What Do You Do With a Wedding Anniversary After You’re Divorced?

I had forgotten all about it this morning. It had been on my mind earlier this week, but not this morning. Not even when my brow pressed down on my eyelids and my limbs felt heavy and reluctant to leave the bed. It wasn’t until I put pen to paper in my journal and dated the page - 9/13/23 - that I remembered. This is the day of my wedding anniversary. It would have been twenty years. That is, if things had gone as we had imagined on the day we exchanged our vows. But as real life actually happened, we started a divorce not long after our 16th anniversary. Then, a few months later, she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer in an advanced stage; so we stayed separated, stopped the divorce process, and made plans for her death. She died a few months after our 17th anniversary. 

It’s actually rather remarkable to me that our wedding anniversary had slipped my mind. I remember the first year of our separation I awoke feeling ill on September 13th. My whole body felt awful. The next year was not much better. I cried a river of tears that day. Now the date has become one of the lesser anniversaries of loss, eclipsed by the anniversary of her death and her birthday. Those days of loss are ones shared by our children and others who were close to my former partner. They are complicated days of loss for me. They serve to remind me that losing one’s dear friend, one’s almost-ex-spouse, and one’s parent are not parallel experiences. The 13th of September is more of a solitary experience. I don’t know if anyone else tracks that day anymore. Afterall, I almost forgot it myself this morning!

I imagine most people who get divorced have complex emotions on the day of their wedding. How do people mark that day? There were moments today when I wished for a ritual. I wanted to do something that honored what was good and beautiful about our marriage and also the sadness and freedom of naming that it had run its course when we finally acknowledged that undeniable truth. But as I started to imagine what such a ritual might look like, I quickly ran into layers of anger, grief, and pain that are so complex they short-circuited my nascent musings about a ritual marking the wedding anniversary that I share with my dead almost-ex-wife. 

But here at the end of this day - one that looked from the outside much like the day before it and the one that will come after - an idea is taking shape. Maybe September 13th is the day I should go visit her grave. I can’t bring myself to do it anymore with others on her birthday or the anniversary of her death. My experience of her dying and the meaning of her death in my life are so very different from anyone else’s. The two times I’ve been to her grave with others, I’ve ended up feeling terribly alone at best and at worst like a pariah. But no one else will think to go on September 13th. Alone at her grave I could yell at her about how angry I am that she left me to parent our children alone. I could let her know that her parents are as difficult for me to deal with as she had feared. I could tell her how sorry I am that she didn’t get a chance to experience being well-loved by a new partner as I am getting to experience now. I could tell her about our children - how our eldest indeed made it to college and how our youngest is as tall as I am now. I could tell her I hope she is resting in ultimate love and at peace. In the context of such a grave-side ritual, I could suspend my belief that physicality is so basic to life that anyone I once knew as my former partner doesn’t actually exist any more on any plane. For a time, I could dance between the memory of our connection and the reality of her death. 

I realize not everyone who has gotten divorced has a grave site to go visit. So my question still remains: what do you do with a wedding anniversary after you’re divorced? I’d love to hear your stories in the comments below.