"The first divorce in the world may have been a tragedy, but the hundred-millionth is not necessarily one."
The late Anatole Broyard, literary critic for the New York Times
This being my first blog in almost two months, I realize it should be light-hearted, and I intended it to be. But I experienced something tonight that I feel compelled to write about, and the other thoughts - of belated holiday cheer, a recounting of our recent bed & breakfast stay, renewed energy for 2007 - will have to wait.
Tonight I've been tying up the loose ends of our Christmas correspondence. One thing led to another, as it often does when I'm working on a "simple" project, and I came upon a box full of cards, letters and photos we received in 2004 and 2005. I decided, before simply tossing them, to indulge my rarely-emerged nostalgic side and read them all one more time.
I came across one from a woman who attended the youth group that Steve and I ran when we were in New York. A quirky, funny girl who, admittedly, was one of our pets. How things change! She has since married and had two children, and we kept abreast of her new life only through our annual Christmas card exchange.
I recalled as I reread their 2004 letter my feelings of shock to hear about her health scare that summer, a lingering sickness that they feared was leukemia but miraculously cleared. I then caught sight of what was to be their family website, realizing I had never checked it out.
Tonight I finally did. Written by her husband, it is a poetic and mysterious site which darkly hinted that she was no longer a part of their lives. "A new life", it said. "Soon, just me and the boys." My first thought was that she had, in fact, been truly ill and died. Or had been sick for all this time and was finally losing her battle with life, a fact he was coming to terms with for the sake of their children. How could we have not heard? Nausea crept over me.
Probing further, desperate for answers, I found an angry piece written about Christmas cards; how she hated sending them, how she ridiculed his desire to do so. The piece sputtered on about how she made taking pictures for these cards a miserable experience, and vacation a miserable experience, and most things a miserable experience. He spoke of vowing to never do these things with her again. His rant trailed off at the mention of vows ...
Divorce, not death. Though never said outright, it must be. She remains unnamed throughout his site, not much is said of her at all (certainly nothing pleasant), and she is conspicuously missing from all pictures.
It seems a logical conclusion when I summarize it, but the tone of the site is sad, almost devasted, and it reminds me more of mourning than anything.
And yet, that's how it must be. Divorce. A death of something. A period of mourning. Broken vows. Broken hearts. Lost dreams. Lost ways.
In retrospect, I knew this was coming. Not the end of their marriage, in particular. But the end for someone. I have thought often, inexplicably, over the last couple of weeks about the possibility of someone we know - friends, family - divorcing. I expected it to be someone we're closer to. I wondered how it would go - where they would each live, who would keep in touch with us.
There is a part of me - the same part that had this "premonition", of sorts - that wants to find her. To make contact with her. To let her know that she doesn't need to look at us as her former youth leaders who might judge her or condemn her for the "sin" of divorce. To assure her that we're so much more than that. That she's so much more to us than a divorcee.
Unfortunately, I only have her former address, where it appears she no longer lives. Even more unfortunately, I sent her and her family a Christmas card on Friday. If her husband has not received it yet, addressed to the two of them, he will soon.
We don't really know him. We met him once, shortly after they started dating. They met online, and we were dubious. (Yet who were we to judge; we who got engaged three weeks after our first date?) But now I felt compelled to make contact with him, as well, as he was about to get bombarded with our ignorant, cheerful Christmas greetings. So I sent him an email. Perhaps mostly because I couldn't find her. A brief one, extending our apologies for not knowing about the change in family dynamic, and for the inadvertent pain or hurt our card may cause.
Did I go too far? No farther than sending the card, I suppose. I don't expect to hear from him. I don't expect him to forward our card to her. I don't expect anything but to be sad about this for some time.
I have never before associated Christmas cards with sadness. But for our friend and her husband, their chasmic approach to Christmas cards became the parallel for all the ways their marriage was miserable, and all the ways she kept him from joy. Their 2004 card that I read with happy expectations tonight led me to a well of sadness. And the card I innocently sent the other day will inevitably bring him to the same place.
Having taken Anatole Broyard's quote out of context, he may well be saying that the effects of divorce on humankind overall, in this day and age, is no longer a tragedy. But in our own personal life dramas, I'm quite certain it still is.
