"I should have left years ago."

My 81-year-old mother said that to me for the second time this morning, and it's made me sad. She takes full responsibility for her choice to stay with my father, a difficult man. But one of the reasons she didn't leave him years and years ago is me.

Makes me especially sad to think that her sacrifice on my behalf wasn't a complete success. Witness to her marriage, I was afraid even to admit a desire to have a husband.

And when I finally managed to do that, the man I chose to marry turned out to be very much like my father (imagine that). And now I'm working on getting divorced.

On the other hand, I did grow up with a father who loves me and who was present and responsible, if sometimes unpleasant. And I've had a chance to see what it's like when an unhappy marriage goes on and on and on and on.... It's been educational.

It hurts to see my mother unhappy, especially at this stage of her life. But hers is also quite the cautionary tale.

I don't have a daughter to explain my divorce to, or worry about feeding and buying school uniforms for. At this point in my life that's a blessing.

But I do have myself to keep faith with, and I know I don't want to become an octogenarian regretting a long marriage. As sad as my mother's situation makes me, it also gives me more courage to push ahead through divorce.

Thanks, Mom. For everything.

Somewhere in my house is a book entitled Letting Go of the Person You Used to Be by Lama Surya Das. I bought it three years ago when I lost my job and my last pregnancy within a few weeks of each other.

When the job went, that was kind of okay. I was about to take up a new vocation: motherhood. When the baby went, that was utterly not okay, and I've been trying ever since, in ways healthy and not so, to get over it.

I need to reread that book. Fifty-one weeks ago I was surprised to hear myself telling Edgar yes, I do want a divorce. I still haven't filed the papers.

I can talk about keeping the health insurance and the expense and trouble of divorce, but at least some of my delay is a result of my unwillingness to let go of a bad marriage.

Doggone it, took me 40 years to find a husband. So he wasn't the best husband, but he was — uh, still is — my husband.

It also took me quite a while to find and buy my house, which I don't really seem to be able to afford right now. 

In truth, I haven't been able to afford it for quite a while.

It has been pointed out to me that if I don't figure out how to pay for, or to sell, or to rent out the house, it'll be taken from me. Then I'll have to let go. For the past several months I've been working on letting go of the conviction that I must and can hold on to my home.

I've put less effort into the idea of releasing Ed.

But I feel my tightly clenched hands being pried open, so to speak. I'm beginning to accept the possibility that it's time to let someone else (who can afford it) love this house.

Maybe the practice will help me to let go of my marriage.

Edgar's therapist mentioned that Edgar's relationship with alcohol was the most important, the one he was willing to sacrifice everything for. My husband, Ed, dismissed the notion with a "don't-be-ridiculous" air that I knew well.

Accustomed as I was to going along with him — and probably because it suited my vanity — I dismissed the notion, too.

After Ed and I had been apart for some months, I listened to a fellow alcoholic, who was under the influence of something at the time, insist that he did not love booze and drugs more than he loved his wife and kids.

And I finally accepted my truth: His therapist was dead right about Ed's affair with alcohol.

Ed would disagree and tell me that his uncontrollable drinking was hell. I don't doubt that. But, as I told him, "I'd feel differently if you were being chased down the street by bottles of rum that threw you to the pavement and poured themselves down your throat, but it doesn't work that way. At some point you make a choice to pick up a drink."

I'm reminded of that Lou Christie hit from the ‘60s, "Lightnin' Strikes," in which he sang falsetto about being powerless to resist sudden attractions to women. He promised his girlfriend that one day he'd settle down and they'd get married.

But until then, he wanted her to stick around, understand.

It is perhaps unimaginably hard for an alcoholic to stop drinking. I don't know exactly why I've been able to do it, one day at a time, for almost a year and a half and Ed has not.

Many recovering alcoholics (and we're always "recovering" or "recovered"; it's kind of like being a pickle, you never go back to being a cucumber) say, "There but for the grace of God go I."

I feel as though I should have been saving up something deeply profound to say here — something that will mark this, something that one might print out and post on one's bathroom mirror. Something deep. Something meaningful. Something universal and marvelous that will affect and impress everyone.

Yeah. I've got nothing.

When I started writing for this site, I had visions of a hilarious series chronicling my forays back into the dating world. This will be delightful, I thought. I'm in my 30s and have been married most of my life. I have never dated as an adult. I have no idea what I'm doing.

Turning the odd and the icky into a column will make the merely awkward hilarious, and what a comfort that will be. A bad first date will have some purpose. I will try many things in the name of research. I will be Carrie Bradshaw, only without the shoe thing.

It was an excellent plan. I had been dating for a bit, so had some stories saved up. I had no desire at all to do anything beyond casual. You couldn't beat me into a real relationship with a stick.

Then of course, I found myself in one, despite the kicking and screaming, despite refusing, for months, to give it a name. So this has become less about the hilarity of Watching-Alice-Try-to-Figure-Out-Dating and more the hilarity of Watching-Alice-Skid-into-Commitment. Which is constantly startling, really.

It has been a surprising help, these columns. Finding the right words for something here has often helped put things in perspective, or decide where to go, or just ease the feelings over something.

So, thank you, those of you who have been here with me, those that have commented, those who have read, and those who write along with me. I've very much appreciated your company, and look forward to bringing you along on future adventures.

During this, the final week of my solo month, there have been lots of opportunities to give up and run to a bar, or go to Fire Island for one last fling before the kids come home.

Instead, I've dabbled in cooking, reading, and sampling wine. I've become an expert in the latter. My friends have given up in frustration trying to set me up with dinner-party hotties.

I've resigned myself to the single life, for at least the foreseeable future.

Labor Day weekend will be my last shot at a three-day getaway. So I've been Googling activities that don't involve getting spruced up for the opposite sex. That means no going to a spa, or a resort, no facial peels or shopping sprees. Obviously alcohol and orgies are out.

Instead I decided to try a resource in the New York metro area that supports mental and psycho-spiritual well-being. There were plenty of opportunities not more than an hour from my home that offered to stretch and encourage my inner goddess.

There was the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health Center in Stockbridge, Mass., which says it aspires to "teach the art and science of yoga" and is a "place where people come together to deeply inquire into the core issues of life."

Kripalu has a radiant health retreat for women on Labor Day Weekend starting at $513 for classes, meals, and accommodations. It's taught by Sudha Carolyn Lundeen, a holistic RN who helps people discover their inherent wholeness.

Hey, if I discover my inherent wholeness, maybe that will do away with my focus on finding the next man in my life.

And if that doesn't pique my interest, Kripalu also offers rock climbing, yoga, and bodywork.

Also, in central Massachusetts is the Barre Buddhist Center, which specializes in meditative insight. According to their calendar, I could cultivate Inner Freedom and Nonreactivity with Michael and Naraya, just not on Labor Day weekend.

Maybe I didn't have it all, but I had managed to build a life I wanted. I had a home and a family. (Well, I had a husband and a bunch of animals.) I had work I loved. It took my entire adult life to put it together.

And now it looks like my next task is to take it apart.

Typically, perhaps, I didn't give a lot of thought to what would become of me after Edgar. I was positive, though, that it wouldn't be good for me spend the rest of my life with someone who evidently could not stop drinking to excess.

So I plunged ahead and got him out of my house, mostly out of my life. There is the pesky little detail of actually divorcing him, but we're over.

Since I married late, at 40, I figured I'd just kind of go back to what I did before I had a husband.

Yeah, right.

Nothing is the same as it was, not me, not the economy, not the fields in which I have decades of experience. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Since Ed's been gone, I've found new homes for more than half of my pets, gotten a roommate, tapped my precious retirement account (and am about to do so again), and I failed to get jobs as a waitress (no experience), in retail (plenty of experience), as well as in public relations, publishing, and journalism.

So what am I to do? Something completely different, apparently.

Probably something I don't want to do.

I may have to find homes for the rest of my animal family. I may have to sell my house — if I can find a buyer. Either of those options is heartbreaking, but as my friend Curtis says, "It's all on loan."

Even if I manage to hold on, neither my dogs nor my house will go with me when I leave this life. But I will die knowing I was able to get myself out of a disastrous situation, even though it hurts a lot in ways I wasn't expecting.

Remembering that doesn't make me feel any better, but it does kind of put things in perspective.

I don't have kids, I have pets. And they became another kind of shattered family after my split with Edgar. I thought getting him out of the house was the hard part. But after he was gone, I saw he was right.

I wasn't making enough money to take care of the house and the dogs, cats, birds and fish. I never said anything to him about alimony, but I did ask him for animal support. After all, it was Ed who had brought most of them home.

He said he thought he might be able to kick in something, if he could be sure it would be used for critter care.

I changed the locks the day he was supposed to be out. But he broke in one afternoon and left $30 on the table.

That's been the extent of it, unless you count his telling me to try not to let any of the animals die.

What a sweetheart.

Halfheartedly, I asked around to see if anybody wanted any of my critters. I had hoped to keep them all, but when the filter broke on the fish tank, I got desperate.

The note I left on the pet store bulletin board, "Divorce Forces Adoption," led to my goldfish moving into a beautiful outdoor pond. The same family took in my cockatiels. My finches have become a source of joy at an old folks' home, and another childless woman dotes on my ex-parrots.

Ed's three cats remain, but my roommate is a cat person and has taken them over. I did find a place for one dog, who went to live with my brother in another state. The deal was that she'd be with him temporarily — but indefinitely. They are so happy, I'm concentrating on the indefinite part.

Hard as it was for me to part with my critters, as much as I miss the chirping and squawking, and the bubbles and graceful swimming, I think those who moved out are better off than they were here with me.

So maybe it’s selfish to hold on to my remaining dogs, and I have to admit there are four of them. But enough sacrifice here.