Independence Day

by Lucy Connor
This week has been a tough one ever since my divorce. For 25 years, we took our family vacation on the week of July 4th. It made sense; he worked for the State so he only had to take four vacation days and got a full week…pretty good deal.
Every year, we packed up the kids and headed to Tybee Island. We got a condo that slept six and filled it up. For a week, it was heaven on earth. We hunted shark teeth, the boys fished, the girls shopped. We ate ice cream and swam and played on the beach. For that one week every year, we were the happiest family on the planet. My husband even did silly things like get henna tattoos with my name on them. It was one week a year that our marriage actually seemed perfect.
Since those days, he still goes and often takes some of the kids with him. The first couple of years that was hard, but now it is just weird. He is married so now I have to think about him and the kids and grandkids, making memories in “our spot”…without me. Two years ago was the weirdest of the weird when we all spent a week together in that spot for my son’s wedding…him, me, our kids, grandkids and his new wife. It was a trip. Something I never want to do again.
Yesterday I heard something on the radio. It was a call-in psychologist who started her show by saying that she had read a new take on Independence Day. The article she read suggested that in addition to celebrating the Independence Day as a historical holiday, we look at it as a day to celebrate our Independence from something that is no longer working for us in our lives.
This seems to be pretty good advice for me today. It is past time for me to let go of that part of my life. It is hard to accept the death of a dream…the dream of “till death do us part”. After five years, it no longer serves me to think about it. It no longer serves me to dwell in it so I think this Independence Day I will declare my Independence from it.
In the search for love, it is never a good idea to be stuck in the past. It is time to make some new memories…starting today


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