Soul Widows Spiritual Retreat ~ Four ~ Friday ~ The Women

i made it through last night. my candle was lit. i was embroidering. my dogs were content beside me. and i fell through the floor at 9:30 PM. i could not keep my eyes open. i took the hoodlums out for the last time and while brushing my teeth i started to cry. see, there is this awful thing called a mirror in the bathroom and i do not look like the woman in the pictures i have of him and me together. i look drawn, exhausted, hollowed out. but today is my daughter's day off and i am going to be with her for a couple of hours today. i am going by Build-A-Bear to stop in and say, "hi, i am back from my weekend retreat." depending on what they say i will wing it from there but i hope seeing my interest will be a good thing.

i am up and i wanted to continue about the weekend. during the breaks in our first session together i saw that we still hung out in the alcove. we ran and got more water, another iced tea, and we ran to the Ladies's Room, but we all hurried back. i think we all recognized the bond forming.

they say that people who go through harrowing times, who live through a trauma, like soldiers and Marines during combat ~ the Band of Brothers ~ are closer than if they had spent years together to form deep friendships. i wonder if that applies to some widows? we were not there for the death of each other's husbands and yet, of all the widows i have met, these women seemed to ~ no, they did feel empathy, compassion, and bore the cross of truly understanding what each other had gone through. sighs. some intakes of breath when a certain story came to light. the "oh" and the small movements of the hands to reach out, the instant furrowing of the eyebrows in fellowship mourning were not coached. they were not platitudes. nothing was done by rote. there was a trueness to it and a realness to it that came from the heart.

i took this photograph above of Elizabeth, the founder and organizer of Soul Widows, because she was still standing in the alcove speaking softly to one of us. the metal sculpture on the wall above her are leaves, but they seemed to me, at this moment, to represent angel wings. for Elizabeth? symbolic of a higher presence with us? i leave it to whomever reads to draw from their own ideas. but it is a photograph that represents the tangible and mystical things that happened this past weekend.

The Women ~ i would like for you to meet them. i can only hope my meager words honor them.

these are my mental images and for all, but for Elizabeth, i will keep their names a mystery; or you could go to a retreat to meet them. the order is from my memory of where we sat in the circle by the fire. when i look at someone i think of images. when i look at images i think of verse, poems, and stories. i have a brain that cross-references. i see threads. it is a quirk i nourish because i believe that my imagination and creativity have saved me else when i was knocked down, i may have stayed down.

Elizabeth ~ as i said, founder and organizer of Soul Widows. she has a powerful heart and a strong and inviolate love for her husband. she has a maelstrom of emotion inside her to nurture and protect her organization. she has reached out for it, to gain acknowledgment for her ideas of helping widows and gotten rejected by other organizations so she is carving her own path. she is as fragile as she is strong. she is a woman and a mother and apologizes to no one for her actions. from one who was taught to apologize for wetting her diaper, i am so very impressed and in awe. the image for me about her is a beating heart emerging from the gilded cage of her pain and yet, i feel she will always sit close to that cage for it is also her weapon against a world that sometimes does not understand.

the Clown of God ~ she is a hysterical woman whose rants are the stuff of stand up. she is religious and deep and thinks in terms of eternity. she is adores her husband and speaks to the qualities she fell in love. that is her shield and also her offering to the world. her lovely husband lived. he was here on this planet and he was hers. i could say so much more but i am not funny. she is laughter with tears. Kahlil Gibran would have loved to have met her.

the goddess Diana ~ this woman is newly widowed, less than 6 months. she came across North America to be with us and for us to be with her. she is young and in such pain, but she is fierce. she is a wall of water coming at you but also she is so very vulnerable. she shared all this with us in words and in what she did not, could not, say. i believe that one day the world will know "Diana" was here, if a large part of it does not already.

the Ceramic Storyteller ~ i know. where did i come up with that one. i used to hand-build them back 100 years ago when i was young and had a kiln. this woman is the mother of 3 beautiful boys and she is heartbroken. shattered. trembling hands. fragile eyes. i see a woman of the Earth inside her. she protects her young boys by keeping them close. like the Pueblo story of the Storyteller, she holds them in her lap and comforts them. she gives them stories of their dad. she is carrying their young grief on her shoulders. with us, she allowed her pain to be laid open. she allowed herself to be comforted and to find a brief rest before going back to the trenches of combining motherhood with widowhood. she is and will always be a powerful force to be reckoned with.

the Disciple of Grace ~ i met this woman shortly after i arrived where i am now. through it all she periodically kept checking in on me. she told me she had been worried about me. and i was touched. few worry about me. it was comforting to know that, should i disappear, i would be missed. she has witnessed to her faith when she was angry with God, but she is sure enough of His love to know it is okay to be mad at your "Dad." her eyes are clear. she does not own that hallway of doors that can open and close when someone wants to manipulate you. her heart is on her sleeve and her hand is out to you. i have not met anyone in a long time who has such grace.

the Fiery Fairy ~ this woman is our grief counselor. she is small in stature but that is all. her spirit is an all consuming light that she carries and shines on all. her eyes are a most unusual and beautiful color and are not afraid to show the balance of anguish and joy that she has worked hard for. i think if you could see her soul it would be a shimmering iridescent orb ~ no beginning, no end, floating gently on a breeze to where it needs to go, a brilliant light of fluid color. she is powerful and righteous and fairy-like with her feathers and jewelry and hairstyle. she has been called angel but i know angels cannot really interfere and this woman, she cares so she interferes. i wish for someone like her in everyone's life.

who is left? me. who am i really? am i Dragon's Beach Bunny? am i womanNshadows? am i my own name? i do not know because so few accepted any part of me much less the whole of me. i designed and built a stained glass window once. i used glass that was left over from other windows. i hate to throw anything out unless there is absolutely no use for it. i am that window.

i am the Lost Stained Glass Window. it is a metaphor for what my life has been. i was born unworthy so, as a child, i had to create myself, not from the example of my mother but from the women of literature i respected and wanted to emulate. i made myself from glass because i was always getting my heart broken. i made myself from glass as a meter for me to find friendship and love. you can see right through me. either you see me and believe i make the world a little more beautiful with what i create or you simply see through me and past me and i make no impression at all. and that is all right. i had my time with my Dragon. he found me. he saw me. what he saw he loved. he loved me for exactly me, scars, private horrors, all of it. now that he has died, i am lost. i am shattered like glass that falls can shatter. all the colors that are me are lying on the ground and the shadow that i am is stooped there in the gutter trying to find all the pieces.

what happened to the real window i made? my ex-husband took it from me. that is why i called it Lost. his taking that window hurt me badly. i had never made such a window before. over 300 pieces of colored transparent glass in a design i will never envision again. he took it before i had time to take a photo of it because it never occurred to me he would do that to me. he could not have hurt me worse if he had killed me.

there we are. the tribe, and then the session was over for the day. i rose and turned around facing out from the alcove. i looked up and saw the heart quilt. probably over 300 pieces of fabric went into this quilt the owner of the inn, Marilyn, had made. she could have hung it anywhere. she hung it there. it was if this giant heart of color had our backs. it was looking down on us from the highest point of the house and there is symbolism even in that. i did the only thing i could do. i took this photograph.

we closed with our candles lit for our husbands. count the heads. 7. 5 women, 1 Dragon's Beach Bunny, and our Fiery Fairy. we are a tribe of widows now who feel each other's pain. the commune we created that lives in our hearts still thrives but that is our private space that we all hope grows as those who seek find us.
after a wild, crazy supper out at a Mexican restaurant that will never be the same after us, we got back to the inn and had our sitting-on-the-bed-talking-until-late girl time. as each one of us dropped off and away to go to our rooms to sleep, we carried with us the awareness that our sister was next door, or just down the hall.
and so Bunny settled in for the night.

knives, memories, and the futility of wishes

i cleaned out his "go bag" and found his favorite pocketknife.

one Veteran's Day early in our marriage, a couple of his Marine friends came to dinner and they sat and talked. one had gone on a mission with him. the other just knew my Dragon by reputation. my Dragon was a knife man. it is all tatted together like a silky thin spider's web of how he earned his nickname, Dragon. Marines are taught "one mind, one weapon." my Dragon was very good at hand-to-hand but he favored knives. as a tunnel rat it was his preferred weapon, even above a pistol which made noise. stealth was best in the tunnels. he had an affinity for knives.

when we would go out, if my Dragon would see a pocketknife, and if he liked it, he bought it. knives had saved his life many, many times. during the last mission less than 2 years before he died, it was a knife that got him home. maybe a story for another time. maybe never since it really isn't important to anyone but me.

he had a favorite pocketknife that he had thought was lost. we looked and looked but could not find it. i could feel the loss of that knife coming off him in waves. it is small, easily hidden, easy to palm. the blade tip is broken. part of that other maybe story. and we could not find it. i kept looking and looking for him without telling him, but we never found it.

and then he died.

i found it. i opened his "go bag" and there it was. his "go bag" was not something i had been able to touch except for moving it around the apartment out of my way. move it there out of my way. but never to open. too much of him inside. but then i worried that there were weapons inside and i do not know the concealed weapons laws for this state. so i took a belt of rum and coke for false courage and unzipped the bag.

there were no weapons but i found his favorite pocketknife. it was not in the pocket it was supposed to be in, but down in the bottom tucked under a seam that reinforced the bottom. when i found it i actually called out his name. i held it up and called to him. for a nanosecond i waited for him to come into a bedroom he had never been in from a living room he had never been in, in an apartment he had never seen. i knew where i was. i know every minute of everyday that he will never see this place. he will never come find me. he is not coming home from this mission. but i sat there waiting for him to come into the room to see his knife.

i know widows have been known to do that, but in all these months, i have never, ever called out to him to come to me believing that he would show up. this was the first time.

this is pretty Beach Bunny sitting with some of her Dragon's pocketknives. she has such a sweet face, doesn't she? it's why i use her instead of the real me.

but actually this is closer to the truth. this is raw looking Sock Beach Bunny. she is hurting inside and can only hug herself while she cries a little bit. just a little. tiny tears eeking down the sides of her face.

i miss him. a lot. there are days where i feel so blessed to have had him in my arms. i feel so honored to have been able to be in his life, hear his stories, comfort him in the dead of night when nightmares slammed into his psyche. but then there are days when i feel pulled far under the surface. i pop up but i hear that bell in the fog and i do not know if i am swimming to shore or further out to sea.

i miss walking with him. to me, my opinion, he is a beautiful man. i loved watching him walk. just an adorable man. i loved our walks all over Cape Ann, and miss them very much. he would massage my foot and then wrap it before i slipped it into my hiking boots. then he would massage it when we got back. my stinky, sweaty foot. he always laughed and said, "i've smelled worse things."

this is the path from the house we always started from.

besides being my camera bitch, he was my professional scavenger and pack mule. we had it down to almost communicating without words. i would look at something, like a lobster buoy or a piece of driftwood and he would look at me and lift his eyebrows, nodding, "yeah, you want that?" then he was off, climbing all over everything to bring it to me. such a sweetie.
i miss him. he is gone and i do not know if i really will get to be with him again. i think i could do it if i knew that he was waiting for me. well, i have to do it. there is no choice. but i think i could breathe if i knew he would come get me. i wish with all my might that i could find permanent comfort in that thought. but i also know faith is up to me and that wishing for a sign is futile. i will never get that sign. i just have to believe and stay strong. i just need to find some strength somewhere. Amazon.com does not sell it. ebay, nada. i guess it really does only come from within. damnit.

Judy, if you are reading this, i cling to that story you told me of your grandmother, i think it was. i hold it close in the darkness. thank you for telling me that. it is a light that i keep my eye on in the storms that come as tears of loneliness and sorrow.

i am glad i found his knife. they are all part of my shrine to my Dragon on the mantle. i am glad there are not any guns i have to explain. i think i would have just called the Marine Corps recruiting office rather than the police. i think it would have been easier to explain a "go bag" to a Marine than a cop.

"come to me in my dreams and then by day i shall be well again, for the night will more than pay the hopeless longing of the day."

full moon & moon bunny ~ photos ~ small steps

it is another full moon. counting the full moon photograph i took the night he died, when i had the luxury of him standing right behind me, i have 20 full moons in frames on my wall. last night/tonight makes 21. he has been gone from me for 19 months and two weeks tonight.

the moon makes me pensive. it is my time for, almost like communion. i take photos but i also just stand and stare at the moon. it is so beautiful. it is so necessary to life here, tides and weather and stuff. i fell in love with the moon when i was a teenager. i have pictures of the moon dating back that far. but the only ones that matter are these most recent 20, make taht 21.

there is a young mother with two small children who watch me take photographs of the moon. they have also seen me talking to the rabbits that live in my area and they also have seen me with Beach Bunny, taking her photo outside. their mother came outside with them tonight to see Jupiter and the full moon. the children looked through my camera lens and saw the moon closer than their little eyes can see the detail. they called me Luna Bunny. Moon Bunny. their mother said that when i am outside, even when i walk the dogs in the evenings, they can see bunnies all over the grass. they see bunnies hop out from the trees. i don't know if that is a sign of anything other than i do not scare bunnies.

i sold some of my photographs. i am happy about that for two reasons. one, i need the money. two, my Dragon always, always loved my pictures. i would take pictures and he would stand and wonder what i was looking at. when we got home he would hurry me along to upload from the camera to the computer. then we'd sit and look at what i shot. he always liked my photographs. he always watched my back to make sure i did not step in it, or on it, or in front of its path....whatever trouble i could possible get into when i would go into my spaced out world of looking through the camera lens, he was there. he was there on 8 February 2009 with his hand on my shoulder steadying me in a brisk, icy wind off the ocean at 8 PM, just 4 hours and 3 minutes before he died. not that i'm still counting or anything.

but he would be proud that i am selling some photos. if i could hear him, he would probably be saying, "i knew it all along, love."
in going through my CD's of burned photos, 1000's and 1000's of pictures, i am finding ones where i turned and took his photo. more photos of my Dragon!! this is not work people! this is a treasure hunt! "go through all these CD's to find a dragon." cemeteries {we are big taphophiles}, old houses, hiking out to remote places, gardens, in town, i took pictures of everything. and i always took pictures of him. so it has been nice finding more pictures of him.

the one above was taken in a place called Blood Cemetery ~ aka Pine Hill Cemetery. it was Halloween 2003 and he is carrying my tripod. he is my camera bitch. i miss my old life.

the small steps from the title is what i took a break from sewing to do today. i cleaned out my closet and my chest of drawers. i took out all the shirts and pants he is never going to wear again, and that i will never put on. i took out all his underwear, too. there are only two pairs of his socks left since i made sock animals from all the others. i put all his clothes in a plastic trash bag and set it aside. i have plans for another quilt. i cannot donate them, i just can't. i plan on making quilts. one, two. i don't know what i'll get from it all, but it is not in my closet anymore. that is sort of a step. i do not have a lot of clothes myself, but if i ever get my stuff out of storage in New England, i will have the room now. i still have two of his sweatshirts, one t-shirt that i sleep in, two of his Marine shirts and his PT shorts from when he taught hand-to-hand that will always stay with my clothes. they are just too cool to not keep.

now that i am looking this over, it does not look as impressive as i thought it would look. i took his clothes out of the closet and put them in a trash bag for me to make another quilt or two. whooptie do. maybe i should have typed "teeny tiny steps" in the title.

peace to all from Moon Bunny.

separation anxiety

hello, my Love, can you hear me? where you are? do you know i’m still down here, longing for you, missing you? or are you protected from the travails of this life? am i writing only to myself, to be heard by myself only, which means this is a pointless endeavor? but if in writing this, if it comforts me and gets it all off my mind, it is not time wasted. maybe it is time spent getting through this latest mood. writing is what i have to say things i cannot say outright to my children. and it is not like i can call up a friend and say, “i need to talk about this. i need you to come visit me, maybe have lunch.” i am not connected to anyone here. not like that.

so here i am, writing to you knowing that when i check back, there will be no answer.

i’m still here. i still miss you as much as the night you died and i wish i could talk to you face-to-face. i need you. i am in pain. i am not sure if i am supposed to be “better” by now or not. i am not even sure what “better” is supposed to feel like. i can honestly say i am further along than i was based on the fact that i no longer cry multiple times a day and there are days i do not cry at all, but i am pensive everyday. i am melancholy, which i guess can be looked at as the lighter side of sadness. that is a kind of improvement from where i was in those first months.

i am lonely for you. i pine for you. i miss you terribly. i do not need to fill my calendar with a plefora of people. i really only want you. i admit i am weak sometimes and would not mind having a friend i could call. i would like to talk about you and tell someone stories about you without fear of being interrupted or the awareness that, like in the grief group i went to for a while, that people are simply biding their time, half listening, until they or someone else jumps in to take over, and then i am forgotten. the kids tell me i do not stand up for myself anymore. our daughter is especially angry with some of the things that have happened to me and i know you would be mad as hell. but what i feel is that i could get mad and tell people how their actions and inaction has affected me, but they quite simply will not care. i was a only blip on their screen and that is okay with me. i really only want to be with you.

i wish you had not had to go. i really need you to go through this life with me. i am tired. i feel so weak sometimes that i am not sure if i can do this yet there is no other choice. the kids are grown so it is not like i have to wake up and say, “i am here for them. i have to get them through school, or through college.” we did that. the realization that life is going to be this quiet for the rest of my life is a terrible thought especially considering how far i am from the ocean. day in and day out i will be without your laughter, your voice, and your touching me. it is a vacuum. i am living in a vacuum. i have been condemned to sensory depravation, the loss of your physical presence.

the kids were both here for the July 4^th holiday – all weekend i had them both. it was so wonderful and yet all three of us missed you. we talked about you and looked at pictures. we tried to work on my scrapbook album thing but there were so many other things we wanted to do together and a very narrow window of time. i wish i could get my scrapbook finished. c’est la vie for me.

our son told me that he sees how different i am. his living in Florida means he does not see me like his sister does so he will notice this. he was a bit shocked and more than a little worried. he told me i am quieter than before. he said i am quiet like i am when i have to be around their father. careful quiet. i had to tell him that i would never be the same.

i told him that the greatest man i will ever know died. i told him that he influenced me and did more for me than all the people i have ever known put together. and now he is dead. i explained that maybe i am taking longer because i have grieved alone, without benefit of a friend to come sit with me, and without the benefit of being in a familiar place. from the moment he died nothing has been my choice or my decision. he died in February and i really did not wake up until late in November. and i was here.

august is coming and i am already blind again with grief. your birthday, the one and a half year anniversary of your death all occur during that Camp Widow thing i am going to. our wedding anniversary will happen the day after i get back. all this will hit when i am surrounded by people who are vested in so many other people and things. and the kids are right. i do not know how to speak for myself. i will be in the middle of a crowd and i will not tell them i am being crushed inside by this sorrow.

i am afraid to go. i know if you were here listening to me tell you this in person, you would come sit down and pull me in your lap. i miss that part of our relationship. we always had these wonderful, very tactile conversations. i always felt comforted, always felt valuable. now, our daughter hugs me. our son hugs me. it is not the same. i miss your eyes looking at me when i talked. i miss using so many words out loud. i have tried to talk to others but i can hear the clock ticking on the time i think they want to hear my voice. i think i am my own worst enemy.

i have aged so much. i have gained some weight from not being able to walk like we used to. to go from climbing on the rocks, from walking six to eight miles a day to walking the dogs within sight of my apartment door so i can run with them back inside when loose dogs attack is depressing. i miss you so much because you did not seem afraid of anything. you were not even afraid of the dark.

i was born a mouse. i learned to be a shadow during my childhood so i could try to go unnoticed as much as possible. i married and became the head Musketeer. i adapted myself to stealth and subterfuge so i could protect the kids. then i was allowed a moment of grace. i was allowed to be your wife, a real person, loved and valued. i got to taste a life lived in the light until that light was extinguished. now i want to live somewhere else because i am someone else. i would not mind being separate physically because i feel separate mentally.

you died. i hate euphemisms. you are not lost to me. you did not pass on. you died and i worked on you and tried to save you and i failed. i FAILED. i failed you. i could not bring you back. i sat beside you after you died and the world fell away.

and so i am different now. i am quieter. i look at myself and i see an old woman who does not belong anywhere because the only place she belonged was with you.

except maybe ……

i want to go home to the ocean. i am so tired of all this concrete. i get despondent seeing only a small swath of sky that peeks through two buildings. the only water nearby stinks because it is littered with trash from people who do not give a damn.

i want a small house with a small yard. i am not asking for luxury. well, i am because a little place by the ocean is a luxury. sorry. i would carve shutters for my house. i would die-cut out lobsters and starfish. each shutter would have a different design. i would fence the yard and call it Scotland Yard. the puppies would have room to play and i could have a garden again.

i would paint, and sew, take photographs, collect driftwood and shells and things for my sculptures. i would carve wood and build stained glass windows. and i would do what i am doing now. i would fantasize about you. i would draw on memories and go back for a while to living in the past when the present without you is too painful. and if anyone tells me that i am grieving all wrong, i can honestly say, as i do now, where were you when you knew i needed you? what do you care what happens to me?

then i would have a door that i could close. i would turn away from them and look out my windows at the eternity of the ocean. and i would dream of us.

i always dream of us.