A Handful of Blossoms


A few blocks from my house there is a yard with beautiful flowering shrubs growing right beside the sidewalk. During the spring the blossoms fall to the ground where, still beautiful, they may easily be gathered by anyone passing by. Back in the days when my house was our house some of them found their way into our kitchen, where they would sit in a saucer of water to keep them fresh while they brightened the surroundings for a few days. Other found blossoms also made their way into our house, in between those special occasions that called for store-bought flowers. My favorites were the big white magnolia blooms that perfumed the whole room for days.

Three years ago today I was still sharing a house by virtue of being married. There were problems with the marriage. I had several times learned of betrayals of my naive trust. I’d had to weather outbursts of temper and controlling behavior that bordered on abusive. Yet I still loved and was in love (two different things, but they can go together), and still held out hope that with enough care and patience and displays of love on my part I would see things get better.

Three years ago today I had just learned of another betrayal of trust that shocked and upset me more than the others. But the confession of this had been accompanied with other signs that made me hope we were about to turn a corner at last. We were indeed, but not in the way I had hoped. Within just a few days there would come the biggest outburst yet, and I would find myself in the house alone and wondering what to do next.

What I did do was to spend a month trying to let things blow over, give space for reconsideration, and find the right time to suggest marriage counseling. This period ended with more irrational outbursts, more betrayals of trust, and the complete loss of hope. In the end I was forced to take legal steps to protect myself, and to recognize that the love of my life had become an enemy who wanted to hurt me.

Recently an elderly woman I know said that she spent most of the first two years after her husband died sleeping. I think I know a little bit what she was talking about. During my first two years alone I kept going to work each day, but I had little more energy and sense of direction than if I had been asleep. I felt tired most of the time, could do little more than the most routine sorts of work, and could only do serious brain work in brief sprints.

Only in the past year have I started to get back into the swing of things, to start accomplishing much of what I should have been doing all along. I’m getting more done at work, and in church, and I’ve been getting active in different kinds of civic work. I’m finally making something of my single, childless life. Even a single and childless life has to be made to count for something, after all.

I’ve had to let go of a lot in the past three years. Hopes of having children, for one thing. When we couldn’t have children of our own I tried to get involved in the lives of my nieces and nephews-in-law. My contact with them ended with the marriage, along with any hope of making any difference in the lives of these children and youths who had few enough good adult contacts.

I let go of the pleasant things of marriage—date nights, and little trips together, and unexpected blossoms and other tokens of affection. I let go of the pride of having my own family household—you can’t be a family by yourself. I’ve learned to live without warm, human touch and the delights that a man and a woman may share together. The last loss still keeps me awake at night sometimes.

I’ve had lots of bad things to let go too. For a long time I let angry and bitter thoughts prey on my mind for much of every day, as I relived all the worst experiences of the marriage and breakup. These thoughts and memories come a lot less than they did, but I can’t say they never come. It’s upsetting to have these thoughts about someone I devoted a decade of my life to.
And someone I still love. The romantic thoughts are long gone. I have no desire to get back together now. But I still love and want the best for MK. It’s not in me to turn from loving to hating. When we married, I wanted so much to help heal MK’s traumatic past. I realize now that I could never have done that. Only God could have brought that kind of healing, and MK renounced God—in so many words—on the same night as leaving me. That was the part that hurt the most—to see someone I loved turning away from hope and healing like that.

I can’t try to help any more, but God still can. I still pray that MK will even now turn back to God and finally be healed. I worry sometimes that my own hard feelings might get in the way of my prayers, so there’s one more incentive to get rid of them. In the end, of course, MK has to make the decisions.

In the meantime I’ve had my own life to look after. The loss of our marriage and the all the hopes and striving bound up in that have left my life much diminished. But it’s hardly a worthless or joyless life. I’m in fine health now, and have a wonderful job, and all my material needs are as securely taken care of as anything in this world can be. Couple love and romance may be gone from my life, but family and friends and church family still have plenty of love to give me. And they’re ready to accept what I have to give them. I find that I’m starting to have more to give.

I guess my heart is still getting better. That part of her that’s concerned with becoming a couple is broken too badly to fix. I’ve decided it will hurt less if I don’t even try. But the rest of her is still running. I hope she’ll always be warm and soft instead of cold and hard. She was in real danger of drying up and freezing, but that danger is receding now.

As the third anniversary of the day when our house became only my house draws near, I find myself thinking more about what happened, and having to deal with feelings I’d rather bury once and for all. I guess there just haven’t been enough anniversaries yet.

A few days before this anniversary, I walked down the street by the yard with the shrubs and found the ground beneath them by the sidewalk strewn with blossoms. I made sure nobody was looking and collected a handful of them to take home. I have to allow myself to remember sometimes that those years had some good moments as well as bad ones.