Long Weekend
A few weeks ago my friend Camille asked me what I was planning to do for the long weekend in November. I told her I was down for anything and that the boys and I would need something to do or else I’d go mad. So we devised a plan to share a hotel suite with her and take the kids for a mini vacation.
Veteran’s Day weekend approaches and you and I have been through the ringer. I thought perhaps we still had a chance to resolve things so I counted you and Sam in.
But you had another plan. One day before they’d arrive, you let me know that your dad and step mom were coming to town. They’d be staying for the exact amount of time that I would be away. You’d made plans in haste and you hadn’t felt the need to consult me about it because I wasn’t part of the plan. I’d just purchased the room to the hotel the day before so I wouldn’t get to spend time with your family. But, you didn’t mean for me to spend time with them...
You said maybe we could go to dinner one night.
The last time I saw these people I was walking through a model home, talking about how we’d move to Florida to be near family. I talked about them as if they were my family already. The boys call them “Lelo” and “Lela” and consider them grandpa and grandma. They took us in and accepted us. I grew to love them. I shared intimate details of my past with them and corresponded in letters, by phone, text and social media.
Dinner? Like one hour together over four days they’d be with you?
I felt shocked. Disappointed. Hurt. Jealous. Acutely aware of how I was no longer a part of your plans. Your home. Your life. Your world.
Sitting at a waterpark all weekend with my friends and their kids, it occurs to me that the only memories I have of this place are with you. The boys run to me and ask me to play shark, the game you’d played with them last time we came. They want me to throw them in the air but I can’t.
Yassine finds a photo of you on his iPad and makes it his wallpaper.
The day your parents flew in, I met you on the playground and greeted them. We were all freezing and I can only imagine how cold they must have been without down coats on, being from Florida. We watched the kids play and caught up and then you invited us for coffee. The kids played while we talked like neighbors or old friends about work and life. Then we hugged and you went home to your house and I went home to mine.
Isolation. It feels like being left out. On purpose. I feel disowned.
It occurs to me Friday morning, while the kids are in and out of my bed and onto mischevious morning iPad playing that I am here in my bed and the rest of your family is up making coffee. I stay in my bed crying until noon. Anwar brings me a heart made of Legos and asks why I am sad. I don’t have the heart to tell him that we have been disowned. That we are not their grandchildren anymore. We will never move to Florida.
It was so concrete for the first time. It was so evident that we wouldn’t spend the upcoming holidays together.
You said at Starbucks that you’d likely invite your mom to come the week before Christmas because “there was no one to watch Sam.” As if I wasn’t sitting right in front of you. As if I didn’t exist and never had.
I decided to post that status update to my Facebook feed that you and I were separated. Because it was the only way for me to make it real. It still is not real to me. I’m still hanging on to some hope that once the worst months of the year for your grief pass that you will awaken and come back to me. I don’t want to hold my breath each year from October to midJanuary. I don’t want to spend my life that way.
I don’t want to come in and out of your life as if sometimes I am important and sometimes I don’t exist. I cried in the bathroom. I cried at the pool. I am up in the middle of the night to write because I truly don’t know any other way to deal with these feelings of loss. To lose you is nothing in comparison to what you’ve lost. I know you’ll say that. But losing you has been harder than divorce. I still want you. I want you. Here. By my side at the water park. Or with your parents when they visit.
I called to check in with you and hear your voice and you were getting ready to go to the favorite restaurant. You graciously shared that place with me and the boys on many occasions. I knew that’s where you’d take your family. But that is your place with your wife.
I see that you are reverting back to the place where you should’ve been two years ago when you met me. A place where you process things and take your time to rebuild yourself. I see that you had needed this all along.
But why did you take me into your world? Why did you invite me to call your house my home. Your church. Your family. Your restaurants. Your child. Your school. Your neighborhood. None of this is mine anymore.
The street is being rebuilt after the gas company tore it up. The sink hole in front of the driveway was covered up by a patch of cement, which you went to carve your initials into like a kid would do. You put JH, and Sam’s initials, and his mommy’s. On the other side you wrote mine and my two kids’. But the street repair crew carved our initials out. It erased our side of that concrete patch. To leave the engraving only you. And your loves.
I wish I could carve you out. I wish I could disown you or erase you. But it won’t be that easy for me. I do not know how I will survive this. I do not have any desire to survive this. I’m glad my son is sleeping with his arm around me right now. I feel his breath on my arm. I feel his tender kisses every day, his undying love. If it weren’t for him I would not have any reason to keep going. But I will for him.
Veteran’s Day weekend approaches and you and I have been through the ringer. I thought perhaps we still had a chance to resolve things so I counted you and Sam in.
But you had another plan. One day before they’d arrive, you let me know that your dad and step mom were coming to town. They’d be staying for the exact amount of time that I would be away. You’d made plans in haste and you hadn’t felt the need to consult me about it because I wasn’t part of the plan. I’d just purchased the room to the hotel the day before so I wouldn’t get to spend time with your family. But, you didn’t mean for me to spend time with them...
You said maybe we could go to dinner one night.
The last time I saw these people I was walking through a model home, talking about how we’d move to Florida to be near family. I talked about them as if they were my family already. The boys call them “Lelo” and “Lela” and consider them grandpa and grandma. They took us in and accepted us. I grew to love them. I shared intimate details of my past with them and corresponded in letters, by phone, text and social media.
Dinner? Like one hour together over four days they’d be with you?
I felt shocked. Disappointed. Hurt. Jealous. Acutely aware of how I was no longer a part of your plans. Your home. Your life. Your world.
Sitting at a waterpark all weekend with my friends and their kids, it occurs to me that the only memories I have of this place are with you. The boys run to me and ask me to play shark, the game you’d played with them last time we came. They want me to throw them in the air but I can’t.
Yassine finds a photo of you on his iPad and makes it his wallpaper.
The day your parents flew in, I met you on the playground and greeted them. We were all freezing and I can only imagine how cold they must have been without down coats on, being from Florida. We watched the kids play and caught up and then you invited us for coffee. The kids played while we talked like neighbors or old friends about work and life. Then we hugged and you went home to your house and I went home to mine.
Isolation. It feels like being left out. On purpose. I feel disowned.
It occurs to me Friday morning, while the kids are in and out of my bed and onto mischevious morning iPad playing that I am here in my bed and the rest of your family is up making coffee. I stay in my bed crying until noon. Anwar brings me a heart made of Legos and asks why I am sad. I don’t have the heart to tell him that we have been disowned. That we are not their grandchildren anymore. We will never move to Florida.
It was so concrete for the first time. It was so evident that we wouldn’t spend the upcoming holidays together.
You said at Starbucks that you’d likely invite your mom to come the week before Christmas because “there was no one to watch Sam.” As if I wasn’t sitting right in front of you. As if I didn’t exist and never had.
I decided to post that status update to my Facebook feed that you and I were separated. Because it was the only way for me to make it real. It still is not real to me. I’m still hanging on to some hope that once the worst months of the year for your grief pass that you will awaken and come back to me. I don’t want to hold my breath each year from October to midJanuary. I don’t want to spend my life that way.
I don’t want to come in and out of your life as if sometimes I am important and sometimes I don’t exist. I cried in the bathroom. I cried at the pool. I am up in the middle of the night to write because I truly don’t know any other way to deal with these feelings of loss. To lose you is nothing in comparison to what you’ve lost. I know you’ll say that. But losing you has been harder than divorce. I still want you. I want you. Here. By my side at the water park. Or with your parents when they visit.
I called to check in with you and hear your voice and you were getting ready to go to the favorite restaurant. You graciously shared that place with me and the boys on many occasions. I knew that’s where you’d take your family. But that is your place with your wife.
I see that you are reverting back to the place where you should’ve been two years ago when you met me. A place where you process things and take your time to rebuild yourself. I see that you had needed this all along.
But why did you take me into your world? Why did you invite me to call your house my home. Your church. Your family. Your restaurants. Your child. Your school. Your neighborhood. None of this is mine anymore.
The street is being rebuilt after the gas company tore it up. The sink hole in front of the driveway was covered up by a patch of cement, which you went to carve your initials into like a kid would do. You put JH, and Sam’s initials, and his mommy’s. On the other side you wrote mine and my two kids’. But the street repair crew carved our initials out. It erased our side of that concrete patch. To leave the engraving only you. And your loves.
I wish I could carve you out. I wish I could disown you or erase you. But it won’t be that easy for me. I do not know how I will survive this. I do not have any desire to survive this. I’m glad my son is sleeping with his arm around me right now. I feel his breath on my arm. I feel his tender kisses every day, his undying love. If it weren’t for him I would not have any reason to keep going. But I will for him.
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