This is why the only thing I'm grateful for during this god-forsaken time of enforced cheer and gaity is my family and all of you.

Now that I have some time and distance, I'm also seeing how toxic our relationship was in certain respects. It makes me even sadder, because we both could have been happier. I miss him very much, but I'm realizing I started shutting the door on us even before he died. I think he did too, and neither one of us did anything about it.

Oh Maria, try to forgive yourself, no love is perfect.

and neither one of us did anything about it.

I hope this doesn't sound prescriptive or preachy, Maria. Just my experience but I want to share it with you. When my first marriage ended I spent at least three years just hanging on by my fingernails and really being only able to live emotionally in a step-by-step, handle the next thing kind of way.

And I finally came to a place where I realized that I wasn't moving forward because I wasn't choosing to imagine a new future for myself. That it was too painful to redefine myself that way, to hope again for something good. To imagine a future instead of survive the present. I had to let go of an idea of myself that was no longer true to become something else.

I really try to be grateful for what I do have, but there are certain things that make me petty still. I'm trying to change it, but you can see how successful I am with that.

I don't think that's petty at all. I am in much the same place, but probably easier, since I never had the possibility that was then taken away. I have no intention of being a single parent, but I'd like to be one. But it's looking like that may not happen. Which makes me sad.

One of the hardest thing about the end of any relationship is that you have a whole future in your head that includes all kinds of things: having children, rafting the Colorado, buying a new house, time with friends, growing old together. A death or divorce steals that whole future, and you have to build a new one.

A few years after the divorce, which was definitely not my choice and came completely out of the blue, I came to realize that I was not the person I wanted to be when I was with him. I kept doing anything I could to make him happy, which meant not doing things I wanted and needed to do for myself.

When he rafted the Colorado without me some years later, I screamed and cried for hours. It's had to know what wounds that were bandaged but never healed.

One of the hardest thing about the end of any relationship is that you have a whole future in your head that includes all kinds of things: having children, rafting the Colorado, buying a new house, time with friends, growing old together. A death or divorce steals that whole future, and you have to build a new one.

That's definitely how I felt.

Seconding everything everyone said. There's nothing petty about your pain or anger, because there is nothing remotely petty about what you're longing for.

If it's okay, I'm still going to hold out hope that you become a parent because I think you'd be so very good at it. I think you have a lot of love that you could lavish on a child.

This, too. And not just love, but wisdom and courage and truth and steadiness of heart. If the universe sees fit to bring a child into your life, whether by birth or adoption or fostering or through you just being an unofficial auntie who is around and reliable when all the other grown-ups have failed (my new co-worker unexpectedly became legal guardian to her 10-year-old nephew four years ago, and says, "We saved each other's lives"), that kid is going to be lucky beyond measure.

Sending much love to Maria and sj. I hope this doesn't sound too Pollyanna-ish, but the way I see it, your stories both have a wide-open, unwritten future. I don't know what those futures look like but I am certain they both hold a great deal of love.

David, I think I'm the opposite of you at this moment. I'm imagining a future and I'm kicking myself for not doing something to change my situation sooner.

Ginger's experience parallels mine right now, though my realization has come in months rather than years. And now I'm pissed that I didn't have the nerve to do what should have been done. Which of course makes me feel guilty because I'm not mourning him properly or something. We were moving back towards the good place after his cancer diagnosis, but both of us slid into old habits and couldn't let go of the hurt. Of course, his death whitewashes a lot of that and I miss what could have been much more than what we had.

Regrets are a marker of a life lived, but I'd rather my epitaph say that I never wished for a different life. Right now, I can't say that. I'm beginning to think that happy is a myth.

Brackets for Maria and meara and sj and anyone else who wants them. I hate that I'm constantly skimming and then posting hastily, because I'm pretty much only here for my half hour lunch, but please know that I'm nodding along and supporting. Maria and sj and meara, may your parenting dreams come true, even if they take an unexpected form.