A Friend Indeed (1)

Nnamdi my husband was a perfect man. Yes I said it, PERFECT. He was as gentle as a dove yet firm at the same time.

 A glance at him would make you think that he wasn’t relatable but once you got to know him, you could see how simple and kindhearted he really was. 

I met him at a friend’s wedding party and after we had been introduced, let’s just say it was a jolly good ride from then on. 

Need I say I was the envy of my friends? They often said he was too good to be true based on the fact that I had been in and out of terrible relationships, some I caused, but most of the others, the men were “douche bags” like my friends liked to name them. 

Our years as friends had its ups and downs, however there wasn’t a thing we couldn’t survive. We finally decided to take “us” to another level, one that would last till eternity (or so I thought). Why am I speaking of it in past tense?

Well because all of it is now a memory…

   ***

I sit in a court room today trying to mend the shambles of what I have left of my marriage. We had been married for about five years and had brought to the world two lovely kids (twins).

I couldn’t bring myself to imagine that this was really happening.

A divorce? How on earth am I supposed to handle this? I couldn’t bear the brunt of it, no way! I had come in contact with quite a number of divorcees and their experiences weren’t all pretty. 

 They always fought about something, from properties to child custody, to name change…the list was endless. 

How do I even explain this to my little children? That daddy wanted to move out of the house and for what reason? I already had a handful answering questions like;

“Mummy, isn’t daddy coming home today?”

“What about our ice-cream?”

“When is daddy returning from his trip?”

“Mummy, will daddy be at our recital tomorrow?”

I had cooked up lies for all these questions and I wasn’t sure that I had enough in my arsenal to give for the ones that would come after this divorce was completed. This separation was something Nnamdi wanted not me. I recall my mother telling me too often…

“Catherine, the woman is the pillar of the home, let nothing ever come between you and your husband, stoop to conquer else you’ll be the one to bear the burden alone.”

And how right she was! I can’t recall when last I had a good sleep since that dreadful day Nnamdi came home and flung the divorce papers in my face. As I picked them up, almost speechless, he yelled the reply to the questions he probably read off my facial expression.

“That’s the answer to your endless questions woman! I want a divorce!”

“But honey…”

“Oh please! Don’t call me that, just get ready to meet our lawyer when he comes in from the States in a month, I’m done with this marriage”

“But isn’t it something we can talk about, I thought we could survive anything”

“Oh sure we can and we will…in court”

Nnamdi stormed out.

I was broken…I was getting divorced and he didn’t even have the decency to tell me why? It felt like one of those hexed marriages I watched in movies but I had to stay strong, not for myself but for our children. The period of waiting for our lawyer seemed to drag and also quicken at the same time. It dragged when I felt the horror of having to live with the reality of it and the quickening- I was going to lose the home I had built just after five years!

One person always seemed to shake me off my misery- my friend Nancy. She was a single lady in her mid-thirties who often said she never saw any reason why a woman would cage herself in a prison house called marriage. I had often wondered where she got that notion from. She never took anything so seriously and always had a way of staying happy and that was what I liked about her. So in my moment of misery I always went to her for some cheering up.

On this particular morning, after dropping the kids off at school I decided to pay Nancy a visit...

To be continued