KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 15 − "Chris: I hope someday you will be able to forgive me. I have to try to become the man I am meant to be. I will never forget the love we shared.
"Stacy: No, no, no, no, noooo!"—Stacy Morrision, Falling Apart in One Piece.
"Let's have lunch," my friend tells me one day, over a text message, "and please, it's my treat, okay? I insist."
Never one to pass up a free meal, especially one offered by a friend with an impeccable palate, I agree without hesitating. A couple of hours later, we are seated in a Japanese restaurant, sipping hot hojicha and snapping chilled edamame pods.
He gets right down to it after we've placed our orders and the waiter has left with the menus: "My wife has left me."
How does one respond to that? I say I'm sorry and I put my hand on his shoulder.
He says it's okay and shrugs off my hand. Concern is fine, but sometimes, talking is better.
Sometimes, letting it all out is the only way to survive, to move on to the next moment.
"She's seeing someone else, of course," he tells me, recognising the almost-ridiculous reality of a just-like-the-soaps scene.
"The worst thing is, she's been seeing this other man for a year already. How could I not know?"
There are rules to a marriage, one supposes. Expectations to meet. Vows to be kept. And oh so much sorrow when things go wrong and the marriage breaks. So much sorrow when it all falls down.
Another married friend had confessed to me that he never knew how painful an affair could be – after all, enough of his buddies would recount tales of their extra-marital activities to him over drinks – till his own sister told him one day how her husband had cheated on her.
I know how these friends of mine feel, though I'll admit I never had to endure the heartbreak personally, because the same thing happened to my sister.
Her husband cheated on her, she forgave him, he promised never again… and then he cheated on her again.
It took my sister more than 15 years before she could see my (now former) brother-in-law would never change. They divorced.
Thankfully, their children (my nephew and nieces) were now old enough to realise they were better off in a more stable, single-parent home, i.e. one without a philandering parent.
That's easy enough to summarise, isn't it? Seems simple: get a divorce and Life goes on.
Except it doesn't. Not really.
"Why do you get to leave it all behind? Why am I the one with everything on my hands? ... It's bad enough you leave me. But you just get to walk away? From everything? And leave me with this whole mess?" ― Stacy Morrison, Falling Apart in One Piece
Our bowls of inaniwa udon have arrived. Mine with strands of whisper-thin beef; his comes plain. We ignore our food though; my friend, whom I've seen withstand bloody and painful falls during nature hikes without flinching, is crying silently now and I'm awkwardly offering him some tissues.
He asks me, "Where do I go from here? My whole life was supposed to be our life together. But she's left, and it's her and that bastard now.
What about me?"
I have no answers for my friend. I didn't have any for my sister when she had her divorce all those years ago. Who does, really? Relationships are such fragile things, and who knows if they are meant to survive "for ever after"? Maybe fairy tale endings are truly only a fairy tale.
Later, after lunch, after I have given my friend a long hug before saying goodbye and stay strong, I drive to the shopping mall where I usually wait for you to finish work.
Your office is nearby and while it seems to defy logic, parking at a mall does ensure an easy exit afterwards once the head-home-for-dinner traffic rush starts.
Our friends find it cute that we do this: the waiting game for each other to finish work and to drive home in one car (we extol the merits of carpooling and saving on fuel); the showering together in the AM and the PM (we insist we're merely environmentally friendly and save water this way); the arguing back-and-forth and constant physical intimacies such as prodding ever-expanding love handles (we claim this promotes more acute mental faculties and quicker reflexes in later life).
We joke about this all the time but after today's lunch, it doesn't feel so much like a joke anymore.
Perhaps there is no grand romance in life. Perhaps there are no fairy tales or fairy tale endings.
Perhaps, there is no Ever After but there is Right Here, Right Now.
We can work at being nicer to one another; we can work at loving – the action itself, the verb, and not merely a Hollywood-bred notion.
"I fell apart. Not knowing what else to do, I dragged (my son) home, him screaming and crying and so disappointed, me with my head down so that I wouldn't have to meet other parents' eyes." ― Stacy Morrison, Falling Apart in One Piece
I call my sister. It's been too long since our last conversation. I ask her how she is, how the kids are doing, the mundane details of her life that are so precious to her younger brother who does not see her or his nephew and nieces as often as he would like.
She's good, and she's getting better. One does move on, even if that never seems the case in the beginning, when everything is so raw.
Putting down the phone, I see you approaching my table. You've finished earlier than usual. I smile at you and you return the smile, beaming beautifully as usual.
Behind that smile, I sometimes forget that your parents separated when you were young too; that you grew up living with your mother, a series of nannies and caretakers as your mother had to work doubly hard to take care of you.
Behind that smile is the pride of giving her a better life once you grew up and had a good job.
You bought her a house; you gave her everything she needed. She was comfortable and happy all the way till she passed away some years ago. That, I tell you, is something. Not everyone gets that.
"It's been a while since we visited your mother's grave, we should make a trip soon and pay our respects," I said.
You nodded, glad that I remembered.
Life can be so hard, it's true. And to move on after a break-up or a death or a loss – not easy.
But we can go on, we can survive and we can prosper. We can be happy again. There is still love in this world, so much of it still.
"At first I wanted to cry; the photo was so sweet, and I felt again the loss of the family I thought I would get to have, sharply, just under my breastbone. But then I caught myself: I had been there to share in the moment. It belonged to me as much as it would have been if Chris and I were still married." ― Stacy Morrison, Falling Apart in One Piece
Falling Apart in One Piece: An Optimist's Journey Through the Hell of Divorce, by Stacy Morrison (Simon & Schuster, 2010)
* Kenny believes we will all survive and, what's more, thrive. Read more of his musings at http://lifeforbeginners.com
The Malaysian Insider :: Food
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