Solemn Goodbyes

6-6-05

5:30 a.m.

I said goodbye to my wife yesterday. My eyes swallowed the whole of her for one last time. She wore a turquoise blue dress with white ribbons rimming the waist, her soft outline accentuated by the swaying ornaments dangling from her ears. Her hair was strained, burnet tresses pulled tightly back in a ponytail, an expression of grim seriousness hardening the delicate lines of her face.

I knew when I stepped into her apartment—an unremarkable nook that rested not two miles from the home we used to share—things would be different. My heart, which long before had lost its measured cadence, screamed for a relapse of that moment. How easy it would be to imagine a quick shift of time, a swift alteration of circumstance, where my visit would speak of more inspiring courtly affairs. The sharp clack of her fingernails on the doorframe and the indelicately folded divorce papers that rested so benignly in my pocket, spoke otherwise, and again I was reminded that realities language is different than that of my dreams.

As I walked up the steps to her upstairs bedroom, I brooded over the details of our shared misfortune, wondering as one foot passed the other how I could possibly utter my last goodbyes. Desolation, wretchedness, longing - few words could aptly convey the weight of my emotion, and sitting down, the lilt and passion of that lexis quickly withered as I stared into her eyes.

Where anger has replaced affection…

Where grief has replaced joy…

Where solitude has replaced companionship…

God knows, my love still lingers…

This I wanted to communicate. And yet, mirroring the sentiment in her eyes, I also felt anger – for being abandoned, demonized, weighed and found wanting.

Our conversation, drawn by the pull of a foreseeable spiral, soon degenerated into the negative particulars of the past. “You weren’t there for me then”, “You didn’t come when I called”, “You didn’t love me then”, “You had to put up your wall”. And in our defiance, as the accusations reached their climax, with rigid spines and cold stares, we both sat back, unified by our shared frustration and disappointment.

“How could something,” I silently asked myself “which once brought my life so much meaning and joy, end in this way?” Still I search for the answer.

I stood up, and with tears in my eyes apologized for any hurt that I had caused her. Delicately I brushed her hand, laid one final kiss on her cheek, and walked out the door.

And there it ended, a final exclamation point to my own personal tragedy. I knew then that everything was different, my life forever changed, and I realized that in the faded alleyways of my soul, all that was left was to sip of my recollections, and affirm, even with regret, my maturity through them.

Footprints fade, new path emerges, and thus I begin my new life…