the last full moon

The moon tonight is not full. But tonight was the first night I have noticed the moon since July. I've been too busy to see it. It's always been there, but I've either gone to bed before it had risen or it was cloudy, or I was just not paying attention to the moon.

I remember when I saw the moon in July. It was the full moon, and I remember thinking that it would be the last full moon I would see before my husband came home. I do not remember the date of the full moon in July. I don't think it matters. But I remember how I felt. It was as though the full moons each month had measured time for me, and I was finally seeing the last one. I felt like I had won. A long hard battle, finally come to a victorious end. I remember wondering if he had looked at the moon that I was seeing. I wondered if he thought of it as his last full moon in hell. I know that is how I saw it. My last full moon alone, my last full moon with a hole in my life.

Things are settling in to a way of life that I vaguely remember, one that I remember being content with, one that I remember for all it's difficulties and triumphs. It was a life filled with compromise and a life with meaning. A life that I longed for as I looked at that full moon in July.

Now I look at that moon, and all I can think is
Ha! We win. We will not be a statistic, we will be a standard by which others measure themselves. We will be looked upon with envy and with the best wishes of everyone who knows us, who knows what we have endured.

At the end of our lives, we will be seen as the ones who made it, and made it with such love and happiness. We will be seen as the life people long for when they look at a full moon.