It is early Sunday morning of the last weekend I will spend as a permanent resident of this old house. He is upstairs in the second bedroom, asleep under the same roof for the first time in six weeks, and I am here in the room we made into an office, reminding myself that a week from today I will be drinking my morning coffee somewhere else. It is hard.

When he arrives, we talk as much as raw emotion permits us, in the silences clinging tearfully to one another. He is exhausted from the long workdays in the city and bloated from the booze. For him, the consequences of his behavior have barely begun to set in. I, who have lived with the pain of it for weeks now, am heartsick, weary of the emotional suffering, steeling myself to move on.

We drive into town to buy food for an easy dinner, touching each other gently in a sad, non-sexual way. We eat pasta carbonara, one of his favourites, and spend a very quiet evening in front of the TV.  He has purchased a bottle of wine and it is just like old times, or so he is pretending. For me it is the last supper, the last evening of (almost) normalcy. The last of our days as a couple.

There are no words to describe the anguish of loving someone with all your heart and yet understanding beyond any doubt that you have to leave them behind you. It is hard when the thing that has ripped your life apart is not another woman, or a falling out of love, or a growing in other directions, or the dreaming of different dreams. When the thing is alcohol addiction and when it takes the other person, the other half of your soul, into that country of despair and self loathing over which he has no control, you are always collateral damage to the disease. Being hurt and sometimes forgotten in the miasma of his private descents into hell has been my fate once too often. I know when I have had enough. Now there is no choice but to move away, take refuge in a different life, begin anew.

Even as I hear my own heart breaking, this task will face me all too soon. In a matter of days, I will be gone. As daunting as it seems and as much as it may pain me,  this is not the time to waver. 

For both of us, it is the best and the only thing I can do.  

There’s no way around the fact that the death of a relationship is a painful thing. Although this time I seem  to be all right on my own, the last time my heart got broken, one of the ways I coped was by seeing a therapist whose first question every session was invariably about whether or not I had cried. 

Shell-shocked as I was by the suddenness of the events that had taken place, somehow no tears would ever come. That time, I was too emotionally traumatized to do much more than stare vacantly at the walls. Although I found this line of therapeutic inquiry to be odd, almost invasive, I understand now that crying (or psychogenic lachrymation as it is technically called) is beneficial for the release of emotional distress, and can even bring comfort to a wounded soul.

Today,  in this period of time immediately following the final breakdown of my marriage, life has been just what one would expect it to be - a proverbial roller coaster ride of  pent-up emotion written large. I cannot even bring myself to think of finding new homes for my beloved animals. That particular deep and searing pain,  I must leave for a future time.

As the days have rolled themselves one into another, I have passed many times in and out of the inertia of shock, enduring the betrayal of my body, the sleeplessness, the loss of appetite, the painful flow of memory through the mind. And always I am dry eyed. With my eyes closed in the pre-dawn hours, I listen through my iPod to the calming voice of Jon Kabat-Zinn as he reminds me that there is peace in the simple awareness of the breath. Breathing mindfully at all hours of the day and night, I walk, sometimes for miles. 

These days, I wake up every morning and tell myself to put one foot in front of the other. I compel myself to stick to a routine. I keep occupied and I accept every social invitation that comes my way. I make lists and put things in boxes, force myself to listen to the soundtrack he lovingly compiled for our wedding, lay my head on his crumpled pillow to inhale the fading scent of his skin. I gaze with newly saddened eyes at the home we created together - my Colette novels, his espresso maker, the folk art animals we purchased before we had any of our own. It is the home where our hearts once beat in unison, the home I will be leaving very soon. 

This afternoon, when it begins to rain torrentially, I am reminded anew of the therapist’s  persistent question and the metaphor of the heavens is not to be lost on me.

In the daylight, in my sorrow, I curl myself into a ball and lay on the soft green ground beneath the bursting clouds, allowing them to flood me with their tears. Soaked to the skin when I finally rise again, I have managed to produce a torrent of my own. 

These are the facts of life. This morning Ceiara’s body lies wrapped in a black plastic tarp in an outdoor paddock just outside the barn. Since Sasha is away until the weekend and it will take both of us to bury her, the bitterly frozen air will keep her from decay. I can’t bring myself to look in her direction.

Every human knows by adulthood these certain truths about mourning - that with death there will be emotional pain, that big hot tears will come often and unexpectedly, and that much time must pass before the memories so newly piercing to the heart will be able to evoke (and be transformed into) smiles and even laughter. One day a lovely warm feeling somewhere deep inside will assure us how lucky we were to have loved in the first place the one for whom today we grieve so much. 

That day will not come soon for me but I have responsibilities here and life has to go on. The other animals still need me.

Feeding time in our barn is an extremely hectic experience, every movement carefully choreographed to minimize the chaos of large hungry animals in lively competition for the food. There is a hierarchy in the herd that needs to be respected, there are special diets for the older animals and for anyone who is thin. There are chickens to feed and eggs to be collected. There are buckets of water to haul. All this must happen in the midst of a sort of free-for-all complete with warning sounds and occasional gobs of spit. Be efficient, keep your eyes open, move quickly and be prepared to duck.

Today when I entered the barn at chore time, I discovered there a silence so pervasive that it took my breath away. As I worked my way, strangely unmolested, through the usual routine - small buckets of grain for the oldest or the thinnest animals, fresh water for everyone, and then mangers filled with hay - I saw the entirety of the female llama herd standing absolutely still, oblivious to my presence and utterly disaffected by their food. To a one, they were huddled together, clustered in the doorway, each facing outward to the black tarpaulin lying before them in the snow. Once again, I couldn't stop my tears.

In stillness they remained there until I finally went away. They will eat when they are ready. Humans, it would seem, have no monopoly on the rituals of loss.