C. S. Lewis: A Lost Chapter of Herodotus

How To Celebrate Christmas...Medieval Style!

It just struck me the other night how hilarious this is:

(me, on the left, ca. 1975)

You stay classy, San Diego.

Christmas is always a traumatic time. Every year, I make myself my favorite thing: a big figgy pudding.

But then these people show up at the door, hammering, yelling, making a god-awful noise, demanding figgy pudding. "Bring us some figgy pudding! Bring us some figgy pudding! Bring it out here!" I tell them to go away, to leave me alone, but they keep on, "We won't go until we get some!" In the end, I always have to give them the damn figgy pudding just to make them shut up and go away.

I said years ago that John Williams was directly responsible for my having come to love classical music, and that much of the best composing now is being done for movies. Anyone who disdains film scores as not being worthy to be included with classical music, I think must not have heard Joshua Bell play the theme from Schindler's List. But this was the one that captured my heart and my imagination, when I was just a boy; and here it is having reached its full potential, at last. One of the world's great violinists playing Leia's Theme from Star Wars on a Stradivarius.

Christian Marriage by C.S. Lewis Doodle

Charity, II. Love by C.S. Lewis Doodle

Chivalry

While I'm on the topic of things mediaeval, there are two other subjects on my mind, which rather interrelate.

First, this book I've been reading: 

Best book on knighthood and chivalry I've ever read. No contest. The author is thoroughly acquainted with and profoundly knowledgeable of the actual medieval texts, treatises, romances, and visual arts, as well as with modern history and archaeology on the subject, and draws his conclusions and arguments from them. No revisionism. No ex post facto ideological bias. No repetition of  "facts" that aren't facts at all, but long-perpetuated lies. Just superb.

Anyway, in the book I keep running across things like this:

"Loyalty is one of the greatest virtues that there can be in any person, and especially in a knight, who ought to keep himself loyal in many ways. But the principal ways are two: first to keep loyalty to his lord, and secondly to love truly her in whom he has placed his heart." -- quoted from the statutes of the chivalric Order of the Band of Castile

And this, in speaking of the Emprise de l'Escu vert à la Dame Blanche, (Enterprise of the Green Shield and White Lady) another knightly order:

"The upholding of the honour of womankind was the chief avowed concern of [this order], whose companions bound themselves for five years to the service of women, especially of the defenceless and disinherited"

When I read things like this, it strikes a chord in my soul that resonates everything within me. This is how life should be. I don't know how I got this way, but I always have been. Maybe the genes, or maybe something spiritual, from those ancestors I was talking about a couple of posts back got passed down to me. I think of what Gandalf said of Faramir, that somehow he had received something of the true blood or spirit of Numenor from across the ages. 

But these examples lead me to the other thing that has been on my mind. I watched a movie, recently which, when I started it, I thought, "Good Lord, a medieval movie in which the weapons, armor, clothing, culture, and other details actually look right!" And it was based on actual historical events. The movie is The Last Duel, if you happen to have seen it. If not, there are some spoilers ahead, though I'll try not to ruin the whole plot.

It's about a charge of rape brought by a knight against his former friend, on behalf of his wife, which ultimately resulted in the last judicial duel fought in France. In case you don't know, in medieval times, matters could be settled by single combat between the two parties or their champions, and the outcome was seen as the result of the Will of God as to who was telling the truth. We'll leave the discussion of whether that's any more or less fair or arbitrary and results in any more or less injustice than the modern court system to another time. (We can say, "Well, that's not justice, the best fighter is going to win!" But how about, "That's not justice, the best lawyer is going to win!"? Okay, I'm done.)

The film is divided into three segments: 1) the truth according to the husband, 2) the truth according to the rapist, and 3) the truth according to the wife; and then ends with the duel itself and its outcome. Which sounds very reasonable and good. Except....

Parts one and two were taken mostly from the historical sources, and are accurate reflections of the court records and other documents. Part three, however, by the filmakers' own admission, was pure fiction. It was, in their words, "original screenplay" based on what they thought the woman's view must have been. If they had had sources, to say what her view of the matter actually was (beyond her actual testimony, which is given in part one), then I would say, by all means, tell her story! But they don't. It's pure imagination. And the real problem is, it's written entirely from a modern, feminist perspective. It assumes, with absolutely no historical basis, support, or even hint (I checked) that she must have been unhappy and miserable in her marriage, that the husband would have been an insensitive and abusive boor, that he quite badly mistreated her the night she told him of the rape, that he was only concerned with his own honour and reputation in the matter rather than her honour and welfare, etc. Which would have been all well and fine for the movie, if ANY of it had ANY basis in historical fact or record. But no, it's all pure assumption on the part of modern authors who assume that must have been this way because all men are, after all, abusive, insensitive boors, and especially those violent, barbaric knights must have been.

Here, on the other hand, is a much more balanced view of the matter by someone who seems to have a grasp on what history actually is: https://alexabaczak.medium.com/the-real-life-last-duel-the-assault-of-marguerite-de-carrouges-ca0ca4eba592. Although she can't help slipping a bit of feminism in there too.

There actually are some points to be made about the difficulty which a woman faced in bringing rape charges (which was a crime punishable by death) at the time. But they fit into the weaknesses of the justice system of the time overall, rather than to some overarching misogynist conspiracy to oppress women. And really, it's never going to be easy, is it? It still isn't. There's always going to be shame, and humiliation, and scandal, and gossip. And to be just, a justice system has to use impartial methods to determine truth to its best ability, and the accused in any crime has to be given a fair trail, because there is such a thing as false accusation, as well as mistaken identity, etc. Even in a crime as heinous as rape, there has to be due process, because there's a chance that the man accused is not actually guilty. 

Don't take that as me defending rape or rapists: anyone who knows me knows how I feel about these things. Some of you reading this have experienced me acting on your behalf in exactly this capacity. I would have joined that order and made that vow. I'm just saying that this abominable crime is always going to be difficult for the victim to pursue justice, by its very nature. The perfect justice system would make it as easy as possible for her (or him), but medieval justice was not perfect. Nor is ours. 

And after all, what better justice could there be than the vile rapist facing the armed fury of the woman's husband or other defender, in front of her, God, and everyone they know? Death is the only punishment suitable for rape.

Anyway, back to the main point: the postmodern feminist assumption that all the men involved were guilty and complicit in the abuse and oppression of all women, patriarchy, etc., etc., blah, blah, blah. They seem to me to have terribly slandered a brave and good man based on nothing but their own presumptions and ideological agenda. But compare that assumption with the quotes I gave from the actual middle ages above. And these are not exceptions, they are the rule. Every man who joined that particular order made a vow to devote five full years of his life to aiding the cause of all women, especially those who had no defender or champion, i.e., widows, women whose inheritance had been stolen, etc. 

There have always been, and always will be, evil men. Until Christ returns. But there have always been, and still are, good men too. Yes, there was injustice in the middle ages. Yes, there was injustice against women. But there was injustice against men too. Yes, there still is injustice against women, some of it perpetrated by men. But there also still is injustice against men, some of it perpetrated by women.

Mediaeval Life Documentary

This is, I think, the most interesting and informative documentary series I've ever seen. The number of skills and crafts which they demonstrate is astounding. I'm especially impressed with the lady scholar, who in addition to being extremely knowledgeable, has mastery of an incredible number of practical ancient skills. I was disappointed to hear her repeating the old "medieval people didn't wash" fallacy (see here for the truth), but that's the only flaw I've seen so far, and have learned a LOT. And I'm only halfway through the series.

Something deep in my soul longs for this kind of life: the simplicity, the order, the rhythms, the harmony and balance, the closeness to nature, the earth, the seasons, the suffusion of God throughout every aspect of daily life....

Genealogy

A long time ago, I developed an interest in where I came from. Like many Americans. Most Europeans don't seem to share this--nor Asians, Africans, or Indians, judging from the ones I've known. They pretty much know what they are. 

But we Americans always have this question...we know that at some point, our ancestors immigrated here, and we know that our surname is of a particular nationality, but beyond that, there's always this unknown.

So when I was a boy, we had had this tradition that we were French, of course. And there was a coat of arms which was supposed to be associated with our family. But that's all we knew.

My father wasn't really that interested, but my uncle was, and he began to research it, way back before the internet. By the early days of the internet and the advent of the first message boards where disparate researchers could share their findings, he had found our line back to the immigration to America. We were Hugenots, it turns out, French protestants who had settled here after being forced to leave France by the edict of Nantes, and had come here, to Virginia. And there it stopped, for a long time. My uncle died, and there was no more information.

But then, in the early 2000s, after much searching, I finally found another trail. And it led back from our ancestor who had come here to a knight named Sir Richard du Pré, who had been awarded a fiefdom in Artois, on what is now the French/Belgian border, in 1437. And there it went cold again. 

I had always suspected that Sir Richard was either English, the name being Norman, or Burgundian, as that region was under Anglo/Burgundian control at that time, this being during the hundred years war. But I couldn't find anything else, other than a transcript of the trial of Joan of Arc in which a Richard du Pré was listed as sitting on the panel of judges. But it didn't seem that that could be him, as the one was a knight and lord, and the other was a cleric. A relative, maybe. Anyway, for a long time that was it, and I lost interest, distracted by other things.

At one point, by accident while researching something totally different (medieval military subjects), I came across a site which had digitized the English records of the hundred years war, and on which you could search for your ancestor's name. I did, and found Sir Richard, and indeed he had served on the English side, under the famous captain Sir John Talbot. Which confirmed my suspicions that he had been either English or Burgundian, but didn't help with finding his ancestry.

But a few years ago, I was at my brother's house, who had become rather obsessed with the genealogy thing, and he mentioned that he had come across a site in French which he couldn't read, and asked me to take a look at it. I did, and lo and behold, finally found possible records of Sir Richard's father, who was Burgundian and lord of Pereins, near Lyons, which matched up with what we had found many years before in association with that coat of arms, that there was a connection with Lyons. And, fascinatingly, one of his ancestors, or rather the brother of his ancestor, was the first grand master of the Knights Hospitaller:

Raymond du Puis

 And then I found his father, and then his father, etc., all the way back to 775, to a man called Aznar d'Aragon, who was the count of Aragon (which wasn't yet a duchy) and duke of Gascony, which is the border region of France and Spain on the Pyrenees. And I found this picture of him:

Aznar d'Aragon

Weird, right? Apparently, the gene for those eyes has somehow lasted down through all these centuries and millennia, and is still the most identifying feature of our family. It was like something in an old movie, where some American inherits an old castle in England or Scotland, goes there, walks in, and finds a picture of himself. In case you don't see it, here' one of me in which you can actually see my face, for reference:

There the trail ended again, for some time. It was surprising and intriguing, because he was said in some sources to be of Basque origin. But that was it.

Then, just recently I came across by accident, while researching something else, again, information on Aznar's origin. It seems he wasn't Basque after all, but Frankish. In fact, it goes back to Clovis, King of the Franks, and then back to Merovech, for whom the Merovingian dynasty was named. Which would explain the family's rocky relationship with Charlemagne and the Carolingians: if they were descended from the Merovingians, they would have a beef with them, wouldn't they? Anyway, super-ironically, Merovech was king of the Salian Franks, who lived in a territory of the northern Rhine in what is now...BELGIUM. lol. Guess there was a reason I felt so at home there. And liked their ale so much.

Clovis I

So, at this point we're reaching the end of what's even possible to trace, as the Franks didn't keep written records in these times, and all we have is what's recorded by Romans. And at this point, history begins to blend with mythology. But it seems that Merovech's father was Clodio, the king who first united the Frankish tribes and established a quasi-independent kingdom in Belgica and northern Gaul:

Clodio

I mean, this is crazy, right? Or am I imagining it?

Anyway, Clodio's grandfather was a Frankish dux (leader) called Marcomer who invaded Roman territory in 388. And that's as far as it is likely ever to go. But I'm satisfied. I think I can say that I know where I came from. Marcomer, if he led an invasion in 388, would have probably been born sometime between the 340s and 360s, and that's not bad for being able to trace one's ancestry. Of course, none of this is absolutely certain or provable at this point, but the pictures make me think there really might be something to it.

Marcomer

"I've got the makings of a great writer in me, but I'll never become one because I'm too erratic and lazy to really try and keep on trying."

-- Robert E. Howard

"Truly I know that this is so"

[that God is just and if Job is suffering, it must be for his own sin]

"But how can a man be in the right before God?

If one wished to contend with him,

one could not answer him once in a thousand times

He is wise in heart and mighty in strength

--who has hardened himself against him, and suceeded?

--he who removes mountains, and they know it not,

when he overturns them in his anger,

who shakes the earth out of its place,

and its pillars tremble;

who commands the sun, and it does not rise;

who seals up the stars;

who alone stretched out the heavens

and trampled the waves of the sea;

who made the Bear and Orion,

the Pleiades and the chambers of the south;

who does great things beyond searching out,

and marvelous things beyond number.

Behold, he passes by me, and I see him not;

he moves on, but I do not perceive him,

Behold, he snatches away; who can turn him back?

Who will say to him, 'What are you doing?'

God will not turn back his anger;

beneath him bowed the helpers of Rahab.

How then can I answer him,

choosing my words with him?

Though I am in the right, I cannot answer him;

I must appeal for mercy to my accuser.

If I summoned him and he answered me,

I would not believe that he was listening to my voice.

For he crushes me with a tempest

and multiplies my wounds without cause;

he will not let me get my breath,

but fills me with bitterness.

If it is a contest of strength, behold, he is mighty!

If it is a matter of justice, who can summon him?

Though I am in the right, my own mouth would condemn me;

though I am blameless, he would prove me perverse.

I am blameless, I regard not myself;

I loath my life.

It is all one; therefore I say,

'He destroys both the blameless and the wicked.'

When disaster brings sudden death,

he mocks at the calamity of the innocent.

The earth is given into the hand of the wicked;

he covers the faces of its judges--if it is not he, then who is it?

My days are swifter than a runner;

they flee away; they see no good.

They go by like skiffs of reed,

like an eagle swooping on the prey.

If I say, 'I will forget my complaint, 

I will put off my sad face, and be of good cheer,'

I become afraid of all my suffering,

for I know you will not hold me innocent.

I shall be condemned;

why then do I labor in vain?

If I wash myself with snow

and cleanse my hands with lye,

yet you will plunge me into a pit,

and my own garment will abhor me.

For he is not a man, as I am, that I might answer him,

that we should come to trial together.

There is no arbiter between us,

who might lay his hand on us both.

Let him take his rod away from me,

and let not dread of him terrify me.

Then I would speak without fear of him,

for I am not so in myself."

"Why, then, do you serve him, if he continually denies you justice and makes you suffer so?"

My suffering or happiness, justice or injustice, life or death, is rather beside the point. I serve him because he deserves to be served. I serve him because he is God.

I am not the center of the universe.

I have learned something important about myself. Probably the most significant thing since I took my first IQ test and discovered why I had never fit in with the public school kids, enlisted soldiers, beat cops, and blue-collar laborers I had been surrounded by all my life. Perhaps even more so.

What I've found is, finally, the answer to the question "What's wrong with me?" for which I've been searching for many years. Or, more specifically, "What's wrong with my brain?" It's a form of ADD, of all things, coupled with TS (Tourette's), which another doctor had suggested some years ago, but then was contradicted by others, so I wasn't sure. But now I am. 

I had never really considered ADD or looked into it, because my idea of it was the typical hyperactive, defiant child who can't sit still or read. I had actually discussed it with my psychiatrist a few years ago as a possible explanation for my difficulty writing, but never as the root cause of all my problems. But it turns out there's much more to ADD than just that. There are different types, and the effects are far-reaching and diverse. I don't have the typical form of either ADD or TS, which is fixed in the popular mind--that is, I don't have either hyperactivity nor coprolalia (the involuntary shouting of obscenities), but that's actually only found in a small percentage of TS sufferers. The clinical definition is "At least one motor tic and at least one vocal tic, persisting for more than a year" and I definitely meet that. When I was a boy, it was horrible. I had multiple both motor and vocal tics, starting from about 8 or 9, and gradually lessening (but never fully disappearing--there are still traces to this day) as I got older. And apparently, TS and ADD are very frequently comorbid.

So basically, without going too long or too deep into it, my brain doesn't (and never has) produce enough dopamine, serotonin, or GABA. Also, certain parts of my brain are seriously over-active, while other parts are under-active, especially during activities which require a specific type of focus and concentration. The parts that seem to be most overactive in mine are called the anterior cingulate gyrus and the limbic system. The former is responsible for shifting attention and focus and when it is dysfunctional causes people to get "stuck" in repeated thoughts, rigid patterns, etc. The latter is the main center for processing emotion and, for some reason, when over-active, produces overwhelmingly negative thoughts and emotions. You see where this is going, right? 

So I've lived my whole life completely trapped in an unbreakable pattern of endlessly looped negative thoughts and feelings. I'll try to explain a little bit--I can only now even attempt it now that I've experienced something different (more on that in a minute), like someone who was born with bad eyesight and doesn't get glasses until they're an adult can't describe to you the difference between what they see and what you see until after they get the glasses: they just don't know the difference between what they're experiencing and normal reality.

The way it's been in my brain is that I've lived with every single negative experience, thought, feeling, and memory of my entire life, fully present, over and over and over and over and over and over again, in an endless, eternal loop, in vivid, excruciating detail, and at full emotional intensity, as if they had JUST happened. Every single one. From huge, major traumatic experiences, to tiny little social embarrassments, they just played over and over and over and over and over in my head, going all the way back into my very early childhood (and my memory extends back to being a baby in a stroller). All my life, I've heard people say, "Well, it's in the past, it's over now," and I never knew what they meant. Because for me, nothing was in the past. Well, nothing bad was in the past. For some reason, good memories receded all too easily, leaving only the regret that they were no longer reality...so, in the end, even good memories became bad ones. Does this sound kind of like Hell to you? You would be correct.

So what do I mean when I speak of it in the past tense? Well, true to form, once we had identified the problem, I went and started reading and researching about it (while the VA drags its feet scheduling appointments for testing, evaluation, prescriptions, etc.), and found a doctor who has been specializing in this for 20+ years, read his book, followed his recommendations about supplements, and...the whole world changed. I'm taking L-tyrosine, which increases dopamine (similar to the prescription stimulants they use for ADD), 5-HTP, which increases serotonin (like antidepressants, but without the side-effects), GABA, which increases, well, GABA, and SAM-e, which acts as sort of a neutral base for neurotransmitters, boosting whichever ones the brain needs, kind of like a stem-cell which can become anything. And has the added benefit of helping a LOT with my chronic pain and inflammation. And literally, everything is different. I can go to sleep for the first time EVER without fighting with all those negative thoughts and memories, as I try to get to sleep, and all through the night as they wake me up to remind me not to forget about them. My whole feeling and outlook on life is changing. It's still in process--this is all relatively new, and I'm experimenting with dosage and which thing works best, and also, learning to live in a completely different way. It's a monumental change, and I have to get used to it and adjust, both physiologically and psychologically.

And the TS part, well, the best way to describe that is...have you ever heard a truck grinding its gears when it tries to shift? That's what the inside of my brain has been like. Since I was a child.

Also, there's this: https://www.additudemag.com/rejection-sensitive-dysphoria-and-adhd/. I'm not going to elaborate. If you've ever known me, you will see instantly how much of me was this. I went for option 2 in the "how people cope" section. But identifying and understanding it is giving me freedom from it.

In addition, somehow this brain disorder causes extreme hypersensitivity to many other things: touch (like my obsession with only cotton clothes, sheets, etc.), sound, light, crowds, just people in general. The world has felt overwhelming to me for as long as I can remember, but I never understood why. It's because parts of my brain, and therefore my entire nervous system, are in constant overdrive.

One of the most significant things about this, psychologically, other than just the relief of finally knowing and understanding what it is, is the knowledge that, after all, it is not a psychological problem, but a neurological one. To be sure, living my whole life with the neurological issue caused psychological ones. But at its core, it's not something wrong with me, With Me, that is, with my psyche. My soul. It's a problem of machinery. It's hard to convey the relief which that gives me. So, for instance, I don't need to beat and punish and judge and condemn myself anymore for "never learning good study habits" and under-performing in school relative to my potential. I couldn't have done any better without having been treated for the ADD. Looking back now, from the perspective of starting to feel relief and freedom from these things, I see my whole life differently--without all the self-judgment, regret, and shame. In other words, it's not a failure of character and virtue. In fact, given the severity of the difficulties I've had to deal with, it's only because of character and virtue that it wasn't much worse. I mean, it could have been SO much worse. 

So much that I've never understood about myself, or been able to control or change is now clear--from my weight (eating to feel better) to my continual risk-taking and danger-seeking--it's all been ways to try and boost the dopamine and serotonin which were so lacking in my brain. Ways to try to feel better, if only a little bit for a little while, no matter at what cost. Because, let me tell you, unless you've ever experienced it, you have no idea how completely awful it feels to be without these neurotransmitters. Think of the worst you've ever felt in your entire life; immediately after a great loss, failure, disappointment, embarrassment, whatever--and try to imagine feeling that way always, all the time, your whole life.

This is still a work in progress, and I've still got a lot of working out of the details to do. It's not completely gone; it's just lessened, at this point. Hopefully, I'll continue to find (eventually with the help of doctors and such) ways to improve. I don't really like, for instance, the stimulating effect of the L-tyrosine, and would like to find a way to elevate dopamine without it--I'm thinking it's because almost everything that targets dopamine also targets norepinephrine. There's a place in Reston which specializes in this, and I'd like to go there and get my brain scanned and get some more detailed and specific targeted guidance from people knowledgeable and experienced in treating it. And there's the possibility that the supplements will lose effectiveness over time, and my brain will reassert itself. 

And there are other components: the discovery of this diagnosis corresponded exactly in time with breakthroughs in both psychotherapy and my spiritual life--as if God were timing it all, to bring it all together at the exact right moment.  

I honestly feel, though, like the Ring has finally gone into the fire. And right now, I'm just taking some time to let it sink in, to adjust, to rest, to heal. Like Frodo lingering in Ithilien and Gondor and dawdling on his way home. But also, like Frodo, I kind of feel like the cost was too great, that I was wounded too many times and too deeply to ever completely recover, like maybe there is no true, lasting peace and rest for me. Like maybe it's just a matter of waiting for that last grey ship. 

What I'm feeling right now is this deep, deep sadness. Not the overwhelming bitter torment of regret and misery that I've lived in until now, but what I almost want to call a healthy sadness. Just the deep, profound sadness of all that I have lost. Not just recently, but over my whole life. 

So, one of the results of all this is that I'm kind of over wanting to talk about myself at great length and in great detail. I've needed to up until now, because I was searching for answers, working through things, processing it all. Now I'm past it. Or maybe just tired of it. But I thought, for those who have read this far with me, that I owed you a denouement. I don't know what the future of this blog will be. Maybe I'll still need to process some things. Maybe I'll let it die. Maybe I'll start a new, less personal one at some point. Just don't know. If you do come here one day and find that it's set to private, it's not because I've blocked anyone individually, or everyone for any personal reason, but because I've decided to archive and shut down the whole thing, and setting it to private is the only way to do that without deleting it all. But if you did read and, in a sense, live through this all with me, then thank you.

"There are things too strong for even the strongest man."

-- Victor Hugo

"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.

At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting."

"And no one ever told me about the laziness of grief. Except at my job--where the machine seems to run on much as usual--I loathe the slightest effort. Not only writing but even reading a letter is too much. Even shaving. What does it matter now whether my cheek is rough or smooth? They say an unhappy man wants distractions--something to take him out of himself. Only as a dog-tired man wants an extra blanket on a cold night; he'd rather lie there shivering than get up and find one. It's easy to see why the lonely become untidy, finally dirty and disgusting." -- C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Why did I not re-read this two years ago? Perhaps it was that tired man wanting a blanket thing. 

I have passed those early stages of it, and have been doing better in many ways. But the truth is that it's not just my daughter that I'm grieving for. And there are setbacks. 

"It is all right to wallow in one's journal; it is a way of getting rid of self-pity and self-indulgence and self-centeredness. What we work out in our journals we don't take out on family and friends."

-- Madeleine L'Engle

Yes, a journal is normally private. But I do it here. Why make my journal public? I don't know, completely. Somehow it just helps. Somehow it makes me feel better. Perhaps because I don't have a living human in my life to actually talk to. This is almost like having someone, and if I wallow and complain, well, whoever reads it is reading it of their own choice, and so I don't feel like I'm inflicting it on them.

And also, and not least importantly, I have some small hope that what I write may be of some help to someone else who may be experiencing, or processing having experienced, some similar grief and heartache. 

Vir sine feminâ bonum non est

 Here's something I never thought I'd do:

Well, two things I didn't expect, really. Yes, that's who you think it is in the pictures. No, we're not back together. We did have a wonderful time, though.