There wasn’t much movement in the snow without boots, so I wore the battered, stained pair I kept beside the bed. Sliding them on and double lacing, I recalled I bought them the winter before I filed for divorce. It had been seven years since, so it was time for a new pair.
I did not want anything from before I served the long-since-becoming ex-wife, having spent the intervening years since methodically getting rid of everything that had been hers—ours. Most of her belongings went on four trips in the first six months: two small moves by her siblings and two major truckloads for which I took responsibility. She threw out a lot of stuff in the meantime, junk and detritus she left behind, like old clothes she did not want, single earrings, a broken TV, and some old furniture she did not like.
Of course, boxes of photographs. Those went downstairs for the porters to cart away the first Christmas Eve without her.
As time passed, I would find specific items, such as a butcher knife one day, a picture frame in a closet, glassware, some old letters stuck as placemarks in books, and an occasional book or stranded item left behind. I threw these unpleasant discoveries into the trash or carefully wrapped them for recycling. It took several years, but the last to go was a cheap gray plastic toolbox a brother-in-law passed down to her before we married. That was three years ago.
After that, I began shedding things she gave me. The ring I threw off the Brooklyn Bridge, silver Celtic coil spinning, unwinding into the murky waters of the East River below. Whenever I had the money for new clothes, they replaced what she bought for me, and those went to Goodwill or Buffalo Exchange. The cards, letters, and gifts filled small trash bags and exited the apartment. Some were missed, Most not.
Once these misbegotten items were gone, I worked on certain purchases I made during the marriage that I no longer wanted or needed. I had sold most of what I had to help cover the divorce expenses, so there was not much. It was relatively easy for that particular purge and didn’t take too long. Stuff is just stuff, quoting a friend at the time, and I replaced my stuff with better things and an improved attitude about life.
Felt liberated and released, and I had to admit I was so wrapped up in the relationship that I realized I missed out on a life.
The world had changed, and I never noticed. It was a jarring revelation—an epiphany I had unwanted but had to accept. I had aged but gained wisdom and a sense of peace from the entire experience.
Lessons learned are always the hardest when it comes to uncoupling, especially after failing at keeping it going and ending badly as it did, but the education was valuable now that I have moved on from it all as blocks of memory shred and crumble into half-formed memories I rapidly replace with new and superior ones.
I read Tarot for meaning, which I began shortly after we married. Nearly every card was ill-defined, so I braced for the obvious, lied to myself for a few years, and endured the remainder. These days, I only recall her face as she was about to scream. Years of therapy helped some, but those visions are hard to erase.
Yet I kept these boots. Once laced, I went out into the snow, trudging toward the subway station, rubber heels worn and treads fading, scuffed and dirty. While waiting for the train, I decided to buy a new pair after work and thus completed the circle five minutes after I met my wife.
Twenty years were lost in a contract I should never have entered, but a life was regained once that agreement was dissolved. As the stations passed, I remembered what I told her: “When it ends, it ends.”
Thus, it shall be after a trip to Foot Locker and me dropping a pair of battered old boots beside a homeless man shivering on a street corner. A good deed of any sort sets the desired closure.
As worn as those boots were, I hoped their new owner would feel my determination to endure when I walked in them.