Navigating Distance and Devotion in Our Late 50s
Eleven Windows
Like the changes in our life that hit so hard
That day I couldn’t find you
There’s a glimmer of everything good that once came before
From “Glimmer” by Neil Young, 2014
Three days before my 58th birthday, work took Bobby, my husband of 23 years, 1,400 miles west, and so began our commuter marriage. A new architecture of two lives still bound together, even as geography pulled them apart.
Before Bobby packed up his Sarge Green Jeep and drove west, he gave me a gold necklace with an Our Lady of Guadalupe pendant, a small act of faith and hope. But on my birthday, he forgot to text me happy birthday until 8 p.m., my time. By then I had already spiraled into doomsday, convinced he was gone for good, that this was all some elaborate trick of fate.
That’s what old wounds do. They wait quietly until something small reminds you they’re still there. They whisper that love is temporary, that distance is dangerous, and everyone will leave you.
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