loss

When someone dies, the people who love them worry that some day, the memory of that person will fade. That they won't remember them clearly. And the eventual loss of those clear memories is painful in its own quiet way, following the acute pain of losing the actual person.

I find that this is happening to me with memories of my marriage, which lasted more than a decade. It's not that I can't remember the person I was married to; I communicate with him almost daily because we are parents, but as time passes, I find it hard to remember the "us" part - what it was like when we were together. Our shared interests, our inside jokes, the way each of us positioned ourselves in our bed each night... These memories are curling up at the edges now.

And despite the fact that I believe ending the marriage was the right thing to do, I find myself clinging to what I can remember and sometimes, trying really hard to conjure up a clear memory of that now-dead relationship.