Yes, a divorce is like a death.

My grandfather died a few months ago.

When he died, I was very sad. But I was also relieved.

We'd spent years knowing that his time was coming. The last year was especially difficult. There were good days and bad. The good days were worse, because they cruelly tricked me into thinking things would be okay.

In the last few months of his life, I felt like we lost him about half a dozen times. He would get very close, and everyone would get ready.

Some of us were in denial. But most of us knew. And then he would get better, and we would all breathe a sigh of relief.

And then he would fall again. He'd hit his head, and he'd pull out his catheter, and the paramedics would have to come and stitch him back up. And he was never quite as good as he was before. This went on for a long time. His partner, a lovely woman we all adore, was keeping him alive through sheer force of will. She meant well. But I felt it was cruel.

Funny, because I did the same thing in this metaphor I am torturing. I meant well.

You can't hang on when someone is dying. You're hanging on to an animated corpse, maybe just barely animated. I wouldn't have wanted him to stay alive. Perhaps I might have wanted him to be back the way he was years before, playing tennis and making dinner, but that was never an option. It was a relief when he went.

He died April 1. I knew for sure that my marriage was dying a few days earlier.

My father called to tell me Grampy had gone. The phone rang at three in the morning; I knew who it was because of his ringtone, and I knew what he was calling to say. I got the news I already knew. The only thing that surprised me was that when I hung up the phone, my first thought was not to tell the person sharing my bed.