Breaking Up is Hard to Do

Although most of the weekend was given over to excessive picture snapping, I did do some packing.  This involved coming across mementos Helen and I collected over several years, which we have dutifully moved to many places across the country. I hadn't seen them in a long time, and was unprepared for the emotional wallop they would pack.

Just after we decided to get a divorce, I had a hard time speaking about it without tearing up or crying. I wasn't embarrassed about this, it was just my way.  But it was only a matter of days before I had my story down: Helen and I had different goals, "irreconcilable differences," and we really would be happier apart than we would be together.  From then on I told people about it with little emotion, to the point that I started to worry that I was becoming robotic.

That story still has merit, because it's true.  But my no frills delivery was also a coping mechanism for not wanting to face head on the sad truth of what's been lost. I realized that this weekend, as I found the evidence of the uniquely loving and lively relationship that Helen and I once had.

So it's time for some acknowledgment of that past, as the process of moving on and healing continues. Here are some of the bittersweet discoveries of this weekend's packing:

• The printed out email I sent to Helen in 1999 from Turkmenistan, where I'd gone for the Peace Corps even though I didn't want to leave her.
• The calendar Helen made for me to keep in Turkmenistan.  She filled it up with nine months of very kind notes, with the idea that when I brought it back for a visit to her in the middle of my Peace Corps stint she could write more notes to get me through the balance of my 2 years. 
  
  • I was only gone three days.  
• Helen also made me a journal for the Peace Corps years, with quotes from great works of literature hand written at the top and bottom of the pages. I didn't find that this weekend, but it still deserves to be listed.
• The stationery we used as wedding invitations in 2001.
• The scrapbook of pictures Helen took to document our move from Evanston, where we met, in 2002.
• The laminated picture of me and her at her Northwestern graduation, taken by her dad.
• The shoeboxes full of cards we wrote to each other. Most of mine for Helen have little cartoons I drew, which she always liked even though I can't draw.
• The "amore" notes we used to fill out and leave around the apartment for the other to find.
• The picture of her and I eating a traditional Nigerian dinner, which is still on the wall.
• The caricature of us created in front of the Whole Foods in Evanston.  It doesn't look like I shaved that day, and Helen must have been wearing her faithful red bandanna.
• The Washington Post "Life as Haiku" story Helen wrote in 2004, which appeared on the front page of the Sunday Style section in our final weeks in DC.

This is a great list, and I could add to it.  But one thing I must note, looking back, is that the sweetest stuff came early.  I guess our relationship was like a fast-burning comet, more than a slow-burning candle.  Even though it ended sooner than expected, it was awesome at the peak.