how did i get here?

my husband, my beautiful Dragon, died suddenly at 12:03 AM on 9 February 2009. there was a cold, lovely full moon and 3 feet of snow on the ground. i "slept" for the following 10 months and "woke" to the physical and emotional pain and torments of deep grief. i "woke" to find i had moved the day of his funeral and that i am lost. i am looking for me while i figure out the abstract, unanswerable questions that follow behind any death. my art has evolved. his death changed that as well because i am forever changed and will forever bear the mark of losing the only man i can ever love.
there is alive and there is dead and there is a place in between. i am here wholly in my heart for my children, but i feel empty inside at this time. i miss him. i have not gotten very far in my grief journey. i make no apologies for this.
this is my place, my blog, where i write to tell the universe that i am still here.

Monday, July 13, 2009

I will cry forever until.... ~ poem for the Dragon

The long days stretch out before me,

Each world-weary hour is spent alone

Worry and fear, sorrow and longing

Have pulled up chairs at my table,

And linked hands in silent prayer.

Each step I take, each task I perform

Each shuddering breath that comes, each stitch I sew

Are involuntary and done so that I

Continue to endure this life that’s left,

This empty existence that mocks my previous one.

But I continue to get bogged down, slowed,

Forced to my knees in endless pain

Mourning for, grieving for, crying out to

The Dragon who unwillingly died,

For my love who lost his struggle to take another breath.

I live a half-life with a blank public expression

And a sorrowful private one, tears, always tears,

That never stop even when my face is dry.

My cries for my Dragon are loud in my anguished mind

And echo in my shattered heart.

Empty arms drop to my sides from the burden of grief,

From the awareness that there is no Dragon to embrace.

No scaly, scarred dragon with a voice of fire

moves close to my body, next to me, encircles me,

No kindred soul can I feel or sense. I am alone.

No more meeting of true minds and truer hearts

No more tangible love though our love did not die,

Nor ended with the death of the Dragon.

Our love was outside us as well as within

And it endures and has been transformed.

I will never be the same, see the same, or feel the same.

All that I loved, all that I held dear, lived inside of you.

All that is left is a woman who has withdrawn to shadows

Enacting a life that she has scraped together to last.

All that is inside her are the tears she will cry forever, until

Until the woman in shadows and the Dragon are reunited.

Then the stars in the night will twinkle brighter.

The moon will be full as it was the night he died

But this time, it will shine on the couple who loved through time

And found each other again past sorrow, through tears, and beyond death.

2 comments:

J-in-Wales said...

Such beautiful,heartfelt words. I can feel your pain in every line.
And I love your new picture at the top of the page. There is something so childlike about drawing a message in the sand to the person you love. We all do it, but it is such a special moment when someone does it just for us. One to be treasured in the heart for ever.
J xx

abandonedsouls said...

hi, J. thank you for speaking to me here. i have felt so alone lately. left you a message on your most recent entry, "Missing Him."

his writing in the sand for me that day, no one had ever done it. the gesture was so very much like him. though he was the big bad Marine, and in the special forces part of the Corps (Force Recon), he was romantic with me. wildflowers, shells, rocks, always things from Nature that he knew i loved so much. i love being outdoors and he'd find things and bring them to me.

and write in the sand above the high tide mark so it would stay longer, until the next amazing storm.

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