Really, it does. I know this sounds trite, and it is, but I really have no better way to explain it than that. Because this summer has seen the entire life my husband and I built for us and our son crumble until it's become just a vague shadow of what it used to be.
Father's Day weekend was a weekend full of hope and love for us. We were working in the yard, doing some spring cleaning and preparing for some celebration of family and love. Our house was soon to be ours and there was talk of a promotion for him at work. I just finished my first semester back at school to finish my bachelor's degree I abandoned 15 years ago and things were headed in the right direction for us. Then he decided to run to to the store.
I got the call before I even knew he was gone. "Baby, I wrecked the car." I thought he was joking. It wasn't his car, he had a customer's car home to try to figure out what was wrong with it and that's what he was driving for the weekend. I ran out of the house, leaving our son with my sister and drove to the corner of our street. There he was, in the car, wrapped around a light pole. I waited while the police came and the fire trucks pulled up. I watched as they used the jaws of life to pry him out. I saw him laid out on a stretcher and loaded into the ambulance and then followed him to the hospital.
It took over a week to start to get answers about what was wrong with him. Finally, the collapsed lung and 9 broken ribs were disclosed, but not the kidney failure and heart complications. Twenty two long days I fought to get answers and bring my partner home to reunite our family. Twenty two days, as it turned out, was all it took for everything else to fall apart.
The job decided that they couldn't keep him. Well, with no job, the bank decided we couldn't keep our mortgage either. The life we were working so hard to build began to crumble, but that was just the beginning. When he got home from the hospital, he wasn't the same person either. Guilt, pain, frustration, and disappointment began to eat at us. Both of us. Our bond began to wear. As the process of losing our home began in earnest our focus began to skew in different directions. Our priorities began to take different paths.
Three months later and I don't know how we'll repair the damage that's been done. His body is healing, but our hearts are more deeply damaged than I think we allowed ourselves to admit. Two weeks left until we have to leave this house we entered so full of hope. We're moving into a disappointment that we have to turn into salvation. We have to rebuild from nothing again, but this time we're building on top of a ruined foundation instead of a strong base of true love. We have to build up from resentment and judgement, distrust and miscommunication to try to recreate the unit we used to take for granted. Where we were once a team we are now two individuals trying to find a common goal to try to unite us again. Maybe we can find it somewhere in this wreckage.
