It was not on my agenda to write tonight – but when I brought home groceries this evening and tossed my purse on the counter, fishing out receipts, I accidentally opened the little mini-photo album I carry in my purse and it revealed a picture of me and my recently divorced husband looking down into the camera for a selfie on a trip to Florida with palm trees above our heads.
I suppose I need to go through this little album and remove photos.
I’m not even sure why I carry this little 5 x 7 mini photo album in my purse. I haven’t shown but a few people here and there the photos in it, and every few years it is so gunky I get a new one.
I’m one of those women whose purses get gunky in the bottom from old gum or random coins, leaking lotion and old chapstick – I carry a lot of stuff in my purse and it can get quite heavy. You’ll never know what you might find…
_____
When I choose photos to carry in this little mini-album, it always feels a little creepy. I’ve added and rotated out some throughout the past several years. I started doing it a year or so after moving from Delaware to Alabama. I loaded it with some of my favorite photos of my grown children, my cousin, and my recently divorced husband, his kids (my step-children) and our wedding photos.
I suppose I just felt I wanted to carry this with me in case anyone I met in Alabama might want to see my most special people or something…I don’t know…
But usually it felt creepy because after I re-married, I flew on airplanes more than I ever did in my lifetime….sometimes the thought would cross my mind that if a plane ever went down and my belongings were strewn about, these would be the photos somebody would find and they might wonder who I was…
_____
This is not my first divorce. In 2005, my 20-year marriage to my first husband and father of my children sadly came to an end.
Though as divorces go, it was amicable, mutual and we tried to do things well for the sake of our children…I know that it was hard not only for me but for him too.
I remember at that time reading online about different ways to find emotional closure following a divorce. There were two things I came across that struck a chord with me as something I wanted to do.
The first idea I had read somewhere was to pick your favorite wedding photo. Then to emotionally sit with it for awhile.
Remember that day.
Remember all the things you loved about that person and all the times you had together – the good, the bad, the difficult – and the carefree easy and loving times when you never thought life would be any different…
And then….
Physically kiss that wedding photo of your former spouse…kiss them on the lips of that photo paper…
Give them that one final kiss goodbye.
I did that. It was very hard, and it was heartfelt.
_____
The second suggestion I read was to go to an antique store and buy an old trunk. Call it your divorce casket. It will hold any items you find in your home that bring sorrow, grief and pain following your divorce. You are to take months or longer to slowly fill the divorce casket with these items. Then, sometime in the future, you can decide what you will do with this divorce casket and all it contains.
Because divorce is a death.
The death of love, the death of dreams, the death of a lifelong marital covenant.
When something dies, remains are left behind….
—–
In March 2012, when I was packing my entire household and home business up to move to Alabama after legally marrying for a second time the month before (our church wedding came later) – I had friends from my Delaware church helping me disassemble a lot of stuff in the basement portion of my art studio. There were several men from my church, and one of these men spotted my divorce casket in a dark corner under the stair case and asked what it was and if it was getting packed too.
I told him and the others what it was, and one or more of the men suggested I simply throw it all out – that I was re-married now and about to embark on a new life and that I should simply let go of all these things.
I know these men cared about me and meant well, and I spontaneously followed their advice but something in my gut did not want to. I do regret that I allowed them to empty the contents into the trash.
I took the antique chest to Alabama and later sold it on Craigslist.
I regret it, not simply because my second marriage devolved and ended after seven years, but because of all this chest contained and why I had saved these things in my divorce casket.
_____
In 2005 and 2006 following my first divorce, I had slowly added items I would find in closets and drawers…some at unlikely times…just like seeing my mini photo album in my purse tonight.
I had birthday and anniversary cards from my first husband and love notes during the marriage. I always saved these. I had the letters we wrote when we were dating in college from summers and other times. I had some photos and personal artwork gifts I had made for my first husband. I had some very nice canvas wedding photos and probably my simple bouquet I had preserved in a frame after spraying it with hair spray. I had taken it with me to his mother’s beach house where we spent our honeymoon and remember trying to preseve it in a very primitive way.
My wedding gown was not in it…as I had put that in a dumpster very early on after the divorce one night as I was deeply mourning…probably with a couple glasses of wine, lots of tears…while my kids were on visitation and I was alone….probably in a moment of post-divorce “emotional convulsion” (I just made that up – but those who have been there especially the first time will understand) I found the dress and simply took it to the trash.
I do regret all of this – the disposal of these physical remains of my marital life– in a sense.
Not that I think about it a lot….but the reason I especially kept the letters with my first husband is because I felt they belonged to my children, someday in the future. He is the father of my children and I will always have a love, care and respect for him and all our memories.
And I had thought that someday – perhaps I would eventually be able to sort through these items from inside the divorce casket and set aside some things that would be meaningful to my children.
But now…these things are gone. They lay buried in some landfill…
_____
I’m a pretty sentimental person, I love photos and memorabilia and items that remind me of people and times together.
Things – in and of themselves no matter how expensive or how cheap do not matter ultimately – but some things do tell our story.
The story of our parents, is also part of our own story. I have periodically read through letters my parents exchanged during the 1940’s and diaries, and looked at pictures. Piecing together their story helped me better understand my own story.
_____
There is quite a lot of data and information out there about why second marriages fail at a much higher rate than even first marriages. I’m not going to delve into all that here.
I guess I just wanted to talk about divorce caskets and creepy mini photo albums – creepy mini photo albums that flip open to a photo of someone so familiar yet now so metaphorically dead and a stranger to me – a person I now feel like maybe I never really knew yet I loved deeply. Everything still so familiar yet it seems as though it was some other lifetime or simply a dream…a bad dream a good dream one cannot even make sense of it…
_____
I think there is an emotional disorientation that comes with divorce that is really hard to describe to someone who has not walked this path.
And I find that my sense of disorientation with the ending of this second marriage much different than the disorientation from my first marriage. While I do recall the surreal sense of that time, there seems to be something different about it even all these years later.
I think we have each put it all in its place…and we still occasionally text or talk about our children. He always sends me a text on Mother’s Day and on Father’s Day thanking me for making him a father. And I send him one also.
Time does bring healing, perspective, growth, peace and interpersonal closure in many divorce situations.
And then, there are those other situations where this may never, ever be possible – interpersonally.
_____
If you are reading this and are hurting from divorce, I pray that you may take some small comfort away from what I have shared and know that though you may feel alone – you are not alone.
And you are going to be OK. Maybe not today. Maybe not this year or next year even…but slowly, you will be OK.
To you – chin up girl – keep being who you are.
I suppose I’m assuming women would read this until the end….
Thank You For Reading
Please Feel Free To Express Your Thoughts Below
