Inconceivable

There is an uncomfortable dichotomy in having been left by your husband.  On the one hand, you accept it.  More than that, you begin to agree that he is not for you, not a good fit or perhaps even not good enough.  Maybe he was never a good fit - or maybe he was (or could have been if he'd wanted to be), and the idea that he was not is merely an inevitable part of your progression, regardless of the previous reality.  The fact of his having left you makes that old reality a part of the past that is simply unknown and unknowable.

What you do know, however, is that his having left says something about him - and even if you can't quite figure out what that something is, you know it's something that alters everything else.  And even if he came to you, professed his love and asked for redemption, it wouldn't change what you now know, however elusive and ambiguous that knowledge is.  And (although you still love him, despite that confused and uncertain knowledge) you're not sure you'd want to change it, anyway.

On the other hand, it remains inconceivable.  Your husband left you.  Your husband.  Your best friend.  The loss is ineffable.

~~~

The alarm forces me from restless sleep.  It's five-thirty.  I lift Chase from the bed, follow the dogs downstairs, let them out, start the coffee.  The morning routine.  Wrapped in a winter coat, I sip coffee outside.  I look at the patio, the firepit, and remember laying the stones last April - me on bruised knees, the Professor with gloved hands, handing me the pavers, calculating which to put where, leveling the firepit.  We rented a 100lb compactor, heaved it from the car, wrestled it to the back yard and filled it with water.  It had a geyser of a leak.  We wrestled it back to the car and went back for an encore.

~~~

For two soft-handed intellectuals, the patio is a masterpiece.  It survived last winter - which is more than I can say for the Professor and me.  Kneeling on those stones, sweating in the Chicago spring (a feat in itself), I never imagined the patio would outlast our marriage.

Inconceivable.  But true nonetheless.