A Dream, Not A Dream

I had woken up early, as usual, full of ideas and ready to dig into my work. The house was dark and cold and Rich’s skinny body was buried under a mound of down quilts. He would not be up for another couple hours and continued to sleep deeply and silently, seemingly impervious to the sounds of city buses gathering people for the early shift at the nearby medical clinic. For me, the hydraulic brakes were an alarm clock. Occasionally I imagined I could sleep through the jarring noise and the vibrations that shook the entire house, but I never managed to get back to anything deeper than alpha brainwaves. So, regardless of whether I was going to remain in San Francisco for the day or head home to Napa after lunch, my early morning ritual never varied. At six a.m. when the bus brakes started squealing, I bounded out of bed, made myself two slices of sprouted grain toast, an egg over easy and a huge mug of black coffee. And then I was in front of my computer, waiting for the onslaught of wedding clients connecting via email and text, which invariably started around 8:00 a.m. as folks arrived at their various places of employment.

All morning I exchange with my young clients cheerful, emoji-filled emails and texts reiterating all of their wedding details. I then update their Pinterest boards, revise their event rental orders and send over the current version of their wedding budget spreadsheets. What I no longer do is insert my opinion on anything related to aesthetics or how much and what types of alcohol to serve. Pearls to swine on these subjects and any effort in this direction is just plain futile (not to mention grounds for getting dumped). This I know well. I like to chock all of this up to generational differences of opinion, even though I know part of it to be the do-as-I-please and I’m-way-smarter-than-you attitudes of the Silicon Valley crowd. I have chosen not to taken any of this personally. It’s just a job and a good paying one at that.

But as I carry out this morning routine, I miss the luxurious extra three hours of sleep that Rich, who’s semi-retired, enjoys, as well as the beautiful sunrise (on days when it’s not foggy) and what used to be my short, but lovely yoga routine. By the time Rich wakes up, the majority of my work day has passed and I’m in the shower starting in on the complex beauty routine I have adopted to keep my middle age body in compliance with his expectations. Rich (a hippy in his heyday apparently and someone who purportedly embraced the sexual revolution) is rather old-fashioned about our roles and prideful about having a younger girlfriend (“younger,” lol). Over the years, he’s made it quite clear that women his age are not up to his standards and I am positive that when he looks in the mirror he still sees a young man in his late 20’s who has an uncanny resemblance to Mick Jagger. The reality is that there are quite a few wrinkles (especially under the eyes and on the neck) and his moderately thick hair is mostly white. Gone are the chiseled biceps and washboard abs. Though Rich is lean and has fantastic legs, he’s a bit stiff (likely a bit of arthritis) and a tad frail/thin/flacid on the top half. Ah, yes. Reality. Something for which men seem to be allergic after age 60. Me, on the other hand... I am expected to overlook these imperfections (which I’m happy to do, she said cheerfully) and to exude the looks, energy and enthusiasm of a trophy wife, though I’m pulling 60+ hour work weeks, juggling numerous court appearances each month with a venomous ex and trying to raise two kids mostly on my own. Then there are expectations of additional tasks that I, as a female, should be able to weave in easily: housework, laundry, shopping and cooking for two households. Two fucking households. Jesus H. Christ. Yes, Rich is very good looking and fabulous in bed. But even the endorphins and oxytocin of great sex cannot counterbalance the magnitude and stress of this schedule. Full stop. Fifteen years in, overwork and juggling details for too many people was really starting to fray my nerves.

Still, I managed to keep things together, if but delicately (and invisibly) for those around me. Rich and I enjoyed a routine of my doing one week in Napa with my kids (without Rich), then the next with him in San Francisco, which was on the off-weeks of my child custody schedule. Thus the kids had me all to themselves one week and Rich had me all to himself on the alternate weeks. It worked really well for the lot of them, though less so for me. Neither the kids nor Rich had any sense for what I did in one place or the other and the frantic weekly transitions between households were something neither saw or appreciated. And they therefore, showed little empathy for my exhaustion and occasional passing out in the middle of family movie night. But the alternating week arrangement worked pretty well. Everyone’s needs were met, no one seemed to be feeling jealous. Secretly, however, all of it was deeply troubling for me as no one appreciated the hoops through which I was jumping to hold it all together. And little by little it was exacting its toll. Structural cracks were forming.

Over the years, with recurring holidays, school schedules, vacations, birthdays and whatnot, Rich’s family and mine became intertwined like the colorful warp and weft of a tapestry. There was a uniformity and precision to the weave of which we were very proud and it felt sturdy and durable. As a mature couple, Rich and I had passed through (and successfully, I might add) more than a dozen major life events together: two family deaths, the marriages of his two children, a bankruptcy, cancer twice, my kids’ graduations, a major career change for me and then Rich’s retirement. This was no small feat and it was a testament to our compatibility. To ourselves, our kids and the outside world, we were great partners. And the lovely routines we created went on uninterrupted year after year.

For me, my relationship with Rich was the closest thing to “normal” that I’d ever experienced. My childhood had been rife with turmoil: divorced parents, an abusive stepmother and emotionally absentee father, moving eleven times before graduating from high school, followed by two failed marriages with grossly unsuitable partners. My only successes had been in academics, my music and event planning careers and in giving birth to two beautiful, healthy, intelligent children. That was really enough for me.

And Rich was wonderful in all the ways my other relationships had not been. He was warmly affectionate, dependable, hardworking and financially independent. He showered me with gifts (which included some really spectacular jewelry) and listened ad nauseam to my travails. And as I mentioned previously, he was very good looking. And he smelled really nice, all the time. And Rich seemed to like me for all the best reasons. He felt we were on the same level intellectually, we enjoyed similar tastes in music and movies and well... he was into me physically. Like really so. Rich often bragged to friends that this was “the best of times” and that I was the partner he’d waited a lifetime for. He told buddies lots of other things about me, as well, but I’m trying to keep this P.G. Things seemed right. And it felt as if our lives would continue to unfold as they had, with our taking the bumps in the road in stride.

Then came the abrupt end to our story. It is hard to make a transition here, because in reality, there was none. One morning, just a week before our fifteenth anniversary, I woke to my usual routine and immediately things were off. For starters, Rich got out of bed at the same time, skipped his exercise routine and went straight into the shower. Rich never missed his ride on the stationary bike. Ever. I tried not to read anything into it, but I did think to ask him how he was doing once he emerged from the shower. I got a one-word answer: “fine.” He then grabbed his clothes and returned to the bathroom to dress. Another something he never did. Rich was comical in that way, showing off his squeaky clean weiner with a little hip thrust, then a grand sweep of his right arm, a quick flip of the wrist, and he would fling his towel across the bed. This morning, however, everything was way off and a terrible feeling grew in the pit of my stomach. And yet there was nothing wrong that I knew of or could put my finger on. No residual bad feelings from the evening before nor anything on the day’s schedule that might be cause for upset or worry, at least not that I knew of. Surely I was imagining all of this, no? No, I was not.

Rich and I then went into our respective offices to begin the day’s work. Mine was just down the hall from our bedroom, his downstairs next to the kitchen. I sat down to my usual pile of paperwork, but was distracted beyond belief, a feeling of dread overtaking my brain and leaving me without any space whatsoever for my usual wedding problem-solving. After a half hour of spinning my wheels, I gave up on accomplishing anything for the day and set to my bathroom routine. I then began obsessively packing up my things for the return to Napa. As I packed, fear and worry overtook me. Rich had not come back upstairs and we did not chat as was typically our routine mid-morning. So I made a ruse of going down to the kitchen to make a mug of French press coffee, though the thought of adding caffeine to this anxiety seemed like a bad idea. Rich sat at his desk, face glued to the computer. He didn’t even throw a glance my way. At this point, I felt I had to break the ice. I cautiously came into his space, cheerfully inquiring as to where he thought we might go for lunch. He said flatly “Let’s just eat here today. There’s lettuce and some hard boiled eggs in the fridge.” End of discussion. Rich went back to typing furiously, ignoring my presence, so I left. What exactly had just happened here? We never ate lunch at home. This regardless of the weather, the intensity of the day’s work schedule, in sickness and in health. Lunchtime on Irving was sacred time, during which we packed in a long walk, caught up on politics and had our main meal of the day. This bustling street had every manner of ethnic restaurant and every type of mom and pop shop, from hardware to produce. The highlight of each day was trying a different cuisine, followed by picking up any needed supplies and groceries for the evening’s dinner. But not going to do that today... got it. Rich seemed deeply irritated, and at what I could not surmise. So I went upstairs to work, though accomplishing anything was not going to happen.

The next two hours were torture. For that first hour I flipped back and forth between CNN, CBS, The Washington Post, and a backlog of New York Time’s Crossword Minis. At 11:30 a.m., and after having read every bit of national and international news, I gathered all of my things for the return to Napa. And as I was doing so, I somehow got the notion I should pack up every single other thing I kept stored at Rich’s house. I cannot explain how or why I came to this, but I did. And I knew for sure it needed to be done, though nothing had been wrong even 24 hours prior. In fact, up until bedtime last night, we had gone through all of our usual routines and conversations, eaten well and then slept well. Add to that fifteen years of what I would describe as a solid relationship. That’s a lot of cause for what-the-fuck. I knew something was way off... I just knew it.

So, while Rich remained in his office out-of-view, I packed up every last thing of mine from my desk, from the bookshelves in my office, from the hall closet, from the bathroom and on the nightstand. I packed up the framed photos of my kids and the few bits of artwork I’d put up on the walls and very quietly I retrieved my music stand and vacuum, both of which were in the entryway closet close to Rich’s office. Upstairs I organized everything neatly into the plastic bins I had kept in the spare room and then one-by-one, I quietly walked each container out to my Honda Element. The complete removal of things I’d accumulated over 15 years took all of one hour to extricate from Rich’s house. And all the while I was doing this, Rich sat at his desk in the back of the house, oblivious, or so I imagined. Once my big square car was packed floor-to-ceiling with the bins, I came back in, removed all of my beautiful jewelry and I laid it out on a clean washcloth on the nightstand next to Rich’s side of the bed. I then went down to the kitchen to put together our lunch.

Rich was right... there was only lettuce and just two hard boiled eggs, one for each of us. Some quick math here... 80 calories per egg, 120 for two tablespoons of dressing and 1 calorie for the lettuce. So 201 calories each. This on a completely empty stomach, as somehow neither of us had managed to eat breakfast that morning. Yet another sign that things were completely off as neither of us ever missed breakfast. And did I mention I hate iceberg lettuce? This was something well known to Rich (and anyone else who knew me). There was not one other veggie to garnish the salad or give it the least bit of color. Not a carrot or stalk of celery, not even a tomato. I chopped up the lettuce and split what little there was into two small bowls, sliced the eggs and put them on top, then set the salads, forks and napkins and some thousand island dressing on the dining room table. Hearing this, Rich came into the kitchen, unceremoniously filled two glasses halfway with water straight from the tap, and then we both silently headed into the dining room and sat down to this distinctively meager meal. My usual chatty Rich said absolutely nothing. Zip. His face stared at some invisible thing in the middle of the table as he ate his salad and drank his water in silence. I just sat there in a stupor. I couldn’t eat a bite, so I didn’t even bother with the salad dressing. And this although my stomach grumbled loudly. It was as if my body was disconnected from what was going on in my head.

Finally I spoke, at this point very crossly. “What exactly is going on here? I’m really confused.” Rich raised his head and lit up, his expression intense, his eyebrows furled. In a completely unfamiliar and cruel voice, Rich dove into a wickedly detailed description of the time he spent last week with our housekeeper, Bing. What a wonderfully energetic and intelligent young woman she was, he said, pointing out she spoke perfect English (and thank god for that Rich, since you’d not mastered a single word of any other language). And for everyone else’s benefit, I must point out that Bing was the 20-year old Chinese exchange student who was a nanny to the neighbors next door. On the side, she’d been doing Rich’s housework. Months ago we both agreed she was doing a terrific job. I was pleased at how much she helped lighten my load and had expressed this clearly to her with a large gratuity last time I was in town.

Rich then proceeded to enthusiastically enumerate Bing’s attributes. For starters, she was incredibly physically fit and strong for someone of such petite stature. Bing could get up on a ladder and Bing could clean the light fixtures. Bing had vigorously polished both flights of the wood stairs and look... now they were like new. Bing did this, Bing did that, blah, blah, blah. Rich’s message was super clear. Bing was smart, she was good looking and she was a hell of a lot better at housekeeping than I was. A real woman and at such a young age. At this point in the tale, I feel obligated to point out there was a 44 year age gap between Rich and Bing. And it is highly unlikely that she reciprocated his feelings, whatever the fuck they were. And whatever was going on there, if in fact anything was going on, someone did not have a fucking clue. And that person was not the young nanny who worked for the Apple executive next door.

But this was not the end of the diatribe. Rich was on a roll. Let’s not stop there! Hell, while we’ve got these open wounds, why not just rub in some of that pink Himalayan sea salt. Rich then proceeded to describe Bing’s staying for dinner the previous Friday. He’d roasted her a beautiful organic chicken with fresh rosemary and garlic (from the fucking herb pots I’d put together for him on the deck), made steamed broccoli from the farmer’s market and homemade mashed potatoes, skins on, my recipe. Please do not spare any of the details fucker. And he’d stopped by Valerio’s for one of those amazing mixed berry pies and some vanilla gelato, never mind the doctor’s suggesting only last week that he had to cut out sweets due to his fasting blood sugar creeping toward 120. And the two of them had enjoyed that lovely bottle of pinot noir I’d brought back from one of my wedding gigs. A wonderful evening all around, he said, beaming. Full of great food and conversation. And yes, he’s put on some jazz using my little portable Boze speaker (which thankfully was already tucked into the back of my car at that very moment). There is no doubt in my mind that Bing was a connoisseur of solo jazz guitar. What 20-year old woman (from China) wasn’t into Joe Pass and Jim Hall? Come on!

This level of detail and Rich’s unbridled enthusiasm were more than cruel and to what end? It was clear to me that all of this was intentional, Rich had planned it. He really wanted to hurt my feelings. I looked down at my uneaten salad and asked him what “this” was all about, pointing to the salad. “You need to start watching what you eat,” he said. “When we first met, I told you I would never be OK with your being out-of-shape.” What the fuck? Had he really spoken those words? Oh my god... look in the fucking mirror buddy! You’re already over a decade ahead me on this! Had I been grossly overweight or unattractive I might have felt ashamed. But this was not the case. His comments were infuriating and misogynistic and even though I didn’t believe a word of what he was saying, they cut me to the core. And Rich had just demonstrated the level to which he had become unhinged from reality. He really and truly did not see himself when he looked in the mirror. What did he, in fact, see?

And what I failed to mention previously (and of which Rich was fully aware), the next day, Tuesday, I was due to face my ex in court. He was suing me, for the umpteenth time, for full custody of our kids, even though our son was a senior in high school. And none of these lawsuits was driven by a desire to spend more quality time with our kids. It was completely transactional. A larger custody share meant he would receive a larger chunk of his trust fund. The impending hearing was a really heavy emotional weight and this current round had depleted me financially. All of this worry I was carrying on my own, as Rich invariably steered clear of anything related to divorce and kids. I was not to bother him with these issues. They were from my past. He was my present and future. Period. In addition to his lack of emotional support, none of my family was nearby and I felt uncomfortable bringing friends from my small town into court to witness what was predestined to be a highly unpleasant hearing. And on this round, I was representing myself, having fully depleted the retainer I had with my lawyer. Tomorrow I was heading into an immensely upsetting and stressful scenario. And onto this mountain of worry, of which Rich was well aware, was a heaping helping of emotional assault from the one person I considered my advocate. I felt completely and utterly abandoned. What the holy fuck.

And there I sat at the dining room table, at a total loss for words. Torrents of tears streamed down my face and neck and into my cleavage. It was a lot of tears and it was humiliating. Rich’s expression told me all else I needed to know, no mirror needed. My anguish was unsightly. Rich stared at me in disgust, as if looking at me had suddenly become abhorrent to him. When exactly had I become ugly and useless? When exactly had I fallen into that category of women Rich and his friend Jim joked about as they sat drinking espresso at Caffe Trieste in North Beach. Was it at 11:00 p.m. last night before we fell asleep? Or was it at 6:30 a.m. this morning after a night snuggled up in bed together? Had I said something unforgivable? If so, what was it? And when did I say it? I really tried, but could not think of a single thing that warranted such distain. Nothing made sense.

Then Rich stood his bony ass up, and all of his 6’4” came bearing down on me. He glared at me with hatred. I searched his eyes for an explanation, but none came. I drew in a sharp breath and held it. Then I released my tension with an unbridled exhalation and wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. My tears stopped and my anger built to a fever pitch. “You need to leave my house,” Rich said in an oddly baritone voice, slowly and without ambiguity. And as I stood up, he literally started shoving me, in a two-handed way, gripping my shoulders, turning me toward the door. If ever there was a what-the-hell-is-this sort of moment, this was it. This was unlike anything I’d ever experienced from him, or anyone else, for that matter. The harsh and unfeeling voice, his mannerisms, the shoving, all of this would have been unimaginable a day ago or at any other time in our relationship. Who in the fuck was this person? I didn’t know this man. My reality had just turned on a dime. All I’d known was an illusion and the bottom fell out from under me.

“I feel like killing myself” spilled out of me like a drunk, mouth was overflowing with red wine. There is was: words that I’d not formed in my mind ever, thoughts I’d never entertained. I felt the words as deeply as person can feel a thing, as if I’d mulled over this final act of my life for months. And I knew in that infinitesimal moment in time exactly how I would do it. It would be back at the winery, in the barn, a note left on the tasting room counter to prevent anyone from happening upon the scene. Everything I needed to successfully complete the deed was right there.

In my state of shock, I was completely incapacitated. I had not weighed the import of my words nor thought about the far-reaching consequences of any action I might take on these dark thoughts. There was no premeditation, just raw emotion expressed out loud, all filters temporarily disabled. Now I fully understood why there was a waiting period for a gun purchase.

All that I had imagined of my future life with Rich was gone. Just like that. And I was not using the threat of suicide as a means to hurt or guilt Rich, of which I was accused. It was just how I felt at that very moment: overwhelmed and no longer having any footing in this world. Rich’s response: “How stupid of you.” Delivered coldly, with strong articulation on “stupid.” All this cruelty did was to fully expose Rich’s cowardice and selfishness, revealing something that up to that point I had not seen. Now it was clear as day. He was a fucking coward, all 6’4” of him. And now Rich had set an irreversible course. No going back at this point, surely we could both see that. My words meant exactly, precisely what I said. I felt like killing myself. Period. And would I would never return to this man with whom I’d been intimate for fifteen years. No fucking way. For starters, this was someone else, full stop.

I felt dizzy. As I stood there in the foyer, my mind laid out our entire history at the speed of a dealer at a Las Vegas craps table. And as I surveyed my hand and considered my options, I could see where everything was headed going forward. At that very moment, I folded. Right there in the foyer. Game over.

Then without warning, Rich’s hand pressed firmly against the small of my back, fingertips curled angrily and digging into my kidney. The gesture yanked me sharply into the present and was followed by a forceful hand shoving me in the direction of the front door. If Rich had fully expressed himself in that moment, he might have beaten the living shit out of me. A deep flush of fury lit up his face and radiated down his neck, spreading across his chest. This was not my partner and lover of fifteen years. Who in the fuck was this? Who in the fuck! If I’d not finally picked up my feet to move forward, Rich would surely have pushed me face first into the floor.

Then, suddenly, I was no longer in the house, but standing vulnerably on the outside stoop. Any semblance of normal, of what only moments ago I had imagined to be my life, was gone. Just like that. Fifteen years. Gone, erased. A memory flashed through my mind of an outdoor lunch we’d had in the Haight a few years back. Midway through the meal there was a loud cracking noise and in a matter of seconds, a ancient towering oak tree tipped to the right, falling onto the meter maid’s car. Only minutes prior she had been sitting in that same car enjoying a bottled water. Miraculously the tree didn’t come down on us, nor did it kill the meter maid.

Suddenly, a sharp tuft of air hit the back of my bare legs, forcing me back into the present. Rich’s front door had closed abruptly behind me, followed by the definitive sound of the deadbolt turning. I could only imagine what the neighbors saw: me, anchored to the doorstep, fluorescent green overnight bag in hand, dumbstruck. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the living room curtains being drawn shut: the grand (and unscripted) finale to our relationship. Down below, our neighbor Allen walked his cocker spaniel. Normally offering up a greeting and a bit of small talk, Allen averted his eyes.

It felt like this whole drama was playing out as one might expect happening to a serial abuser or a nagging, obstinate spouse. After years of torment, the overbearing spouse is kicked out onto the street. Everyone is relieved. There at least would have been some sort of satisfaction to the scene had this been the case, and I’d been the protagonist. But I had been neither an abuser or nagging spouse, in fact, I’d been exactly the opposite. I had always considered what Rich liked and needed, I never spoke harshly to him and I listened patiently to his endless and oft-repeated anecdotes, laughing in all the right spots. And this was not done to pacify him, I really enjoyed who he was and how he was. Rich’s actions on that day, however, revealed a dark discord that was contrary to the gentle affection he expressed and our compatibility on so many levels, from our left-leaning politics to what we liked to cook for one another in the evenings. Nothing, absolutely nothing, made sense.

And in this moment of utter confusion, Rich’s favorite platitude came back to me as if he were whispering it in my ear: “Once you know a person’s underlying agenda, suddenly all of their actions make sense.” To what  agenda had I not been privy? This I knew... there was no way Rich’s agenda was in getting it on with the neighbor’s nanny. How convenient that might have been, and perhaps that’s what he wanted me to believe. But I knew Rich to be a more complex and thoughtful person than that. Just his shyness about his ED made this an impossible scenario in my mind. My guess: Rich was using Bing as his “beard.” Something deeply disturbing was emerging and spreading out like blood from a gunshot wound. None of this was about infatuation. What exactly it was about eluded me. The young Chinese woman who cleaned Rich’s toilets and made his bed was not the problem.

How many minutes passed, I don’t know, but at some point I stepped off Rich’s front stoop for the last time and I made my way down the block to my car. Windows rolled up, I sat in the car for what seemed like hours, dissecting that one earth-shattering sentence and I wept uncontrollably. “You need to leave my house,” a short sentence, but one that needed taking apart nonetheless. For starters I “needed” to stay, not to leave. Secondly, this had been “our” house. We lived there together, we both worked there. We painted the walls and we bought new furniture and appliances. I shook my head repeatedly in disbelief, asking out loud what it all meant to my audience of zero. Rich and I had never argued. With a spring in our step, we enjoyed predictable, agreed-upon routines: walks, people watching on the Muni, preparing dinner and talking for hours in bed at the end of the day. Even yesterday, we were still doing these things. When exactly was it that Rich had switched to just going through the motions? Had Rich been unhappy all along? Or was he unwell? Or was he too cowardly to talk frankly with me about whatever?

This I knew: the relationship was over. Permanently and forever. There was absolutely no going back. And never would I return to that house, which now resided in my memory as a dark and unwelcoming place. And never again would crossing the Golden Gate Bridge soften my face into a smile and fill me with feelings of youthful anticipation.  Everything we had was gone.

---

Over the next few months, it became revealed to Rich’s friends and family that he and I were no longer together. Hard to imagine how this unfolded exactly, how the conversation might have veered to this topic. Some folks bravely called to check in on me, intimating that Rich had been telling everyone he was sure we would eventually be getting back together. Was that the case? They were curious. Rich had described to all my needing time to sort out my life (huh?), telling everyone he was sure that at some point I would “be back,” as if I had left him. I caught wind of much of this through Rich’s nephew, Tom, one of his closest family members. It was hard for me to ascertain whether Rich really believed what he was saying or had just concocted this version of our split-up to satisfy friends and his family, all of whom liked me very much. Or perhaps, as was more likely, he was just a big fucking coward. Everyone, especially his adult children, would have been confused and upset had they heard Bing was the reason for Rich’s change of heart. Rich’s kids surely would have been disgusted imagining hooking up with someone forty-four years his junior. His daughter, in particular, would have disowned him, there is no doubt in my mind. Bing had been cleaning her house, too, just down the street. The worst part of it was this... Bing was 10 years younger than Rochelle. Would Rochelle be expected to invite Bing to the baby shower? Hard to imagine Rochelle dealing well with any of this.

As more holidays and birthdays passed with no reconciliation in sight, folks began another round of calling and emailing me, inquiring as to whether something was wrong with Rich. As if I knew. Apparently Rich had become non-communicative altogether. And no one had seen him. Tom was the first to re-connect, calling me out-of-the-blue in the middle of a workday. Rich’s birthday had passed and he’d not shown up for his and Tom’s annual fishing trip on the delta, something scheduled and meticulously planned by the both of them. Tom then asked how things were going with the two of us. My jaw hit floor... huh?! I explained to Tom there was no “two of us.” Tom was shocked to hear we’d not gotten back together. Rich had cheerfully relayed to him only weeks ago that our “reunion” was in the works and that we were back in touch. Additionally, Tom had learned from Rich that he had never told his children about our break-up. At the holidays he had apparently explained to them I was too busy with work to come for the usual family gathering. He’s even encouraged them to bring presents for me and my kids, all of which they left at his house. Tom said the gifts still sat in a pile on the coffee table near the fireplace. Shortly thereafter, the kids had called Tom to say they were really concerned about their father.

Christmas dinner had been a carry-out pizza, and a small salad, enough for two or three people and there were six of them. And that was it. There was no turkey, no desserts, no appetizers, no wine. This was in stark contrast to the feasts that Rich and I normally laid out for every holiday, birthday or whatever occasion warranted a family get-together. And there was no Christmas tree. Also disturbing: the house was filthy. All of this was totally out-of-character for their father.

Then Tom divulged something I had grown to suspect over the last few months: something was really off with Rich and I mean beyond our failed relationship. There was something to which he would not admit or perhaps could not fully comprehend. As I was soon to find out, Tom and his mother (Rich’s sister), Margaret, had been keeping tabs on him. For over a decade they had been documenting what they felt were signs of early onset dementia, something that had ravished most of the men on his father’s side of the family. Margaret had kept a notebook with dates, quotes, descriptions of odd behavior. All of this was news to me. I felt heartsick. And just as my mind had rewritten our history in the foyer on the day he kicked me out, it was once again correcting that history, this time from a perspective that took into account the hidden “agenda” to which Rich had often eluded. He had left breadcrumbs.

Tom and I talked for hours, both of us unloading our sad feelings and worry about Rich’s future. And for me, there was also a bit of relief, which I admit was a bit selfish. Tom described to me in detail a younger Rich, who in his 40’s had been the sharpest knife in the drawer. As he described the personality and business acumen of this younger Rich, I realized that the Rich I had known, was not the Rich that Tom knew growing up. What I had imagined were Rich’s idiosyncrasies were not that at all. His funny, but repetitive anecdotes, the post-it note reminders on everything, the obsessive need for routine and for things to be in their place, printouts of everyone’s phone number in 62 point font in both his office and on his bathroom wall and Rich’s habit of leaving open every single cupboard in the kitchen... these were not idiosyncrasies. Rich had left those cupboards open because he couldn’t remember what was in them. The depth of my grief in this realization was unfathomable.

Every morning I had shut those cabinets, and always with a bit of irritation. My beautiful, broken man. The man I had loved for 15 years. All of my anger and self-pity had been grossly misplaced. But more importantly, Rich was there in San Francisco hiding this terrible secret from everyone and trying to survive in his huge house, on his own, by himself. Rich, the man who provided generously for his family. Rich, the successful businessman who managed millions of dollars in retirement funds. Rich, the man who lovingly nurtured his decades-old friendships. Rich, my lover and confidente of fifteen years, the man with whom I’d spent thousands of nights of my life. There he was, in San Francisco alone, neither his children nor Tom taking care of him, because no one knew what was going on in that dark house. I felt paralyzed about what to do. Tom instructed me in no uncertain terms not to call him. He was sure, from what little he had heard, that Rich would not remember me. This was for his children to sort out.

---

Though I wept for Rich, and considered whether I should make an effort to return and take care of him, what transpired that terrible day in June, now four years past, had for a long spell drained me entirely of my will to live. I was still recovering from what he had done to me. When I returned to Napa on that fateful day, I returned a shell of the person I had been. It took my young adult children almost four years of hard work to bring me back to life. After what I put them through (and myself), I decided I could never expose myself to something like that again. There just wasn’t enough of me left to go another round and it wasn’t fair to my kids, who had already gone through so much. The end of my relationship with Rich had nearly been the death of me.

Then came 2020 and the pandemic. Fragile as I was, something about that moment in time jolted me into a new reality, as it did for nearly everyone I knew. From whatever frame of mind in which any of us had been wallowing, be it zealous overwork or inertia, we emerged. Circumstances caused my career in events to end abruptly, allowing me to step back and assess my situation from a whole new angle: unemployment. I saw that I had let my life flatten out, my body deteriorating to where I no longer identified with it. It was like a foreign object. Everything had to change. In celebration of the end of my career in event planning, I chucked both pairs of my very expensive Keen work clogs in the trash. I took pictures. I posted them on Facebook.

And during this time, my daughter and son were experiencing their own challenges and transformations. My daughter was completing her senior year of high school with none of the traditional rituals or even the every day social interactions which were so important to her. My son was thankfully solidly employed selling and repairing bikes, and getting paid quite decently as there was a surge in demand during the pandemic. And he had found a beautiful young woman, whom we all hoped would become his life partner.

And through all of this... sad I was not. I had been loathing the thought of returning to my job of catering to entitled Silicon Valley millennials, and had been worrying incessantly about the potential of getting ill. I was ready to be let out to pasture. No cattle prod needed. And after my daughter completed her hellish senior year, I owed it to her to put my attention toward helping her navigate the now unclear path to adulthood. There was no room for bullshit in my life.

So now I am here, free of a meaningless career and what I thought was the relationship of a lifetime with Rich. Though I didn’t choose to leave either, I have been unburdened nonetheless and it is a great relief. These were probably the greatest gifts I have ever been given. And you know... I think that Rich knew that. I really do. Because Rich loved me a lot. And he believed in me. And he knew I would never leave him.

To quote Rich’s favorite phrase: “Things have a way of working out for the best, you just don’t know it at the time.” Spot on buddy.

---

So then there was last night’s dream. In the dream, it is night, and I am in Rich’s bed, his house in the Inner Sunset enrobed in cool fog. The soft lights of a building on the hill peek through the curtains like distant stars. We sleep on our sides facing one another, noses touching, with the soft nutmeg fragrance of our lovemaking filling the bedcovers. The entire night he holds my hand. And on my hand is a bright aquamarine ring he has given me because he thinks I’m beautiful.

But this is not just a dream. It is also a memory, and one so precious that it replays itself on the deepest level of my psyche, revealing itself to me when I succumb to sleep, emerging in the turn of a musical phrase as I play my flute. And from time to time, and almost exactly when I need it most, the dream miraculously reappears, reminding me that life is and has been very good indeed. And although things are different now, those moments had their place and those experiences delivered me to where I am today.