I'll Have More Meat Loaf

It's been seventeen years since the day my mother and father decided their marriage was not working. January 14th was the anniversary of the day my parents told me they were getting a divorce. I always think that maybe that day will come and go and that helpless feeling followed by the flashback won't haunt me. It has yet to happen. I don't wish for my parents to get back together and I don't blame them for what happened. I do often wonder how two people can be in love and together for such a long time and then find they're not in love anymore and go their separate ways. My parents were together for around sixteen years including the time they dated. My father took my mother to her senior prom. Today, they don't speak and the only connection they have to one another is me. They had this life that just stopped existing. The joint bank account, the house, the cars, the pets, the dinners around the kitchen table, the vacations, the same friends, the in-laws and the kid, were no longer shared together. One life became two lives and that was that. Two people that once shared the same home no longer even shared the same zip code. Court dates, custody and child support hearings and every other weekend became the norm. Two lives.

My parents went on to find happiness with others and for that I am grateful. I went on to become normal or for the most part normal. I don't blame the divorce for any of my shortcomings. I don't think it was for the best; I know it was for the best. In their case, two lives was much better than one. It's funny that I can still recount the exact day and they can't. I guess they finally moved on and perhaps they don't blame one another for everything including a rainy day or a headache caused by nothing more than sinuses. I was forever changed on that day and I guess that's why I can't seem to get through it without a sense of loss. A life ended that day. Everything that symbolized that life was sold or split in half, that is with one exception....me. They have a thirty year old reminder of what they once shared. And that reminder hasn't forgotten nor will she ever forget.

There was good before there was bad. Who knew that Meat Loaf's "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" would be a song that I would hold dear to my heart. It's a memory, you know of the life that once was. It came on the radio and my parents started singing to one another and they were obviously happy. I thought it was kind of crazy but I was seven and also enjoyed watching them as they made fools of themselves. They loved one another in that moment and that makes me smile. My parents didn't find themselves "praying for the end of time" because time just gave out. I'll continue to smile whenever I hear that song and I'll also keep that prom picture, the one of of my father in a blue tux and my mother in a dress that her mother made, stored safely away. January 14th wasn't a good day but there were good days. Every time I look in the mirror I know that I represent one of those days. So, I say thank you, Momma and Daddy for giving me some fantastic memories and pretty hilarious photographs and thank you, Meat Loaf for an awesome song that will forever have a place on my ipod.