I have never loved my husband more than on the day we put Garrett on a plane to Uruguay. It was nearly unbearably hard, and the strength of my husband was a life line. I don’t know how I would have done it without him. All the love I have felt for him over the last 20+ years overflowed inside me. Seeing how Garrett felt about him, and the united feeling we all felt made me love Dan as the father of my children. He has been a good father. He is not perfect, but he has been good. Very good. He has strengths where I have weaknesses and vice versa. He also seemed to accept who I was, and let me have this very hard time. He didn’t try to fix it or expect me to fix it. He just let me grieve.

Saying goodbye to Garrett was hard, but it was also this culminating thing. This moment we have worked for since before he was born. It was amazing to be altogether in every way for it. It made all the difficult times worth sticking it out for. I felt a sadness for all those people who gave up in the difficult middle part. They missed this amazing, culminating time at the end. Sometimes there is good reason for divorcing, but I wonder if people could experience the end, in the middle, if they might just see that it is worth hanging it there100 times over. I think many things are like that. We get in the middle and thing, I can’t do this. But we don’t stay in the messy middle forever. The reward at the end is more rewarding than I could have imagined.