So it’s final. I had January 23, 2010 locked in my head for six months, because I filed for divorce on July 23, 2009. For those of you who’ve been through it or are going through it, you know that the divorce is not formal or legally recognized until six months to the date of the filing. This gives you six months to meet with your attorneys and pay them thousands of dollars to sit in a room with you and your soon-to-be ex and hash through your earnings and assets and debts and furnishings and lives and custody schedule and paper after paper after paper of tedious detail on the state and disrepair of your former union. Trust me, even if you go the way I did–the route of collaborative law, where everyone sits together in a conference room and smiles and laughs and meets and discusses as if life is grand and we all love and are civil to one another–you will still spend HOURS and THOUSANDS to get to those final pieces of paper requiring your signature, the declaration of the dissolution of marriage and divorce judgment. Those documents then get filed with the court, and wouldn’t you know it–in our case at least–all of that took . . . six months! In fact, it took us 7.5 months. We signed those final documents on March 21, 2010 and the papers were sent to the court on March 24, 2010–almost exactly 7 months from the date I filed.
Each time a meeting with the lawyers was postponed (for valid reasons) I struggled with a rush of disappointment. I had that date fixed in my head! Almost as if it were . . . a wedding that was being postponed! Seriously, once I had gone through the life-altering, mind-numbing process of accepting that my marriage was finally kaput and life as I knew it was drastically, fundamentally changed, I wanted to know when it would be formally, legally final. Over. Done. Past.
The date was merely symbolic, sure. No more anniversary date or the date of our first date or or the date we decided to get married or the date he told me he didn’t want the baby or the date I found out about his affair or the date I kicked him out.
Now, and hereafter, it’s the date I was divorced.
I needed the closure. Who wouldn’t?
More to the point: I did not need closure so I could grieve. I’d already done a good bit of that and, I suspect, have plenty more mourning and wallowing in my future (as the shrinks would say: it’s a process). I needed a date to fixate on as a time, occasion, excuse to publicly celebrate and move on. At first I’d thought of having a “ceremony” to throw our wedding bands into the East River. Because I don’t much care for the East River; in fact, I don’t really like the east side of NYC. But I sold the rings for cash (I picked them out and paid for them, so getting some cash for them seemed like the only appropriate thing to do)! So I planned to have a party. But would I have the party in LA or NY? Or both? There were lots of fun possibilities, but first I needed to know the date when celebration would be in order.
First it was January 23rd, then February 23rd, then, very reluctantly, March 23rd. I finally accepted March 23rd and began concocting ideas for celebration. But the final meeting with the lawyers dragged on for 3.5 hours and, at the end, we were not done; although I knew I was one detail and one signature away from being legally single, I could not and did not feel celebratory. And then there was the issue of furniture and “household items” that my ex and I had not yet hashed through (you’d think all those thousands of dollars spent in meetings with our “mediators” would have taken care of that, but, lo and behold, at the final meeting my lawyer said, “you can do that together, it will be much easier than you think.”).
So, I left the table with the signed documents and walked away feeling a fair amount of despair. Because had I a date and an event–yes, like a wedding–to look forward to, I might have walked away rejoicing in my new freedom, happily focusing on how much better my life now is. Unfortunately, those more positive thoughts eluded me at the time because it all felt so . . . not final.
Then, last week, one day after my birthday, one day into my 45th year, I received a thick envelope from my lawyer. Inside were copies of those final documents bearing a stamp from the Superior Court of California County of Los Angeles, April 08, 2010. I was restored to my single identity six days before my 44th birthday. A strange birthday present, and anticlimactic. A piece of mail.
But I am free at last. Free at least, free at last, thank god almighty I am free at last. Go shorty, it’s your birthday, it’s your birthday . . . We gon’ party like it’s your birthday.
I didn’t celebrate, I didn’t party. But there is time. Indeed, there will time.
Congratulations
thank god he’s gone!!!