I fell in love in college, and I hoped then it would last forever. Kent was smart, funny, good-looking, and athletic. As we progressed to almost living together we developed a few areas of friction. Of course. I guess I thought then that it would be good for the relationship if I didn’t make a fuss. I swallowed little irritations. I viewed some bad scenes as normal vicissitudes in an intimate relationship, and I tried to wait them out. I didn’t believe Kent when he said he was breaking up with me because I wasn’t fully present with him. I knew even then that no one tells the full why about a breakup, at the time of the breakup, because no one has the perspective yet to understand the why. But something stuck. I acquired a suggestion, I guess, that my anger might drive a guy away, but my suppression of anger wouldn’t keep him.

The therapy wasn’t refined at first. Learning to be angry meant I cycled from too much to too little like a drinking duck toy: bobbing back and forth while slowly locating the middle ground of healthy expression. That’s how I see it anyway. Sometimes a friend lets me know, even now, after I’ve been too much. At first Claire used the adjective “draconian” about me. I looked it up and resented it. She still does it now and then, but that’s probably just sibling stuff; I don’t think I deserve it. I’m more a Mistress of Indignation (or maybe a Queen of Sarcasm).

I haven’t married. I’ve had relationships that lasted years and included shared vacations and savings accounts and almost cohabitation, but no one’s ever proposed. Claire insists that I could have made it happen, especially with Kent’s successor Charlie; she says it’s been my choice to stay single.

But I don’t know. I’m still not good at fighting with a lover. I seem to be better in an affair with an unhappily married man than I am with an available guy. And spending the time I have with unhappily married men, remembering the terrible teenage years of my split-up family, I don’t exactly have a positive viewpoint about marriage. Claire’s 40th wedding anniversary will occur in three months, I like my brother-in-law and I love my niece, but I wouldn’t want the union she has.

Mostly I think it’s Dad’s fault. Except for his absence, he was perfect. I knew his love was unconditional. His complaints about me were minor; he cherished me and I luxuriated in his affection. After the divorce Mom started drinking a lot, dating a bunch, marrying a few times. She was cute, but she wasn’t much there for me. And she was kind of slothful. She didn’t do the laundry or dusting as often as was needed. I had to take on those tasks. To this day I’m the best ironer I know.

Cindy has a similar history. (Her expertise is laundry-folding.) Her folks didn’t divorce till she was 14 but there were several separations in the years before the final decree, so she endured the unstable split-home experience. Her father wasn’t physically affectionate – sometimes I think all her therapy is about needing a paternal hug – but he was patient and understanding and ever ready to take a walk with her. Her mother was vain and favored Cindy’s older and younger brothers; she must have thought a daughter would raise herself. She didn’t even rise to the maternal occasion when Cindy told her that Uncle Edward had exposed himself to her and asked to touch her panties. Cindy and I have learned what the term “self-referential” means by contemplating her mom.

Anyway, we agree that it may be our dads’ fault that neither of us is married. The simple fact is we haven’t met guys as fine as our fathers. We haven’t been able to imagine signing on for a lesser man.

Mostly. Maybe. My dad died five years ago and Cindy lost hers last summer. My mother is demented and in a memory facility and Cindy’s, who has been losing her mind and body for the last decade, passed yesterday. Neither of us achieved any resolution with our moms.

I’m still angry about the way Dad went. The doctors ignored his low (fit) resting heart rate when they calibrated his pacemaker, and then they called his strokes little TIAs; as we learned after he died, he’d been enduring a succession of brain bleeds that added up to catastrophe. But he’s gone, and his personality left before his body did.

I’m angry about Dad, and maybe ready to be angry with a man of my own. I’m not likely to marry – I’m statistically too old for that – but I’m not dead yet.