By the time I moved my daughters and I into this apartment just over a year ago, I felt a bit battle-worn. I’d been just struggling with so many things for so long and was still trying to adjust to the weight I now had to carry alone. Since my husband had abruptly left me, every shift in my life felt so much heavier.
So, while moving was always stressful enough on its own – add to it being still raw with the grief and rage of infidelity-led abandonment and maybe you can imagine how burnt out I was on every level as I sat alone in a room piled high with boxes to unpack and heard shrill cooing from outside.
I looked to see Brenda: The Good Dove of Divorce. ( I decided.)
Mourning doves mate for life. We had a pair that hung out in the yard at our last place (Stella and Stanley, I decided) that were always showing off their tiny, lifelong love. Not that I was bitter, not about the birds anyway. But Brenda…she was always on her own.
When she wasn’t hanging out on the wires right outside my window, she’d be out there on the street, softly cooing her heart out like some character out of Les Mis. I’m not saying she’s tragic, or even depressed, but she doesn’t exactly move out of the way of cars like she should- you know? And sure, maybe I’m projecting. She could be a widow. Or a male. I know the chances that her life mate ran off with a younger bird who worked at his restaurant are *perhaps* small. Still, I started to feel a kinship with Brenda whenever she would randomly show up, always announcing herself with her mournful little song.
As spring bled into summer, I hit a snag in my ‘healing journey’. The move had already amplified how alone I really was now, then the grief anniversaries (griefiversaries?) all started hitting in rapid succession; the day he left in March, finding out about his affair… the night the lies were revealed and he really left along with that horrible Mother’s Day surprise in May… our June wedding anniversary…followed shortly with an August filing for divorce… all that chipping away led to me finally getting cut off at the knees.
I’d thought I was getting better- moving on. Now, suddenly I was emotionally and psychologically hobbled again, angry with myself for not being able to get back up. But what I didn’t know yet, was that move and his lack of involvement when I clearly needed help, was the start of a final severing for me. That was what that new pain stirring up really was; the slow slicing away of the deepest, last layer of love and connection I had to this man I’d so long been devoted to, and the life I’d loved with him. It took an end of summer hurricane and the distance it established, in more ways than one, to finally tear it all the way apart.
I didn’t see Brenda for a long time after coming home from our weeks-long evacuation. I’d assumed she had moved on in some manner or other. Then, after I got back from a brief Mardi Gras getaway months later, she was there again. I was surprisingly very glad to see her.
I started to wonder if maybe she’d just come back from a vacation too, because unlike all of her mated pair friends, Brenda doesn’t have to answer to anyone. She can do what she wants. She’s a lot plumper than those coupled doves too, but why should she care? Maybe Brenda is just out there living her best life. Maybe Brenda is having a wild fling with one of the sleek, cat- sized crows that hang out here. Maybe I don’t see her too often because she’s taking long trips to Audubon Park to party with those ducks that sound like excited squeak toys that have taken over Bird Island there. Maybe Brenda doesn’t give a damn.
Brenda is free.
Look, I know what you might be thinking. “Soooo….has anyone else seen Brenda? Does she ever, you know, tell you to do things? Have you mentioned “Brenda” to your therapist?” I also see the concerned smile on my friends’ faces when I’ve mentioned Brenda to them. I’m probably still not seen as someone that can withstand much tough love- especially given the lack of that other kind, so I think maybe people aren’t comfortable telling me outright when I sound like a lunatic. So here goes this post.
(Feel free to think I’m crazy anyway, but like Brenda, I will not be judged.)
