Christmas – traditionally the time of good cheer – is also, for many, a time of great sadness. Somehow, the fact that everyone is out to enjoy themselves seems to concentrate the mind on the tragedies of life. A train derailment or plane crash in the weeks leading up to the festive season appear all the more terrible precisely because it’s Christmas time. People talk about it for years to come. Likewise, the tragedy of a child’s parents’ divorce or separation can feel heightened during the holiday season.
What Happens to Children When Parents Separate?
For many years, that’s how it was for my family. Because Christmas day was remembered as the day my husband walked out on us all. In reality, the marriage had been failing for years, its embers repeatedly breathed back into life with determination on both sides, only to smoulder and die once more on the altar of adultery – until the final conflagration consumed what was left of us. I knew it was over when the cuckolded husband rang me on Christmas Eve. He was devastated! I, oddly, felt a sense of relief. And because my husband was out – with her? – I had time to compose myself before his inebriated arrival on the doorstep.
