This Is Awkward

I am not suicidal.
I'm not even depressed.
I'm saturated with love, and  moonlight and cricket-song are seeping into my window.
But I've been pacing and thinking before  burrowing into my bed with my purring laptop.
Suppose tomorrow or the next day I get distracted while crossing a street and clumsily stumble in front of a bus or just clumsily stumble on my black granite stairs or get bit by a spider or slip in the shower.
I want to be cremated.
No Catholic Mass. Don't bury the ashes.
Ashes in Paris. Ashes in the Aegean. Ashes in the Mississippi.
Have a party. Drink gin.
Thanks.
I still have my old will where Mr. Ex gets everything. Probably that's not enforceable now. I hope.
I'll work on changing that but meanwhile let this post serve as official word that he should have nothing.
And he can't come to the party.

Collateral Damage #2

My daughters have a baby brother courtesy of Mr.Ex & the Little Missus. From all reports he is quite adorable and bears a certain resemblance to his sisters.

I will never know him.

I am the child of a blended family--blended before blending was popular or tolerated or accepted or the norm. My mother was my father's 3rd wife. Marriage #1 produced no children (he said.) Marriage #2 was to a woman who was married previously. She had a daughter from that previous marriage and together my father and wife # 2 had a son (the siring of the son is a matter of some debate--but nevermind because this is the simple version of the story.) The daughter of the previous marriage became pregnant at age 16 and was married (or not--this is the simple version of the story, remember) But the marriage (or the not-marriage) fell apart, and my father and wife #2 took over the raising of the baby who was legally adopted by my father and wife #2. But wife #2 died, and my father and my mother fell in love, and eloped, and kept their marriage secret, and after some months eventually came out of the closet about being married. The adopted girl was then raised by them, and I was born, and the adopted girl thereby became my adopted half-sister. When my brothers were born, she was their adopted half-sister too.

We all spoke. Some of us lived together, and those that didn't got together with us frequently to barbecue, play badminton, shuffle board, horse shoes and canasta.  I didn't know then that all of that was some kind of miracle.

The moon is 98% of full and I am overflowing--
my inbox drenched with this:

Denise, 
Mr.Ex is thus far not willing to cooperate in dividing the joint assets.  I spoke to his attorney  both today and last week, and he complained of not being able to get a response from Mr. Ex, whom he continues to describe as a mess.  I’ll keep pushing him.


And the moon  keeps pulling.

Collateral Damage

 I think it's safe to say that Mr. Ex and I will never have a congenial post-divorce relationship. Whatever goodwill might have been scraped up off the pavement has been washed away by the resentment that's built up over these past three years of his refusal to divide our joint assets. That's a loss--but not a surprising one as divorces go, I guess.
I have mourned the loss of our family profoundly and continue to do so.  No more "the four of us" at holiday dinners, vacations, the celebrations of  the milestones in our lives. We'll never again see a play together or take a walk. This is the aspect of divorce I find most devastating. It even surpasses being dumped for a younger woman. I've lost my family. You expect that in a divorce, right?
But it's the collateral damage that's making my heart ache this week. I didn't expect the grief over the loss of my mother-in-law--and I haven't lost her exactly since we still write letters to one another. But Sunday there's a family brunch  to celebrate her 90th birthday, and I'm not going.
Mr. Ex is going.
I have friendly relationships with all of my ex in-laws. They have demonstrated nothing but kindness and support toward me, but all of us know that it's not possible for Mr. Ex and me to be in the same room. It wouldn't be a birthday celebration anymore.
When I met Mr. Ex, I fell hard. My eighteen-year-old brain/body was certain it was fate. He was my soul mate, I was sure of it, and I remember explaining this theory of mine to his mother. She wasn't particularly impressed. Maybe because she wasn't sure she wanted me to be part of her son's life then. She might have even disliked me when Mr. Ex first brought me home. I was a wild girl tearing up the path her son had been on to become a Catholic priest. We pushed her 1970s Catholic midwestern envelope and insisted on sharing the same bed at her house although we weren't  married. It was kind of a mess. But she made us sandwiches for the road when we left.
My mother-in-law is prim and proper and unapproachable compared to my own wildly extroverted smoking, drinking, swearing, lipstick-wearing mother. I was a little afraid of her in the first couple of years of my relationship with Mr. Ex. Afraid of being judged, I guess. But over the years, we scratched out our common ground. We are both gardeners and have toured one another's yards and gardens with appreciation. We are both writers, simple cooks who love wholesome food, and lovers of thrift (though she puts me to shame in this category because rural Nebraska thrift is not glamor-sated L.A. thrift by any stretch of the imagination.)
I've never ever been to a 90th birthday celebration. I so wish I could be at hers.