Relationships are complicated and they never really end.  Even when you have no contact for years, the memory of that previous life still links you together.  Yesterday, I found out that my second ex-husband is dying.  I haven’t talked to him in more than 15 years.  The only time I’ve seen him since then was at our oldest daughter’s wedding.  He & his latest wife stayed on one side of the reception hall and I on the other.

If this gives you the idea that our breakup was nasty with bitterness all around, you’d be wrong.   We fought the same battles over and over, until I finally decided there would be no meeting of the minds and I couldn’t  live with the probable end result of that.  So, I took our two daughters and left.  We continued to communicate for a while.  He tried to reconcile and I cooperated at first, until it became obvious that we were still covering the same ground with the same result. Eventually, I moved away.  At the time, there was little in the way of employment opportunities here and I had two daughters to support.  I know that I destroyed his world.  That knowledge makes me sorrowful.  I know how devastated I would have been if the positions had been reversed.  Still, given the same circumstances, I’d have to do the same thing again.

If you think we still live in different states, that’s also wrong.  We live 30 minutes away from each other.  When I first returned home because my mother had been put in a rest home due to Alzhiemer’s, I was willing to build a relationship that would allow him to see our grandchildren when they came to visit me.  He rejected the offer.  He had remarried by then and seemed to think I was trying to damage his new relationship.  Again, I was sorrowful, this meant he would only get to spend part of one day with them, when their mother came to get them.  If he had been willing to accept my involvement, he could have had them all to himself for several days during the weeks they spent with me every summer. ( Read more )