Death and divorce

In early 2009, reflecting on a family that was struggling after divorce, Jen exclaimed "I'd rather be dead than divorced". Of course she got her wish, painfully. I've long hesitated to write this blog, because it's easy to be misunderstood. I'm not in any way wanting to criticize people who are separated or divorced, as I know that can happen to a marriage even if that's not what you desire. I mainly want to consider some similarities and divergences, and come back to an insight about Jen and her priorities.

The main commonality between death and divorce is obviously the loss of the relationship and all that it provided, even if there were difficulties. Part of the grief is for that loss alone, what I've been thinking of recently as like marriage in reverse. Between our engagement in November 1992 and our wedding in September 1993, there was an intense anticipation, not only of the ceremony, but more of the shape of our life beyond it. The first year or so of marriage was a time of adapting to the continual presence of the other person - a sometimes stressful process! Between Jen's diagnosis in September 2008 and her death in July 2009 (a curiously similar length of time to our engagement), we were anticipating the bleak future without knowing when it would arrive. One of the challenges after Jen's death has been to adapt to her continual absence, to the hole in our lives that is there every day. So also at the time of separation, there can be a dramatic shredding of the fabric of daily existence, and the same slow struggle to make a new life.

 With Jen's death, our projected future together turned to ashes, but the past was intact. Of course we had our struggles as a couple and a family, but the legacy of our years together with Jen is immensely positive. Divorce seems to affect the past as much as the future. As an adult, there's the tracing back of the fault lines, and wondering where it went wrong. It could undermine your confidence in your ability to have lasting relationships. As a child of separated then divorced parents (though when I was in my twenties, and already away from home), I know that from the child's perspective there were harsh questions in my own mind about what had really been happening in my family's history, and indeed questions about the kind of family I wanted to build with someone else. When I remember Jen's death, I'm sadder for the boys than for myself because they had much less time with her, but I'm grateful they didn't go through that agony of divorce, and instead are left with a positive memory of our past together.

The dead are also more convenient and less troublesome than the living. If anything with Jen I have to be careful to remember her failings as much as her strengths, both so I don't lose her further as a real person, and so I don't make her an impossible act to follow in any future relationship. Apart from the complexities and compromises of shared care of children, for the divorced there are often fresh emotional challenges if the other person remarries. Here of course I'm assuming civilised behaviour on both sides, but we all know of much messier and more acrimonious divorces.

In Jen's last week, her father remarked to her that there are worse things than dying. In many cases I think divorce is harder to recover from than the death of a partner. In the words I quoted at the start, Jen was, I think, saying that in the end she preferred our relationship to end in death, beaten by disease, rather than end in the pain of divorce (not that it was ever an option at any stage of our life together). She knew that she had to die but she didn't have to give up. One of her shining qualities was her fierce commitment to relationships, especially with family. To be loved truly is to be transformed by grace, and even in my memories of the darkest days, I'm thankful for that experience, which points beyond itself to the greater and more lasting grace.