I graduated university and married a good Catholic man. We had two children. We were destined for amazing things together.
Marriage with my husband wasn’t anything I ever could have conjured up in my own mind. He broadened my scope beyond the periphery of my gaze.
How was it then that we split up after only eight years? Divorce dealt a devastating blow to family life. He moved to New York and remained a journalist. I stayed in Chicago and taught school. Seasonally, our children went back and forth on 747s.
When an epidemic took his life, everything fell apart even more. Our sons and I were left to carry on without him. We have. But it’s been ever so much heavier without his joie de vivre, as he called it.
-Gretchen Grossman