Love Letters
An Open Love Letter to My Ex-Wife
A Thanksgiving of Remembrance
Last night I had a dream we were driving and I was kissing your hand the way I once did, your arm outstretched, your palm to my lips, your fingers opening up to receive them, relaxed, gentle, expectant, knowing they deserved it.
When I awoke it brought me to that moment 16 years ago when you were sitting happily waiting for the dance to begin, your feet kicking rhythmically as we sat together in the foyer seating area. It is still my fondest memory. Not because it is the best, but because it is one of the first. It is the lead memory in a swarm that doesn’t act like a swarm aside from being innumerable, a layered set of memories gilded by a nearly instantaneous love.
It didn’t take us long to get silly, did it? On our third date, we were watching a symphony, holding hands, and bouncing our fingers to the music, almost as if trying to outdo the other. Later that night we met your friends, who during dinner informed us we’d be getting married.
We didn’t do that usual, “oh stop!” thing. We just sort of both nodded subconsciously together in our thoughts as if we could read one another’s minds, and accepted the comment as if we had just heard someone announce a simple fact.
When I drove you home on our first date, at a museum, you pointed to a baseball diamond at a local park and informed me that it was a good landmark for the next time I drove to pick you up.
I drove home that evening as if my car was fueled by whatever it was that made you say that, whatever made you sure there’d be a next time, made you inadvertently share that knowledge with me.
It didn’t seem like I was driving home that night. It seemed as if the car flew above freeway traffic that I could see below me. As I was carried by a stream in the wind above, I knew what it is like to be literally held aloft by the kind of romance that seems ordained by a heavenly presence.
Remember the time I discovered how small your ears were? We had been married for at least seven years, I think. I was kissing them fondly and somehow only then, even though I had kissed them at least a thousand times before, only then did I notice, quite alarmed, how tiny they were. God, I loved your ears.
Is it possible to recall every individual moment within such a tonnage of memories when each moment is filled with gold? The moment you walked into a room, the moment I came home from work, the moment I woke up next to you, every moment was a treasure, at least for me.
There are ways to extract special occasions together, but it seems pointless when each moment was adorned with a wave of blessing that was given no special weight by occasion.
Oh, we had the issues of daily living that any married couple might encounter, stresses and questions of convenience, but they were truly first world problems, and I never lost sight of the most important aspect of our lives together.
Some of them were serious, and maybe we both allowed them to stay somewhat concealed, maybe me more than you.
But I cannot kill the thing that we were. The bond that holds it together is locked in our past. Killing it will kill my soul and would require me to denounce that epic book of memories we share. How does one denounce joy? Why should I lie for the sake of “closure”?
Instead, I choose to renounce any attempts to kill my soul, whether through my own conveyance or the artful persuasion of the devil who has come between us. It’s a risky proposition, I guess, because it means I may not heal.
But sometimes we are walking wounded. I have proven to myself before that I can survive deep wounds to the soul, so I will persevere. I’d rather bear that wound, bleed from it if I have to on the streets and sidewalks, than bear the lie that I should forget how I felt about you, and how I still do.
God has taught me much since our parting. And one day recently we were having a little conversation, God and I. And I said to him, “I wish I could have found you, God, when I was younger, so that I could have lived a better life.”
And he told me that I could live my life over, with that one change, that he’d grant me that wish if I wanted it. I said no thanks because when I get off this planet I want to stay off, and move on to him, not in a suicidal way, but in an all embracing way, because I know there’s a better world tomorrow, after we transition, when we see in a greater light what the author of Ecclesiastes told us so perfectly, how the pursuit of everything worldly is a vanity of vanities.
But the other thought was this: No matter how amazing that life could possibly be, I wouldn’t want to overwrite the life I had with you in that process. What are the chances I’d meet you in that reconfigured life under a completely different set of circumstances? My hope is to retain my memories of you long after I die. Those 16 years were blissfully happy ones for me, even on those most mundane evenings when the lone excitement was another episode of Stargate (“Indeed”).
So, no thanks. I want to keep those years stashed in the music box that chambers the sweetest parts of my existence. If I relived my life, I’d probably meet someone else, who may be wonderful in all the ways humans cherish, but she wouldn’t be you.
I suppose this is my goodbye, or as close as one as I can find. I need to release the love I treasured into the wilds of cyberspace, perhaps for nobody else to read but me in my twilight years, at least with some solace that I told the universe of my feelings, and that real love isn’t breakable because memories are not so easily disposed, and I choose to look upon them with the fondness that I have always felt for you.
But it is a strange goodbye, because you will never leave me, even though you have. Perhaps someday the amnesia of old age will finally extricate you from my being, but in the meantime, I must walk the aisles of stores alone and sad, missing our silly banter, missing some of our favorite times together. Who in this world considers trips to grocery stores favorite times? That can’t sound crazy when you consider that all our times together were like that for me.
I miss you trimming my hair. I miss walking the dog with you, even though I resisted it every time. I miss you asking to see the yearly Christmas lights, me reluctantly agreeing, and secretly enjoying it because it meant more moments with you. I miss our walks, and I miss you trying to get me to not spend $300 at Costco.
I guess, like most men, perhaps I didn’t show that side of me often enough or find enough ways to let you know. Other men who have similar experiences will probably relate to my saying that I just assumed you knew how I felt based on my general behavior. Like singing to you (literally) every day about how much I loved you, or how wonderful you were.
Sometimes I think that simple, boring, mundane days were better than the ones that should have been interesting. Vacations were stressful. That’s not unusual, I guess, and I have a lot of fond memories from those days, as well. But it’s the routine bits of life I miss the most about you — the everyday occurrences, the walks, the goofy daily conversations filled with humor that only we could have found funny.
A love letter is not about apologies. I’ve already done that. What I’m submitting to the historical record is the part of our marriage that was blissful in all its forms. The parts that weren’t blissful can remain hidden from history because they aren’t the fragments my memory has chosen.
No. What I’m submitting to the historical record is that I love you, and I always will. Even more so, I love the memories, and am going to commit to rejecting the sadness of your loss and replacing it with the joys of our moments together.
Because forgetting about someone is not healing. It merely covers wounds.
I’ll let the blood of my wounds flow freely, and give the deeper pains to God, who is better qualified than I to handle them.
You always used to like to say that we read each other’s minds. I wonder if you know that I have written this, and will somehow find it in your own way.
I pray for you every day. Not in the weird, fundamentalist Christian kind of way that is secretly a judgmental hate chant, but in a way that asks for your protection and happiness. My prayers to God towards you are my only real means of communicating with you, and I hope that someday he is able to share them with you with grace, and, as you might say, ease, joy, and glory.
Please stay safe.
