It's time to begin...

I am grieving. Tears well up in my eyes and I feel a sense of devastating loss. I cry at all hours. I wake in the middle of the night in tears. I replay the movie of the last 29 years over and over again. It was a typical married life. Lots of ups and downs. Children, vacations, memories all embedded into what I call "me." But, there were always the financial issues. I'm not talking about lack of money, but my mismanagement of it, my hiding issues from my husband, my wanting to shield him from the issues. That never worked out very well but we stayed together. Finally we didn't have to struggle anymore. He was in a position making lots of money and I too was making a good living. We could finally do the things we always wanted to do. But, in one year we spent too much traveling and were heavy in debt. We refinanced our home to erase the credit card debt, but that was the last straw for my husband. He just couldn't look away anymore. I didn't matter that he was a willing and knowing participant in both the cruise and the trip to the Bahamas, I was to blame for the issue. It didn't matter that in St. Thomas he bought the GoPro, while I purchased a t-shirt. It didn't matter that he wanted to include our daughter, grandson, and son-in-law on the trip to the Bahamas, somehow the issues all fell on to my shoulders and he was an unwilling participant. What I'm trying to get at is that this was a two person ordeal, one was no guiltier than the other. For the sake of our marriage, I took the blame and I worked my ass off to pay off all other debt that wasn't paid off in the refinance. In October of last year, we moved his parents into a retirement community. This meant that their house of 40+ years would need to be sold. To say they were hoarders is an understatement. In January of this year he decided that he would spend every day after work and weekends working on the house to get it ready for sale. He would work until he dropped and just sleep there. He was still coming home every day before work to get ready and every day after work to say hi. I knew that he had to do this this way, because he would never get it done any other way. I was supportive, bringing him dinners and working all day on the weekends helping him clean out the mounds of "stuff." But after that, my help wasn't needed anymore. I came over to clean, to paint, to do what I could but I wasn't there regularly. He still came home in the morning and after work. He still participated in family get-togethers. For a time I felt that once the house was sold, he would come back and resume our 29+ year marriage. He stated he was "coming home." But recently, he has revisited the "financial issues" and says he just can't get over them. I have worked so hard to turn things around, all but 3 credit cards are paid off and I have begun a savings. Not enough, he can't let go of the past. So here I am at the beginning.