Day 28

I hate Sundays. He left on a Sunday, but it’s more than just that. Sundays were family days. For the past couple of years, Sundays had been the only day that he and I had off together. Our routine was having breakfast as a family, going to church, and then taking the kids out to lunch afterwards. The kids looked forward to these lunches all week. It was a special treat and a guaranteed time that we all had together without the distractions of work, school, or extracurricular activities. More often than not, we had Chinese food. Needless to say, the kids and I haven’t been able to eat Chinese food since he left. He loved Chinese food, and the kids have acquired a love for it as well. When we lived in Portland, we would visit Chinatown. Archie and his dad would eat anything if it was called Chinese. Sometimes our Sunday lunches were held at the park that is down the street from the church. I would pack a picnic lunch, and we would spend the afternoon eating and watching the kids play at the playground. Oliver would run back and forth across the open, grassy area and would periodically stop to rest between his dad and me on the picnic blanket. I haven’t been able to go to church or to the park since he left. I see him everywhere I go, and I imagine the conversations we would have in various places. He used to always pass me notes in church, and now I don’t even have anyone to sit with. Each Sunday since that Mother’s Day, I have been haunted by the events of that day. Everything seemed so normal. Everything seemed so real. But the facts I have uncovered since that day have made me realize that nothing was real or normal about that day or the days surrounding it. In fact, nothing appears to have been real about the person I shared a bed with for 11 years.

It’s been 4 weeks today. It is 1:36 right now, which is about the time it was when he left for “work” that Sunday. He left at 1:48, and I spent the afternoon and evening in complete oblivion of what he was doing. While I was tidying up the house that afternoon, he was booking a flight to Denver and pulling out thousands of dollars from a business line of credit. While the kids and I ate dinner that Mother’s Day, he was boarding a flight for Denver that departed at 6:54. And while I was bathing the kids and putting them to bed, he was arriving in Denver, leasing a rental car, and settling in somewhere for the night. It was not until 10:38 (2 hours after he had arrived in Denver and 2 hours after I had tucked the kids into bed for the night) that I discovered my life had changed forever.