The irony of my current situation is never lost on me. The irony is that as hard as I tried to not allow history to repeat itself, here I am: divorced, middle-aged with a teenager and a college kid, just like my parents. Knee-deep in a very busy career, just like my mom. Struggling to make sense of the end, just like my dad.
The thing I could not see through my own grief over the final
ending of my parent’s marriage, a relationship that I knew most of my life was
already over, was how hard it all was on my parents. Now I do.
I was 18 when my parents separated. My mom soon began to
date Mike, who became my stepdad while I was in college, and eventually earned
the title of bonus dad through his kindness to me. I can tell the story of the
exact moment our relationship changed to one of deep respect and care, but
that’s not the point of this story.
My dad also quickly moved on with one woman, and then a few
months later to a new one who would become his life partner. I mistook the ease
with which they seemingly transitioned into new relationships to mean that the divorce wasn't hard on them. In the middle of my own pain, which was (rightfully
so) my focus, I could not begin to think that the life up-ending for all of us
was difficult at best, nearly impossible at its worst, and heart-wrenching at
its core. But it was all of those things to all of us.
In the end, both of my parents found themselves with
partners who, in many ways, were very broken. No one ends a 25 (or in my case
20) year marriage without some collateral damage. Hell, any marriage,
regardless of its tenure will generate emotional damage for both parties. It
can be both our brokenness that leads to the end and why and how we choose
the partners we do for that new beginning.
Neither of my parent's second relationships was perfect. No relationship
is ever perfect, and both of my parents stayed with their “other” until either
they or the “other” passed away. I learned by watching these three
relationships, my parents’ marriage to each other, and then their time with
their “others” that relationships take work.
Sometimes no matter how much work you put in, there is no
fix. And sometimes, even though the relationship isn’t perfect people can make
it through until the “death do us part thing.” I’m not sure if that is my
future or my direction. And I’m not sure I really care. I am still broken. And
I always will be. And that is OK.
Broken is beautiful, and here’s my story about that: once upon
a time, my mom and bonus dad took a trip to Europe. In fact, they traveled so
frequently they may have been to Europe more than once, but I remember this
particular story very clearly.
While in Morocco, my mom found a big bowl that had a pretty
design that she loved. It was ceramic and therefore quite fragile, but she was confident
she could get it home safely. It was decided that they could carry the bowl onto the plane and keep it safe. It was left in an overhead bin on every leg. And
it almost made it home until they reached the final flight. A passenger who had
no idea what was in the plastic bag shoved his carry-on into the bin and my mom
said she heard the bowl shatter and knew it wasn’t going to be fixable.
When they finally landed my mom grabbed the bag and the bowl
was in pieces, and her heart was almost as broken as the bowl. It was something
she thought would remind her of this wonderful trip with Mike, which was
fortuitous as just a few years later his own memory would fade, and he would
eventually be diagnosed with Lewy Bodies Dementia.
Mike, my bonus dad, knew how much the bowl meant to my mom. It was broken, so broken, completely beyond repair. But, unbeknownst to my mom, he glued it back together piece by piece. The bowl was unusable, but it was transformed from a broken bowl into something beautiful enough that he could take to a ceramic store and attempt to recreate the design.
The bowl
he painted was a little different than the one they brought home, a slightly different
shape than the original, but even more special than the one they bought.
That’s what happens when we are broken. Eventually, we glue ourselves back together.
We don’t know how all the pieces will fit, but we do our best to make it work.
And, in the end, we aren’t the same. But we end up
being beautiful in our own way, better than we were before and sometimes we
become the inspiration for something or someone else.
Broken is beautiful. It always will be.
