Swing Sets In the Closet

Catching up with an old friend should be a happy occasion. I intended it to be at the time that I searched for neighbors on Facebook from my old neighborhood. I found one of them. One that had committed the same crime I too had committed years ago. The charge? Divorce from Spouse and Friends. The sentencing? Excommunication.

This friend had declared the end of his marriage before I had gotten the nerve to end mine. I was secretly envious of his ability to verbalize that in fact their marriage had failed. I knew mine had failed and was still failing. I just couldn't speak the words. So I continued on while trying to slowly distance myself from all of them and my marriage like one would carefully cut the wires on a live bomb. I watched from afar as one marriage dissolved and listened as the rest of the neighbors chimed in on who was at fault and who wasn't. All the while harboring feelings of jealousy because one or both of the people in the 'bad couple' had found the strength to do what  I couldn't.

We were married October 22, 2000 and bought our house January 26, 2001. This was after seven years of living together. I don't know to this day if we had made a good decision marrying but I do know that in hindsight we did give each other more than we would have accomplished on our own so the joining of hands in matrimony; if nothing else did at least form an advantageous partnership at the time.

When we moved onto Sunflower Court we were a little intimidated by the environment. It was Carroll County. Westminster. This was out of our realm of comfort since he was from Essex and I was from Dundalk. After the ice thawed and the weather warmed and every wall in the house had been painted my new husband and I ventured outside despite our apprehension of how we'd be received. By May, we were sitting on our deck with the neighbors drinking beer and grilling on our new grill. Over the next few years, those of us in the cul-de-sac grew even closer. Six couples all close in age and personality. We spent holidays together, vacationed together and weekends were all about hanging out in the cul-de-sac watching each others children play and laughing. My husband even helped our friends across the street build the large wooden swing set for their children. They had a son and a daughter. The little boy was three years old when that swing set was constructed. He was a cute kid who absolutely adored my husband. So much so that he would sit in his bedroom and call my husbands name from his window until my husband would walk across the street and go visit him. They were like two best buddies. On the outside - all was  perfect.

When my friends announced they were splitting we were all a bit dumbfounded. It would ruin our commune of happiness. It would disrupt our summers swimming and grilling and vacations to the Outer Banks. While the other four remaining couples shook their heads in disbelief I secretly wondered how it had happened. Not how it had gotten to that point. That I understood too well. I wanted to know how they ended the madness. How did they get to the point that they vocalized that it was over? After nearly a full year of contemplating this, I found the words myself one week prior to Christmas when my husband looked at me and said with knowing voice, "Is there something you need to say?"

"This isn't working. I want a divorce." were the last and first words I expected to say. But I said it.

Four months later, on April Fool's Day of 2006 I moved out. The house was sold. He moved to Colorado and then on to New Mexico. The divorce took two years to be final. I received my papers on September 26, 2008. There was no bitterness. There was no hatred. Was there reason to have those emotions? Yes. No one would have benefited from that and so as we did in our marriage we did through our separation and did not discuss any of it. Not a word. It was just over. We maintained a close friendship and spoke a few times a week. We were better friends I think than spouses. That was why I didn't tell him our divorce was final when I spoke to him on October the 5th. We had been divorced for exactly nine days when I spoke to him last. I didn't want him to have a bad day so even though he knew the divorce was coming I chose not to mention that it was indeed final. It was only three days after that last conversation that his daughter called to tell me he had a heart attack.

He was airlifted to Texas in a drug induced coma in hopes of preserving his organs. I thought this meant he was sleeping off the heart attack. Does that make sense? No. Am I more intelligent than that? Absolutely-- but I was heart broken and confused and remained in that dumb state of mind when I asked his brother to put the phone to his ear so I could tell him to wake up. I yelled through the phone from Maryland to Texas that if he did not wake up he would be late for work. He hated to be late for work because he had such a great sense of work ethic so I thought this would snap him out of it. On October 15th we turned off life support. On the 16th he died.

He never did know that we were divorced. One day I may share that story in its entirety. I'm not ready for that though.



I confided to my friend, now found again through Facebook, that I envied him for having the strength to end the marriage when he did. I told him I had wanted to end mine as well. I say that with mixed emotions given the circumstances now but at the time I very much wanted to end my marriage and was awed by the fact that my friend had the courage to do so. My friend shared with me that he had been crushed to learn of my husband's death. I say 'husband' because given that we were divorced only twelve days when he had the heart attack I never had a chance to learn the term 'ex-husband.' I told him that my husband -- ex-husband-- and I had remained friends and that I miss him still.

He said, "We took down that wooden swing set. The kids outgrew it. It was hard given that he had helped build it and we thought of him as we took it down."

I hadn't thought about that swing set. I had forgotten about it. I had blocked that from my mind. I don't think about the sound of the little boy's voice singing my husband's name and the smell of cut grass from our riding mower. I don't think about the grill or the Halloweens spent on haystacks in my front yard. I try not to remember the taste of salt water on my lips on the beach in the Outer Banks.

My divorce had been final.

My life has changed. It is nothing now like it was and most people tell me they didn't even know I had been married. But I was married. And I vacationed in the Outer Banks. Now I vacation in my laptop by typing blogs and writing books and editing photos I didn't know I could take. I miss my friends from the neighborhood. I miss the hotdogs on the grill - Hebrew Nationals only. I miss planting tomatoes in a barrel and eating them on my way to work. I miss New Year's Eve parties in pajamas and fireworks we weren't supposed to light.

But my divorce had been final.

And the swing set came down.

There is something inside of me that can remember all the things I mention here now like I am reading an inventory list of my past. I put those things in a closet now in an old back room where my brain meets my heart and I don't open that door. People don't realize I was married. They don't know I was someone else. They don't know the Cyndi who didn't flirt or take photos or write but lived in another time and place on the Commune of Happiness and all its imperfection and outward perfection. That swing set fell against the door in that room between my brain and my heart and it knocked it open yesterday. I know it was open because the tears on my cheek were a clear indicator. I am trying feverishly to lean on it and push it shut again but I am struggling to close the damn thing. It's a pretty heavy door. I believe one day that door will fly open. Swing sets and hotdogs will fall out and I will probably smell cut grass as the lawn mower runs me down.

Until then, I will work and take photos and write blogs from the rooms not overstuffed with the things of Sunflower Court.

And I will start vacationing in Key West.