I hadn't planned to conclude the Goodbye Series on Valentine's Day, yet it feels appropriate -- a candid portrayal of the disorientation and devastation of love's destruction and a tribute to a girl who loved fiercely and is learning to integrate loss. Click here and here to read the other essays in the series.
The mountains glowed in in the warm December sun as we drove through rural Virginia. It was no small feat to slip away from five young children for four days, but our fifteenth wedding anniversary was worth the effort. I am sure it took several hours for us to unwind. As we exited the highway, I soaked in the beauty of the forest and hills, the curves of the road following a lively stream outside my window.
In the coming months, I would return to this moment when the golden sun splashed across his face and I grabbed my phone to take a picture while he drove, his familiar smile flashing my way. I would study the picture, search his eyes, looking for clues.
How did I miss it?
How could I not know?
I felt giddy with the freedom of being alone together in the car, surrounded by the frozen beauty of the forest. I shifted to face him. “So, how are we doing? 15 years … I mean, how are we? Is there anything we should talk about or that you want to work on? How can we do better?”
I felt secure in our marriage, despite the mayhem of five kids in ten years and an active, busy household. I didn’t have any real concerns, but wanted this time away to be more than just entertainment. I wanted a chance to grow closer, to take the pulse of our marriage, and see where we needed to grow. I wanted us to be the best we could be.
He kept his eyes on the road, but answered lightly. “No, I think we are good. There’s nothing. I’m really happy.”
In a matter of months, I would know the truth.
His first affair was more than a year prior. Several others followed and even as we drove, he was seeing the “other woman”, the one he would choose over me, over our family.
As I recall that weekend, my memory shifts to a montage of what I thought was a beautiful getaway – massages, skiing, fancy dinners, New Year’s Eve. I have searched the photos for clues, but see nothing amiss: just a loving husband and wife and the simple pleasure of time to celebrate their marriage and everything they were building together.
Three weeks later he returned from what I thought was a business trip and told me he didn’t love me anymore -- and didn’t think he ever had.
Years ago, I watched a poignant video on the transitions of motherhood. It is only in hindsight that we realize our children no longer wish to be carried to bed or need help with their bath or need their shoes tied.
The “lasts” aren’t honored or grieved in the moment, only through the gaze of your rear-view mirror.
So went my marriage. The man I knew and loved was gone before I had a chance to say goodbye. I don’t mean physically gone. He still lived in my house for many months, then later appeared at the door to pick up the children. We still texted as needed for years, but he was a stranger.
In the first year of our agonizing uncoupling, the man I knew would reappear occasionally for hours or days at a time, confused, broken, and devastated. Desperate to save us, I would open my arms and my heart again and again, sure that we could do this. Together, we could fix what he thought was wrong, heal what he believed was broken. But it didn’t last. He would vaporize again into an adversary I neither knew nor liked.
The last time he appeared was almost two years after the initial declaration that he didn’t love me. Our separation agreement was months before. I was adjusting to the horrific new normal of custody and visitation. I filed for divorce after spending more than a year banging my head against the closed door of our marriage while he lived with another woman in another town. I had even begun to spend time on my front porch with a lovely widower from our church.
On that chilly November evening, my soon-to-be-ex-husband came to the front door. In these early days of separation, in order to help our children as much as possible, I allowed him to stay at our house for his weekends while I stayed at my mother’s.
A cocktail of anxiety and grief swirled behind my civil exterior as I went to answer the door. It was no longer his home, but it was still unnatural to find him ringing the bell -- as if we didn’t build this dream home together and stuff it full of children and life and love. As if he didn’t destroy that dream (and almost me) and now we were supposed to “play nice”. The newness was raw, chafing against the wounds where I still worked to rip him out of my heart.
Yet, there he was. I could tell the difference right away. I had not seen this man in almost a year. This was not the stranger hiding in my husband’s body that came to visit our kids every other weekend. This man had no fortress of anger and resentment. He carried no daggers of accusation and ugliness. He seemed broken.
It was the eyes. I knew these eyes. These eyes belonged to a man I had loved since I was 21 years old and was finally learning to let go of. These eyes belonged to a man who promised to love and honor me all the days of my life. These eyes had loved the Lord and read to our children and prayed silently by their beds while they slept. I stared at him, my face frozen and guarded. In a quiet voice, he asked if we could talk.
Wary and confused, I walked to our kitchen table and sat formally at the end. He followed and took a chair, angling it to face me. I held my breath and waited for him to speak. He leaned his head back, rubbing at his face and cheeks, swiping at tears. His eyes were red as he looked around our kitchen, taking in our home, taking in me. I could hear the children playing in the basement and I prayed they would stay there, allowing this moment to unfold.
“I can’t believe the mess I have made of our lives. I can’t believe what I have done to you and our family.”
His face was wrecked, his voice choked with emotion. I couldn’t breathe. I had prayed for these words, waited for these words, and yet …
Really? Now? After we have suffered and bled for almost two years while you “found yourself” and your “sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll”? After the lawyers have been paid and I can finally begin to believe that life will be good again? After another man is reminding me I am beautiful and kind? NOW you are reflecting on what you have done to us? NOW you have regrets?
I stared at him, saying none of this, while tears filled my eyes. His words echoed within me, butting up against the shaming-blaming words that were the “new normal”. What should I believe? Where did this man come from? Where did the other one go? Will the real man please stand up??!!
My heart pounded, both angry and sad. I grieved seeing this man, the one I knew and still loved. For sure some aching, younger part of me was desperate to believe him, wanted to grab his hands and spin in circles, celebrate this answer to prayer and claim him again for our family, our marriage.
At the same time, the wiser woman I was becoming knew to hold her ground. These were just words. I had learned to protect myself from his words. I was not the same woman he decided he didn’t love anymore. I was healing. And this new woman knew her value enough to not crumble at the feet of those tempting words, however much my heart ached for this man, the one I loved and missed. I no longer trusted him and had stopped trying to rescue him from the wreckage he created.
I gazed into his eyes, waiting for more words, but none came. “I have to go,” I said, eventually breaking the silence. “The kids’ schedule is on the counter.” After going downstairs to hug my babies, I grabbed my overnight bag and left my house.
Unless you have buried a marriage, it is hard to describe the disorientation of losing someone who is still alive.
It is a unique suffering for your husband to become dead, but only to you. Even now, it is a curiosity that my children see and know a person who used to be my world, but with whom I rarely have any contact. We have become strangers, neither of us the same as when we were married.
As our marriage began to die, I was tenacious in my belief that the man I knew and loved had just lost his way and if I tried hard enough, I could bring him back. I was wrong. There was no amicable parting of the ways. There has been no shared processing of what happened or acknowledgements or apologies.
There was just a man I loved with all my heart, and one day, he was gone, replaced by a man I didn’t recognize. A man who walked away from every promise. A man who invalidated every memory and moment by declaring it wasn’t real. A man who accused and blamed and failed to take accountability for any of it. Do people really change that completely? Can you be someone for almost 20 years and then just not be?
For years the duplicity made me crazy. I might have convinced myself that I made the whole thing up --our beautiful marriage, our intimacy, the fun we had together, our shared faith and dreams, our mutual love and awe for our babies – except for that night in my kitchen.
A brief moment, just a few sentences really, but a reminder that at least for a time, he was real. We were real. And then we were gone.
If I had known that would be the last time I really saw him, I would have said more. I would have reminded him how desperately I had loved him. That even though it wasn’t enough, wasn’t what he actually wanted, that I was proud of myself for being all in. I had given his heart every ounce of mine and love is never wasted. I would say I am sorry for all the hurts I didn’t mean and I forgive you for the wreckage. I would tell him that God is using the wreckage to rebuild and heal me. I would say that I hope he finds the peace he is looking for.
I would say good-bye.
