, ready to go to her funeral, laughing at the patchwork tie he was wearing – a gift from my mother and a running family joke – using merriment to hide our grief. That day, I had no one to conceal the grief with, no one to process it with; that might have been a blessing.
I will never forget that day, or the date. I can never remember whether I was married on June 27th or 28th, but January 26th is etched in my mind forever as the day a new life began, unbidden. The day I had to reinvent my future, the day I had to learn to stand on my own two feet for two of us, Cecilia and myself, and try my best not to topple over.
I’m still processing it.
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