Bedrock

We both knew with absolute certainty that it would never happen to us.

Our love was solid as bedrock.  

We were friends first, having grown up together, seeing each other's awkward phases, our ugly ducklings, our dark sides of the moon.

We stayed friends through our swan phases, me clearing up my acne and growing into my body, her ridding herself of the shackles of braces and a training bra.

Our love wasn’t based on looks, or passion, or any one thing. It was a collection of little moments in time, our first kiss, first date, first child. It was sharing a bowl of popcorn when sharing meant you got two bites and counted your fingers afterward to make sure you still had ten. It was hugs after a bad day, dancing in the kitchen because we could, unbridled laughter over some silly joke you told. Beth said she fell in love with my humor, my goofiness. I fell in love with her caring heart, her love of animals.

We orbited each other’s love lives for years, as we crashed our satellites onto distant planets repeatedly until the gravity of our connection pulled us back together. On a trip back home from college, I bumped into Beth at the local supermarket. Literally, I mean. I hit her with the grocery cart as I exited an aisle, sending her off like a tumbleweed towards the produce section. After many apologies, we reconnected over Italian pie and Coca-cola. Two months later, we were engaged. Six more and we were wed. Tommy was our first and only. He, of the cherubic cheeks and belly laugh, of the sea blue eyes, of all our hopes and dreams bottled.  

Yet even the strongest bedrock can form fissures over time. Our fissures were our careers which set us off on different paths and our misguided belief in the absoluteness of love. My job took me away from home for weeks on end, hers required long hours in stressful situations.  

The simple act of taking someone for granted, for twenty years, ate into that bedrock. We became more roommates than soulmates. We buried our parents, a few friends, and our only son. Each loss seemed to push her into a more distant orbit, far away in time and space, heart and mind, body and soul. Lines were drawn, barriers erected, hearts hardened. 

She was the moon to my Earth, keeping me in check, regulating my tides. She kept me grounded, my gravity until she wasn’t, leaving me adrift in the cold lonely vacuum of space.  

Complacency and hubris were our greenhouse gasses.  

My bedrock morphs into a game of the floor is lava. Every step, every move I make to rectify, to rekindle, reignite the flame of our love ends in fiery demise.  

I’ve moved on, she says in a text.  

You need to do the same.  

Nine words. Simple and short.  

A razor-sharp guillotine blade lopping off my foolhardy head, cutting my remaining heart strings.  

I’ve moved on.

Three words.  

Replacing other trios of yesteryear

I miss you; I love you, Beth loves Dan. 

The divorce papers hit me like an asteroid, a world killer, cratering my heart, nuking my soul. I forget simple things like how to breathe as I shed a lone tear on her signature at the bottom of the page. It is unique to her. I mourn the fact I’ll never see her trademark capital B, its rotundness, sitting on the page, googly eyes scrawled in the curvature. No more notes in the lunchbox. Hi, hun. Have a great day, love you xx oo. Tiny hearts ringing the message. Little sentiments letting me know I was seen, I was loved.  

 The blank line awaits my submission, my acquiescence, my white flag. Extinction events, that is what they are called. This is our extinction event, ground zero, our personal fallout zone.

Don’t believe in absolutes, the always and the never.  

Solid ground becomes quicksand.  

Worlds change.

Universes go supernova.

Entire galaxies are sucked into the endless void of a black hole.

Nothing escaping, not even light, nor hope, nor love.  

I run my hand across the oaken trunk, tracing the grooves of our youthful vandalism, the curve of the heart etched in cellulose.

Dan loves Beth.  

I still do.  

I always will. 

Triplets of truth for me, but I’ve been told to move on, to search new worlds, to explore new frontiers. With my shattered heart of broken dreams pieced back together with Band-Aids and scotch tape, my leaden feet forge new territory.  

Unknown and foreboding.  

I sign on the bottom in a cursive farewell, a parting gift to end one halves suffering. I long for home, for the comfort of her friendship, her love, my Beth.  

She is off exploring new worlds, sending out satellites, moving on, creating new orbits. Never my moon again.  

The loss, my loss tears at the fabric of my being. My molecules, my atoms torn asunder. The undefinable part, the part that gives life its meaning, the turnkey to my soul no longer exists. Stray filaments of blonde litter my clothing. Secret assassins imparting gifts to remind me of how I have failed. Scents of known origin cling to the bed linens. Her perfume, visions of her sleepy smile, a photograph of contentment. Quiet moments, a shared doublet, forever lost. The contours of her face, the crinkle of a mischievous smile forming, stolen moments in a chaotic world.

Scrolling through my feed, our lives together, a timeline that was supposed to end with death doing us part. Droplets of pain fall slowly at first, increasing in size and volume as I get to the last few posts. I log on to her account, the bell tolls for me, her status says one word: Single. 

I sit on the tarmac, waiting for liftoff, praying that in some distant future, in a cosmos uncharted, our orbits will intersect once more.  

Don’t believe in absolutes, the always and the never.