It's interesting I've been writing about death and loss lately, last week in my mantra and also in my book. Last Tuesday, my mother-in-law passed away. I am divorced, but she will always be my mother-in-law and grandmother to my boys. The finality of someone's death brings up feelings of nostalgia and longing. Even though parts of our life have been final for a while, the sting of death opens heart space to relive moments that are lost, and we grieve not only for the person who is gone, but for the time that has passed, moments that have become memories, and life cycles now ended. Instinctually, we might cling to the past, in order to relieve our pain. 

We might feel guilt or regret, in order to make sense of why we hurt so acutely. We hurt because we loved, not because of something we did or didn't do.

The fact that I signed my name on a line, to claim my marriage "irretrievably broken" has no effect on my grief at her passing, or on my relationship to a woman who was my mother, and my family, for over 15 years. The fact that my life does not look like what I had imagined when I walked down the aisle in a long white gown does not exempt me from feelings of grief and sadness, nor does it take me away from the fact that my family - what it looks like today - has suffered a big loss. My boys and my ex-husband are still my family. We live apart. We are no longer married, and I am in a new partnership. I am sober. None of my life looks like what I had planned. A lot of the time I feel like I am starting completely over. I imagined many aspects of my life would be easier and more clear-cut when I took those steps down the aisle. I knew my husband and I would go through losing one another's parents. I knew we would raise children and share parenting triumphs and trials. I didn't imagine my marriage would look like this, but maybe what it looks like doesn't matter. Maybe what it looks like is perfect the way it is.

If the point of marriage is to feel love, I have. If the point of marriage is to support someone through thick and thin, I have. If the point of marriage is to create and nurture a family moving forward, we do. If the point of marriage is to expand our love to others who are not blood related, like a mother-in-law, my heart has expanded. It's easy to see your place in life, whether it's a relationship, family situation, career, or friendship, and feel like we have failed because the image is not what we thought it would be. The image is not what most of our friends have, or what we see portrayed in movies. 

But let's go easy on ourselves. We can adjust our image of love. We can adjust our image of family. When we stop hanging on to an image that isn't ours, then we can appreciate the true gifts in our life - like love, like partnership, and like loss. I feel my emotions without expectation and regardless of whether our not it confuses people. Most importantly, I can set an example for my boys - an understanding that love, life, and death will affect us whether our name is signed on a legal document or not. And what a gift.