Happily ever after? Not this time.

Years ago my husband wrote a 10-minute piece for the Sh’brooke symphony for which he did not get paid. He made a deal with the executive director that he would get complementary tickets for the rest of his life. Last year they forgot to send them to us, so we never went. This year they remembered, and so tonight I went to hear Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 and Violin Concerto, as well as a brief work by a contemporary Quebec composer. Hubby was not with me. He was playing jazz somewhere else, and that was the source of some domestic conflict because I did not want to go with him, but would rather stay home and hear orchestra music. Oh well, that’s not what this is about.

I took Ed with me, or rather, he picked me up and drove. That was fair as I was providing a free concert ticket. We stuck around for a while afterwards for the post-concert reception where I got to greet the conductor, the director and several of the players whom I know. One of them was the principal horn, and another the principal flute.

The two of them met in the symphony 18 or so years ago and became a couple very quickly. R (the horn player) is a very good looking guy (he’s the same age as Hubby and still has a full head of hair) who teaches music at the private school, conducts the band, and teaches phys-ed. He’s very fit. A (the flutist) got her doctorate in flute performance and has been teaching full time for the French university in town. They got married about eight years ago and moved into a house on the private school campus. It was one of those success stories.

Until tonight. Tonight R told me that he and A have been divorced for about a year. I couldn’t believe it. She decided that the relationship was not going where she wanted it to go. I laughed out loud. Relationship? That’s what you have before you’re married. Marriage is the culmination to a “relationship”. After that, you don’t worry about where it’s going, you live your lives, you have children, you worry about mortgage payments, you plan for retirement. You don't think about where the relationship is going. It’s where it’s supposed to be.

Anyway, they divorced. R is internet dating, but he says it still really hasn’t hit him that A has moved out. For the most part, his house is still set up the way it was when she lived in it. They’re still friends and talk, as well as playing in the symphony together. It’s going to take a while for me to wrap my head around this one.

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