Nothing Is Lost: Talking To My Kids About Divorce
I was four when my biological father disappeared like a phantom out of my life. I have vague memories of him and his family. I suppose they are my family as well but they float in my mind like shadows. My whole life has had this weight of absence upon it.
Despite my mother finding a great guy and settling down. Despite becoming the oldest of eight wild siblings. Despite growing up in a loving and encouraging family. My phantom father touched me with cold hands when I found out that my wife was pregnant.
I vowed not to do that to my son.
When our second son was four, divorce was a serious topic of discussion. My wife realized some truths about herself that made our marriage no longer viable. Namely that she was lesbian.
After the process of her self-discovery and arriving at that conclusion, I felt the cold breath of my biological father on my neck. Neither my wife nor I had any intention of abandoning our kids. However, we didn’t have any examples of a healthy divorce or co-parenting situation in our circle.
Stories are wonderful vehicles for discussing complex situations with simple and understandable language. A story that had become popular with my boys was The Neverending Story by Michael Ende. We had read it twice through for bedtime. I even did voices.
While covering themes of hope and loss, much like the movie, the narrative in the book goes beyond the story of a hero saving the day. There is a turning point for the protagonist, Bastian Balthazar Bux.
(Spoiler warning for a book published in 1979).
After giving the Childlike Empress a new name and saving her, and Fantastica from annihilation, Bastion finds himself on a second quest to rebuild Fantastica. To do so, he must wish it into existence, but each wish takes away a memory until he has lost all sense of identity.
When he becomes aware of what he must do to save himself, he has one wish left, using it would keep him in Fantastica forever, never to return to the real world. In a conversation with Dame Eyola, who has become a mother figure to Bastian, he tries to make peace with what comes next.
“There’s only one wish that can take you there: your last.”
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