V's Version

This is the (google swiped) view of Tahoe from Homewood - where Pk and Dani and all the teens (and 2 other advisers) are right now. I decided to sit this day in the cabin. The wind / cold conditions are too difficult for my skin and eyes. and besides, I am both a little sick with the common cold and a lot lot sad.

Several of the teenagers have been recently faced with death very close to them and I have spent a fair amount of time just being with them. Sitting calmly and openly with tears and sadness and the questions of fairness. - I am somewhat drained. I struggle not to advise. I struggle to just listen. I struggle not to shut down my own feelings. It is such an honor to be allowed so close to one's heart. I try to recognize that honor with my own authenticity. So I sit here with the sadness that was brought up after listening to theirs.

I allowed myself to grieve last night and today. I am so aware of how not-normal / not-human it is to cry with no tears. It is annoying as sinuses fill, my throat tightens, my face gets hot and the edges of my eyes get red and inflamed - and there is no cathartic release of saline. My hot dry face makes me weep even more. But it only distracts me from my deep sadness anyway.
I love love love my family and I am very content in our rhythms and patterns. On this - the 3rd anniversary of our coming together and on the eve of Dani's (much anticipated) adoption of Pk- there is no sadness in my relationships with Pk or Dani, none in my parenting, none in our home life. But just as survivors of an attack or a war cannot process that tragedy until well after the danger is over, I am now safe enough to feel. There is a yearning sadness that creeps in only when I let the last of the walls come down and I let the light into the darkest parts of me. It is like my charmed and glorious home life has a shadow on it. I am not sure what the shadow is exactly but I think it has to do with forgiveness.

P and I used to come to Tahoe with our church youth group each year - in California we call it "going to the snow." This is my 10th year. I am infused with memories of our shared time here in this special place. I am raw from offering a youth service on Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Unitarian Universalist ways of cultivating faith to cling to in moments of grief. I have come to a place where I now know that I want a formal divorce from P.

Everything happened so quickly - too quickly for me. I was sick and focussed on surviving. I was not ready for that day when he told the therapist that it wasn't working out. I was not able to integrate his explanations to me on the couch or his statement that he had not wanted to marry me in the first place. I was too busy trying to accommodate his new lover into my own heart to actually feel the grief ripping through it. I was too angry about the ridiculous but necessary subject of money to really find solace in mediation. I was too busy fighting the cancer and going blind and wresting with government agencies to even know what I needed on the inside. I was too in love with Dani to bring up the welling sadness surrounding my break up. Who was I to look the gift horses of luck and love in the mouth? Move on - rejoice - count your blessings. Prayers and pushing toward the easier emotions of joy and wonder and gratitude.

But now I really have come a long way and I must practice what I preach. As I sit here on the banks of the amazing crystal waters of one of our country's deepest lakes - I reflect on the deep connections that I had in my first marriage. I regret none of my relationship but I do regret my naiveté, my stubbornness, my inability to listen with no agenda but compassion. I regret the ways in which I communicated. I yearn for forgiveness.

I grieve the loss of my own vision of family. I grieve the loss of the tenderness that P and I shared. I miss his touch - I miss his voice. I miss his wry laughter. I want witness and to remember those moments with someone. I don't want them back. We have our lives - we have made our own ways - but I want to connect with someone who can tell me that yes - they happened. I am not crazy. We were each young and stubborn and broken but we had moments of healing and love and mirth.

I grieve the loss of a clean break. Grasping the meaning of his words through the pain meds, the dissolving of our domestic partnership by a signature on my death bed, the whole way the negotiated resignation went down and how it affected us all - it was hardly clean. I cannot change the course of events but I can grieve them. I can name my sadness at the loss of integrity.

P and I were witnesses to a divorce ritual once and I remember saying to myself that there was no way that I could ever do that. I could not stand up in front of loved ones and ask to be released of my marriage vows. (Our vows from my memory: "I accept you as you are. Together we will walk the journey of life. In sobriety and without violence, with love and compassion, I will stand by you always as your lover and your friend." )

I meant those words with every fiber of my being. So how could I ever ask to be released of them? I couldn't then and I cannot now. But P asked me. He asked if he could be released and he deserves to be (which might be where my true love and compassion shows.) I could, now, after all this time, acknowledge and grieve this release in the way that the participants of that divorce ritual did. I doubt that P would ever want something like this and neither or us, I am sure, would want anyone else to witness it. And whether or not I will ever get a chance to be alone with him to look him in the eye - I do not know. What I now know is that I want to. I want to hold his hands, to thank him for all the lessons learned and his support and friendship. I want to ask him forgiveness for the behaviors I regret. I want to forgive him for the things he had to do to be true to himself. I want our hands to release and to hear these words uttered to each other: "I accept you as you are. I honor our separate journeys and look forward to when they intersect. In sobriety and without violence, with love and compassion, I will stand by you always as a co-parent and your friend."