Sunday, November 13, 2011

The Anniversary Effect

No, not as in wedding anniversaries.  As in close to the time someone near to you died.

I'm walking down the road of another anniversary effect time -- November is when my grandmother died.  November is when my father had the catastrophic stroke that led to his death.  November is when I was digesting the fact that my former husband was "probably" gay.

November is also when I had my first date with my current (and new) husband.

Every year since that first date, we've commemorated by doing the same thing -- attending the final night of a local film festival.  This year, however, we didn't and I feel as if I blew it.  His father is dying, he's struggling to keep his business afloat and I said I would buy the tickets.  And I forgot, because, I, too, am working long hours and juggling lots of plates.

I was already feeling the various pangs of anniversary angst and when I remembered I'd forgotten ... well, let's just say I cried a little bit.

This morning, I got up, got dressed and went to church for the first time in several months.  I had a serious desire to partake of communion, more than anything else.  I experience more grace in Eucharist than I do in anything else at church.  It's wild, because having been brought up a Southern Baptist, I spent most of my life afraid to take communion lest I fall into judgment for neglecting to confess a particular sin.

I didn't, however, ask my husband to go with me.  I needed time to myself, to be still and be with God.  It was refreshing.

So much has changed in my life and in my heart since I've begun this little adventure in occasional blogging.  The most obvious is, of course, my new marriage.  The least visible is probably my attitude toward gays and lesbians.  Today, I realize that they are who they are and who they are is probably who they were created to be.   I believe that reparative therapy is an oxymoron and damaging.  (The people I've known in the church who were/are gay and tried not to be are now either dead or out.  And yes, many of them were once married.)  While I don't embrace the darker sides of gay culture, I've known enough genuinely devoted gay couples that I question why they can't marry.  I think that sexual promiscuity is a sin against one's own body whether you are straight, gay or some variation thereof.

Big, big differences.

One of the biggest is that my former husband and I are now on reasonably good terms.  I like his partner very much.  I invited them both to my wedding.  (They both attended, too.)  These changes have had some positive impacts on our children.

HOWEVER, those clanging, pesky anniversary effects ... yes, well, for me, Thanksgiving is probably the noisiest and most painful.  I miss having Thanksgiving at my old house.  I miss my former husband's inherited silver and china, not to mention the antique breakfront that held so much of that stuff.  It had become "ours" not his, and isn't it silly that I miss getting it out, cleaning it and making a pretty table with it?  Why is "stuff" so important all of a sudden?  Or is it the traditions and the old history of things that seemed good and stable when it really wasn't?  I don't know.