NOTE: As I mentally deconstruct the demise of my marriage, I am publishing a series of short essays about things that happened, the way I felt, and so on. It's intended to illustrate my mental state at the time, and provide a kind of chronicle of my emotional state, hopefully helping me not make the same mistakes in future relationships.

5/10/03 7:15 PM: Yuri's alarm clock sat on a small white glass pedestal, directly diagonal from my head as I slept. It was often the first thing I saw, almost every morning when I woke up. It was always set to the correct time -- truthfully, it was the only real clock in the entire house that did tell time right -- and it proclaimed the progress of time's relentless march at an angle visible from the hall or any point in the bedroom.

It sat on a white glass pedestal from Bath & Body Works, with this sprig-like floral pattern boasting tiny blue berries, painted on its flat top. The clock would have been hidden behind the corked jars full of coins and the sno-globe of her brother and niece, if not for the pedestal. In my own case, I'd have sat it atop some action figure box or stack of CD cases, but that wasn't her modus operandi. In every aspect of the mundane everyday existence, she sought to impart some kind of aesthetic, a dash of glory. It was part of the real wonder of her I didn't appreciate until it was far too late.

The morning I woke up and saw the clock was gone, it took me a few moments to get my bearings. I looked down, to see if it had been shaken from its perch by seismic activity, then looked to my own clock -- set somewhere between twenty and forty minutes fast -- to verify that time indeed had not forsaken its deliberate walk along the fourth dimension. Muddled and confused, I got out of bed, lit the appropriate candles for the day on my shrine, and took the silent walk down the red-carpeted hall to the front of the house.

I saw that Yuri had opened the futon couch that paralleled the east wall, and on it laid pillows and a blanket, lain askew as if she had just stepped out of it. It bothered me at the time how easily it seemed she'd adapted to an existence away from me, how simple it seemed to fall back into an existence like the one I saw when we began. Ever since I'd gotten sick a week before, Yuri emigrated from our marital bed and took up residence in the living room. Even now, that the infection had run its course, she had yet to return, and I seriously doubted she ever would. I glanced at the VCR in the room, and it told me that Yuri had been at work for hours.

I slowly turned around, taking in the changes of the room, and finally saw the clock. It was perched atop a wooden jewelry box, sitting on top of a stereo speaker. It looked out of place, like something pasted on to a picture, with different lighting and shadows than the new backdrop. But the shadows were as right as the time -- it was just me, accepting that Yuri had effectively stopped living with me, even as we remained in the same house.

The next few days were weird. I kept looking over at the empty pedestal, expecting it to tell me the time. Finally I began to consult the tiny green numbers on the bedroom VCR, but it still felt like I was getting bad information.

I realized at that point an importance I never realized Yuri had in my life. She was the still point by which the rest of my world was calibrated, the timepiece that maintained the stability of everything else. Now that she was physically gone, as I'd felt she'd been emotionally leaving me for months, the oddness of reality was thrown into sharp relief, and I was forced to recalibrate my relationship with the world. Even on the late nights I'd come home, smelling of smoke and karaoke bars, I would walk into the bedroom, see the time on her clock, and see her profile under the covers of our bed. Even through all the real pain and concern I felt about our marriage at the time, I was mentally reassured by the stability and presence of her. Admittedly, for months it felt like there was a Maginot Line between our respective halves, but she was there, she was a constant by which I considered all other things.

Now she's gone. Now I'm starting to understand what she meant, about how I would miss the stable place she built, one I claimed never to care about. Now it's too late.