The date that wasn't

If not for the divorce, today would have been our 50th anniversary.

I’ll be out of town for a few days to get away from the reminders, but it’s a fool’s errand. I’ll be carrying the memories and the baggage, as always. I'll decompress, eventually, but it's a long journey ahead.

This is terra incognita, a place I never thought I’d visit. We came here slowly, with setbacks and progress, until we arrived at the least-bad option for our specific situation. There are no villains and not a ton of drama, just the steady abrasion that wears away at the foundation until it fails.

A few people thought it helpful to congratulate me on this milestone and I couldn’t help but wonder what the hell is wrong with them. A few were offended that they weren't made privy to our challenges along the way. Mostly, though, people have sidestepped the topic and that’s probably for the best. My dad said nobody knows what happens behind closed doors, and he was right. It’s nobody’s business but ours, and there isn’t much to talk about, anyway.

The past is past and we cannot change any of it. It isn’t dead, because it guides us, but it is immutable, incapable of change. We would like to think we would be in a better place if we could have avoided this setback or not suffered that hardship, but that's a foolish notion. We are who we are as a result of--not in spite of--each individual step along the way. Regret is inevitable, because we are human, but it is a wasted effort on a one-way journey.

Looking back, I have all kinds of scars and sadness, but I also see all sorts of crises avoided and bullets dodged. Clearly, we didn’t dodge all of them, but nobody comes through this journey unscathed.

Today, that will need to be enough.