Owning Up — Or — I Know How Nicholas Sparks Feels

Speeches, soundbites, video clips, indelible images — memories mapped to become mementos in and of themselves. What if we don’t want to remember? What if we need no reminder to be unable to forget?

Two and a half years ago, I stood on a public stage and put my marriage on a pedestal, a shining example of how patients and caregivers should be together. Every word was true. For all intents and purposes and for what it was worth, our relationship was far from the worst, which makes it harder to pinpoint exactly how, when and why it failed.

Neither points fingers or at least we know the adage — “point one finger at me and three more point back at you.” We did pretty damn well. We could have done things better. We made assumptions. We didn’t allow for change. And now we no longer live together.

It’s been five months since the separation, and it will be another seven months before a judge will grant a divorce. (The South likes to make such things more difficult than they already are.) We’ve agreed to do together as much of our coming apart as we can, which has confounded loan agents and real estate attorneys, but neither of us knows how to go through something hard without the other one. It is… complicated.

I am mad at him. I am mad for him.

My husband and I are divorcing. My friend is losing his wife. 

The only redemption comes in that two friends do not have to lose one another. 

At least not yet.
At least not yet.

Because he knows me. And I know him. 

Because we have learned so much from all we have gone through together as husband and wife, caregiver and patient. 

Because the very things that made us strong as individuals — independence, persistence, doggedness — were detrimental to us as a couple. 

Because we did the best we could. 

Because we deserve a happy ending. 

Which we don’t know what looks like yet.

He’s been painting what was once our bedroom — rose and warm gold covered over with dark mustard and "greige." He says it’s beachy. I say it’s nautical. We know we both drifted away.