Grief and Gratitude, Grok - Shifting

[grok]

All the thoughts Pt 1

Death without a funeral
Grief seems to start anew

Pains feel innumerable
Feelings slide to blue

Time within this crucible
An emergence, a breakthrough

Something very beautiful
The discovery of you.

An amazingly short encapsulation of the entire year+ process. Every time I read it I cycle though all the stages in about a minute. If you’ve been through it you know.

And like all good poetry, it reaches into our experiences and feelings to pull out meaning FAR beyond the words themselves.

3 people that didn't know me, or her. Didn't know the joys and sadness, the trials and tribulations, the for richer or poorer, the sickness and health of our marriage....

And they watched it end with a click of a pen….

Sitting in that courtroom for less than 10 minutes, her in the petitioner desk and me at the defendant, the judge chipper and smiles, ~10 people in the rows behind us awaiting their turn, and only a few short questions directed at her and the quiet unconfident answers despite herself, resulted in a simple email with a PDF attached. “Dissolved”. No one in the state process knows or cares about the rich tapestry of 25 years together.

What it didn't do however, was to change my heart, my feelings or emotions, and it sure as heck didn't take away my memories of it.

With that click of the Bic, I had a million emotions wash across me in an instant, and I felt the sting from a thousand needles while a tear welled in my eye.....

Then it was gone. Or at least the intensity of it was gone.

I found that nothing she did or said changed my heart or mind or choices along the way. They were all my own. I didn’t know this would be true at the start.

Resulting emotions? It comes and goes in slow, occasional waves now. Not nearly the intensity. I let it flow and go. Paraphrasing the Bene Gesserit saying from Dune,

I will face my feelings. I will permit them to pass over me and through me. And when they have gone past I will turn the inner eye to see their path. Where the feelings have gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

That paper doesn't and won't define what your marriage was, and it sure as F won't define who YOU are....

Feel this, let it burn deep for a minute, then process it and let it go....

Your vows have nothing to do with your spouse, Ex-spouse, or even the legal side of a marriage....

Your vows belong to you ….

And it takes a while to internalize long after you see the intellectual truth. … and right now that paper represents a pile of work to separate and divide up the accounts as agreed in the next ~30 days. Sigh. I had better do it myself if I want it quick and right.

The vows? I still think of mine periodically. I haven’t looked at hers in about a year. I don’t think I care to. Paraphrasing DnJ reminders, leave that to God to adjudicate.

PS....I pinged you in the Alt.

Jus sayin

Thanks for that BTW. Feels like the checking in with each other after the hurricane down here. I put pics on that account too.

g