Elegy For A Wedding Band - I took Off Your Love Today

This hub is really about using hobbies to help deal with mood swings - that wonderful affect of everyone going through a major change. Affect n. (āf'ěkt') feeling or emotion, especially as manifested by facial expression or body language; an emotion or mood associated with an idea or action, or the external expression of such a feeling .

Gardening has always been a passion of mine, and I am finally in lovely little house with a lovely little back garden. It's just the right size - big enough to have lots of room to play, but not so big that it eats up every hour in the day. We have added some lovely new roses, and many plants from the acreage where we used to live have made their way into this new home.

It is an altogether lovely place - my mind is much on love these days...

The beautiful, mature trees are well-grown, and the lawn only takes an hour to mow. This is a far cry from the full eight hours it took to mow the back-forty where we once lived.

Now that everything that can and will be said and done has, in fact, been said and done, there only remains the "getting on with it" part - the truly difficult part.

How does one "get on" without the person who has become such a part of your life that you finish each others' sentences; so much a part of your life that while watching TV, you glance at over and burst out laughing, each knowing exactly what the other is thinking?

How, indeed, did we go from that such closeness of heart and mind to cold, uncaring silence - no, not uncaring, but rather a will that wavers somewhere between half-smothered amalgam of relief and fear at my leaving, and an ill-concealed desire to have me gone as quickly as possible.

It started many years before, with an unwillingness to face a growing difference, an expanding gulf between us. It started with not daring to ask questions that dearly needed asking. It started with being afraid of answers - answers that might lead to change, separation, and mainly, to being alone in the kind of world where being alone for us meant extreme economic hardship.

Perhaps it is better to stay together in some kind of friendship and survive, than to loose the roof over your head and starve in freedom. If those are the terms, though, then the heart must bend to them on both sides of the agreement. The problem comes when one heart desires but cannot afford freedom, and the other does not desire freedom, but rather desires the other heart.

So it was with us. Neither wanted to be alone, nor to suffer hardship, but neither wanted to ask the hard questions - the questions that might lead to hurt and a return to loneliness. We stayed together, limping along, still sharing family and holidays, still acting the loving parts we had crafted for ourselves.

Then, the unthinkable happened.  Another player entered the picture,and everything changed. There was no more pretending - it was obvious to anyone with eyes to see that  something had changed. The heart that had longed for freedom strained even more to break free to pursue its new love.

In the end there was nothing more to do. The inevitable, though not acceptable, was all that remained.

,,,and now, the hardest part of all  - learning how to survive alone...to survive, and to overcome... 

I took off your love today,

That single band of woven gold;

And our life must, too, unweave,

Unravel, disentangle now...

Like tangled limbs and lovers' sighs,

The golden strands that bound us close,

And wove, in bliss, our hearts and minds,

Now metal bond - a shackle fair -

A band of woven gold that holds

No longer lovers' souls entwined...

Cold logic cannot rule my heart,

Nor turn off all those errant thoughts

That fly unbidden through a mind

Still grieving over spilt amor...

Love all spilled out, now fled away,

Another's garden waters now;

Another's joy will fresh like dew;

Another's love lift up - and mine,

Cast down to stony, barren shores

Adrift on seas unknown...

Cast off then, I shall cast off, too,

And set my course alone again;

But lonely not, for friends have I,

And harbors safe for journey's end.

Some angel watches over me;

Some other love my heart shall mend;

But whole am I, and wholly mine,

Shall see what lies around next bend;

Shall find what life will make of me

And I of it -

For I took off your love today...