2010-02-16 – Another cut


I wonder if we know what we're losing.
Tonight, in bed, the memories and feelings began to turn and haunt me.
Tomorrow, I will have all of my personal life shipped here to New Zealand.
A sad ending, another tie broken.
And then I realized how few ties there are left and how tenuous they are.
The accounting and the computers are now all that connect us.
The house, no longer my house.
Never to sit in that meditation chair she made for me again.
To pet the cats, walk down to Paradise, admire the pond in the front yard.
All cut off and unreachable.
Never to stand and read again  in the kitchen while she prepares a meal.
To sit in the TV room and enjoy a show together.
To discuss our day.
To sleep in beds just beside each other.

All these things unraveling are tearing my heart out.
All these things that were part of a marriage until death do us part.
The end of shared experience is the hardest.
The real treasure lost.
Where we live, what we have or don't have, is so much less.
One day, the last cut will sever us.
The accounting books will be closed one day and then the ebb and flow
   of all that will be lost to me.
And the computer links that let me see our place
   will be closed as well and I will be blind and lost
      to all that was there, once mine.

These lives, these tragedies, these broken hearts are real.
It doesn't get any more real than this.
As the country and western song says,
   "This ain't no rehearsal."

I feel like I am being punished for having had a dream.
And for trying to carry us into a new life.
For listening to history and the future and heeding its whisperings.
The joy of creating something new with your partner
   was lost somewhere along the way - to this terrible place.
The marriage that was suppose to be forever
   has floundered on insecurities, distrust and anger.
Am I to blame?
Perhaps.
But then so is she; tied to her fears, her need for security,
   and her anger and lack of trust.
What does it matter who is the one?
A dream is ending and every time another part is pulled away
   I feel the greatest sadness of my life gathering.
We began so well, with such intents and promises,
   to end so very poorly.
I wonder if I can survive such heartbreak.

gallagher
17 Feb 2010 - Christchurch

— Copyright 1965-2010 by Dennis Gallagher —

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