People in long-term marriages or partnerships react differently when those relationships come to an end, whether by death or divorce. There is always a period of adjustment and then, for some, a new beginning as life moves on.
When my father died, my mother was initially numb and grief-stricken. She could have seen his death as a way free from the chains of their co-dependent relationship and then made a whole new life for herself. She was only fifty-two at the time, bright and attractive, and could easily have carved out a new career for herself or become involved in a exciting new relationship. She chose not to. She more or less gave up on a life of her own and merged into our family unit instead. Not that there is anything wrong with taking up the role of grandmother, it’s just that she stopped having dreams or ambitions of her own and hung her future on her only daughter – me – and her grandchildren instead. She also created a fantasy around the image of her late husband. She somehow forgot all the negative aspects of his personality and reminisced only about the good times they had enjoyed together. It’s understandable in many ways that she would want to suppress the painful memories of his infidelities and the subsequent drunken brawling, but sometimes I became very frustrated at the rosy picture she painted of her life with Theo.
I had an aunt who spent her life totally at the beck and call of her husband, who was quite a forceful and dominating character. She was meek and bird-like, but their marriage was happy because they obviously met each other’s needs. My uncle didn’t like flying in aeroplanes and he had but one favourite holiday destination, to which they returned year after year. They were very set in the pattern of their lives together. When he died, my aunt was initially devastated. But when the shock and grief subsided she decided, despite being well into her eighties, to do a little travelling. It was an amazing thing for her family to behold. Suddenly she was airborne, zipping from Sydney to Broome to Adelaide to Tasmania. Exploring Australia for the first time on her own because during her married life it hadn’t been an option. She was a late-life adventurer and for years it was almost impossible to catch her at home.
In France, my friend Margaret Barwick was similarly grief-stricken when her husband David died after a long battle with cancer. Margaret, usually a lively personality, became quiet and almost withdrawn. She slowed down, gained weight and even developed late-onset diabetes. Her friends and family were worried about her. Then something amazing happened. She just took charge of her life again. Picked herself up and went onwards and upwards. She started exercising, kept to a rigid diet and lost weight rapidly. She had always been a keen hands-on gardener and she took to it again with a vengeance, disappearing down the back with barrowloads of plants from early morning until dusk. For several years she had been working on the manuscript for an encyclopaedia of tropical trees, her particular passion. She and David had spent their married life in tropical regions of the world, where he had been a colonial governor. During this phase of their life she had developed her passion for plants and had helped establish botanic gardens and parks in several of their postings. With her renewed energy and fitness she finished the manuscript, found an English publisher and worked day and night to prepare the large volume for publication. She was a dynamo.
So there is life after a long-term marriage ends. There can be a new beginning. My problem is I just can’t imagine what my life would be like without David. It would be like a death, I guess. Even though we have had major ups and downs and at times I have felt a desperate need to escape from the confines of our relationship, in truth I can’t visualise myself as a single woman. I feel as though our lives are bound together through more than just love. Through myriad connections and shared experiences. Some people say that choosing divorce is the ‘easy way out’ of a troubled marriage. To me it feels as though it’s the most difficult way out. Surely staying together and trying to work things out is an easier solution. For me, anyway.