This is my last Monday in my wife’s house, the beginning of my last week here. I’m in the final stages of packing and staging my boxes and furniture in preparation for loading the moving/storage Pod on Thursday and Friday. The reality of the move is evident throughout the house. It hangs heavily in my heart.

Our carefully practiced normalcy is more like a free fall. One might mistake my packing up as for a long business trip, not for an eviction.

My wife and I spent the day almost—almost—as any other non-marriage dissolving day. She went about her day and I mine, coming together for morning coffee, preparing and eating dinner together, discussing the South End by-laws revisions as we might have last year this time, before the end was decreed. Is this the way the week will progress?

The poignant moments come when I look at our little dog Bebe. He’s the innocent among us. He doesn’t know that this time next week there will be no man in the house. Niland will be gone, never to return.

I know that my wife is simply biding her time. She would have preferred for me to have been gone long before now. I know this and sense it daily.

My schedule was agreed to in exchange for not contesting the divorce.

In truth, it has been too long living under this dark cloud of unhappiness—for both of us. The tension is barely below the surface. It’s a wonder we’ve survived.

It’s hard right now to know how I feel. I’m sad and anxious and excited all at the same time. I still regret this is happening. I still believe it was a moral failure for my wife not to give our marriage a chance of renewal.

I want the week to be over.

I want to move on.