There was a stretch of time I didn’t like to talk about, mostly because it didn’t feel like mine.
Years ago, I’d been in a serious accident during a winter storm. I spent weeks in the hospital and longer than that trying to put my life back together. The doctors warned that memory issues were common. Some people recovered quickly. Others carried blank spaces for years.
I had blanks.
Claire rarely pushed me to revisit that period. When I asked questions, she answered what I asked, but she didn’t pile on extra details. At the time, I was grateful. I didn’t want to remember pain, fear, or helplessness. I wanted the present. I wanted normal.
So we moved forward.
We built routines that felt real. We parented our children through school projects, scraped knees, teenage moods, and family dinners that somehow ended with all of us laughing. We argued over small things, like paint colors and grocery lists, and made up in the ways long-married couples do, quietly and completely.
Just last year, we celebrated a big anniversary. I gave her a necklace she’d admired months earlier. She gave me a fountain pen engraved with my name. We toasted in our kitchen and talked about the future with the casual confidence of people who assumed time would keep cooperating.
“How did we make it this far?” I asked, half joking.
Claire leaned close and smiled. “We didn’t run,” she said softly. “Even when it would’ve been easier.”
At the time, I thought it was a romantic line.
Now, sitting with that divorce decree, I wondered if it was something else entirely.
