Last week, as my ex-wife and I dropped the boy at a place about 3 hours from town, we had a lot to time to talk. I had a burning question. I’d been wanted to ask for at least 10 years. But it was difficult to frame it correctly. I didn’t want to seem obsessed or overreach for a connection with my stunted and stunned ex-wife. I thought the conversation might provide some levity.
“There was a moment, back in the last months of our marriage, that I’ve thought about a lot.” She responded, “Oh?”
“I want to get permission to ask you something random, no related to the current events.”
“Go ahead, shoot.”
“I remember a moment. It’s stuck in my mind. Very clear and sparkly in my neurolibrary. I came into the bedroom, after putting the kids down. You were doing something on your computer. And a song came on, Goodbye My Lover,” by James Blundt. And you were singing, and in my memory, crying.”
“Oh!”
“Do you remember the moment?”
“I do. I remember you seemed a bit troubled by the song or my singing.”
“Or your tears.”
“Fair enough.”
“Here’s my question. You’re singing the song about your exiting lover, but I’m right there beside you. We’re in couples therapy to try and save our marriage. And you’re singing a “goodbye lover” song.”
“Oh, that’s not what it was about for me.”
“Really?”
“No. It’s just a song that lands right in my key. I can sing it in full voice and I was jamming.”
“So, you weren’t crying about the song?”
“Was I crying?”
“Memories are not always reliable.”
I paused and took a breath. She wasn’t showing emotion at that moment, 15 or 16 years ago. She was just singing along with a random song that she liked. My myth shattered. A deeper reveal, however, she was as emotionally dead back then as she is now. She’s been suffering mightily under the onslaught of our son’s angry journey over the last four years, since starting college. Yet, her emotions were so tightly covered up about so many things in her life, she was missing the “feelings” completely. Suppressive fire gets good feelings and bad feelings alike.
I could feel the sadness right there in the car with her. I could smell her anxiety and coffee-enabled continuation. I let her drive home. She was prone to nausea.
So many moments felt and experienced in hi-definition on my side. On her side, “just a song I liked.”
Fuck.
Family of origin damage cannot be compartmentalized forever. Either you do the work or you suffer, develop illness and anxiety, and eventually become detached from your own heart.
Five years after the divorce, Scrambles was ready to take the rainbow bridge. My daughter asked to come. So, as we held Scrambles for the last time as a family, he was curled in my daughter’s arms, just as he had been those years ago when he was found in Brady. She whispered in his ear. She was feeling this for all of us. I was quiet. Tears fell freely from all of us. My daughter, the future nurse, was calm and cheerful. Okay, not cheerful, but not afraid either.
It was a family moment. I was no longer part of that larger family. I was the outlier. I have always been the out-truther as well.
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