I've just been done by a song.

Done as in ... out from the undertow and spat ashore. Sweet relief! I just sat and heard Paul Simon's "Love and Hard Times" about twelve times over ... There's nothing like a lucid, loving and occasionally ludicrous songwriter, aged nearly 70 (!! -- Paul Simon -- seventy!!), singing Thank God I found you in time in a way that makes you think Yes -- thank God I found you in time -- in this time, in our time nearly a decade ago, in this life.

I heard the song over and over and I bawled, deep from the gut. A good, steady, cleansing cry. It's been just over a year now. One full cycle of seasons, anniversaries, birthdays, holidays, memories, undoings ...

Thank God I found you ... I can't yet thank God or Life or The Great Whatever for having lost you, and I doubt I ever will.  I can't see myself feeling grateful for this particular near-death, late-middle-age FGO (Fucking Growth Experience) ...

We are forever admonished to let go of the past ... but does the past let go of us? Can it? There's no letting go of certain attachments, certain bonds that have hoven into the blood, the nerves, the marrow. Despite how it expired, our bond as it was when we were wedded remains, one of the realities that paradoxically sustains me because it was for a time ... We created this bond and we destroyed it. I blame no one, ultimately; I blame nothing. Shit happens is up there with death and taxes -- guaranteed. Shit happens ... and so does grace. As Drew says to Quincy in Meet Joe Black: "That's just life, Quinc."

Sometimes life brings us caritas, kairos, tendresse ... grace. Sometimes life shits on us. Always, at the end, we die. Always, at the beginning, we are born. So it goes.

So you go. So I go. So we go on, broken in this way.

And then along comes Paul Simon.

Dear unhusband, should you ever read this, "Love and Hard Times" is our song. The 'wedded we' is broken, and love is gone.

thank god i found you 
in time