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Parting is such sweet sorrow, but oh the morrow
My husband and I have decided to separate. Our parting date will be effective January. I know this comes as a shock to most of you, people who imagined that we would never separate or part under any circumstances, but I'm afraid it must be done.

They say the first line of any article or book is the one that must hook the reader or you lose them. Well, I bet my first line got your attention. The truth is, what you read is not always as things seem, which accounts for the necessity of explaining or laying out evidence, or the need to search out the whole story.

There are times in a marriage when a "natural separation" must happen. In my situation my husband and I are separating in January for nineteen days while he attends a short-term mission in Athens, Greece. On his way home, via London, he will skip over to visit his family in Ireland. I will miss him, but as they say, the parting may cause some sorrow, but oh how sweet the greeting will be when he returns.

This week I read the story of a woman's "natural separation" for different reasons than my own. She was hired by ABC to work on a new sitcom. She lived in Vancouver and found it necessary to commute to Los Angeles. She decided to rent an apartment so she could fly in Mondays for work and return home Friday night. She said she truly had the best of both worlds, a high-powered job in the city, enough time alone to enjoy her own company, no one to bother her when she dropped her clothes, didn't have to prepare a meal if she didn't feel like it, and on the weekend she still had a great date waiting for her (husband).

Certain compensations present themselves in natural separations, like having the whole bed to yourself, no requests to help find something lost, no arguments over the remote control or who's going to watch what tonight, but when my husband is away I can't enjoy the benefits.

I tend to cling to the side of the bed, even though the whole queen size space is available, somehow I cling to the edge so as not to remind myself that the other half is empty. I wake with every little bump in the night often not knowing where the noise came from and wonder in my half sleep state if someone is breaking into the house. My husband's cat always acts up waking me two or three times to go out, bugging me for extra food because he too misses the master, and leaving little dried bits of fur on the rug, commonly known as hair balls, which really look more like wet cigars.

To console myself in my loneliness I tend to eat more, listen to more television than usual (I miss the sound of other voices in the house), and generally get lethargic. My daughters used to tell me that when Stan went away for even a few days I'd stay in my room. I argued against the point, but I think they speak a known truth. I can't help it, when my husband is away I feel like a drug addict going into withdrawal. I tend to hide out, curl up; I try to read a book or carry out my responsibilities, anything to make time pass quickly, but it never seems to work. I go into withdrawal, suffer the symptoms and wait until he returns.

With the Athens separation I'm doing something different. To while away the time and inject a little more life into my system I'm going to visit my girlfriend in Newfoundland. The trick to handling this natural separation is to pretend that it's not going on at all. I must place myself in complete denial. That should be simple to do; as a counselor I know all they symptoms. Any information about being husbandless will be rebuffed and refuted. I'm going to pretend, like a little child, that my best friend (husband) is with me, just invisible. Maybe I'll be able to fool myself into being comforted while he's gone.

One really learns about the truth and reality of marriage when a natural separation occurs. My friend with the apartment in L.A? She discovered life was better as a couple, that it was much more fun to share the end of the day with stories and a meal. Work was one thing but if you didn't have a meaningful relationship at the end of the day it wasn't the same.

Two are better than one, Ecclesiastes says, because they have a good return for their work. If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him.
In absence of having a spouse during the natural time of separation I've opted for a friend. The way I see it, anyone who doesn't have a spouse should have a good friend. I think having a good friend might be easier to come by, but whichever you have, spouse or friend, they certainly help the time pass, add value to a day, and make life meaningful.