touch

it is the 9^th month of this year and it is the 9^th of another month. 19 months today. i still mark time. i feel things deeply on the 8^th/9^th of each month and during the week of the full moon.

it has been 19 months since the last time i touched him, since he touched me. i feel every one of the days, every minute that has passed since i was lying in his arms in bed with my hand on his chest over his heart. it was so sudden. i still cannot get over how sudden it was. i could not believe it when it was happening and when i failed to save him, well; there is nothing more to say than this is the worst thing that has ever happened to me. to have him die under my hands while i tried to save him. to try and breathe for him. to call to him. to feel the kind of cold you cannot ever get warm from. he died while i was trying to save him. i lost him.

i love him. it has not lessened with the passing of this time. i realize it has only been a year and seven months, but i am not doing any better. the only thing is that i am more awake to feel it. i am now able to feel how hollowed out i am from the anguish of his death. i miss him and i feel every day that passes as if it were an Exacto knife cutting my flesh. the blade slices through and at first you do not feel the pain. what you feel first is the cold that antagonizes the exposed tissue. then the burning pain hits. my grief can be like that for me.

we were very involved with each other when he was alive. i have never felt more alive than when i was with him. now that he has died, i feel like an empty form of the woman i could have been allowed to be, just waiting for the plaster to be poured inside, only the sculptor has died so she will remain unfinished. i am not the person i was when my Dragon lived. had you met me once bDd and then met me now, these 19 months later, you would be truly shocked. day and night.

if you have actually met me now, you know i am not as pretty as Bunny; the fuzzy stuffed one that is my stand-in. what life has done to me is etched on my face. the wretchedness i feel is apparent in my eyes. desperation can be heard in my voice. i am at the lowest point i have ever been in my entire life, both financially and in the way i feel about myself and if you had the Cliff's Notes of my life you would realize how low that is. before he died, when i was with my Dragon, i was something. when he looked at me, i felt like he had touched me. his smiles gave me the same thrill that i got when he would run his fingers over my face. every glance he gave me was akin to being touched by him.

he has magic hands. they are so rough that they are smooth, like fine sandpaper. his grip was always firm. when he held my hand, he never lost it even when our hands were sweaty. he held onto me as if he were afraid to ever let go. it was as if holding my hand was all the joy he needed from life. and when he held me in his arms, he held me tight. he loved me and he conveyed it through the power of his touch.

the mere brush of his lips to my cheek, my wrists, my palms, and onto my own lips could penetrate down to my soul. our eyes were always closed his lips touched my skin. i cannot put words to the feelings that raced through me. i felt wanted. i felt beautiful. for the first time, i felt like a woman and i could tell i was truly loved. he did not ask anything of me other than to be with me, and me with him. all we wanted in this world was to be together.

how do i live without him? how do i breathe? some nights, some days, it all feels too much. it is too hard to accept a world without him in it. i would rather be asleep, half dozing, and dream he and i are together by the ocean, in the mountains, hiking, planting a garden, lying tangled on the sofa reading together, or in bed. “to sleep perchance to dream.”

he is my first love. i know how sad that sounds, and unreal. but it is true. he is my first love. he is the first person to love me and it was such a powerful thing. it was tangible. you could hear the music of our love when we talked to each other. you could see the electricity between us. constant touching. fingers laced. quick kisses snatched in public places. silent communication exchanged in looks at each other. we were meant to be together. i wish we could have been allowed to start much earlier in our lives.

i will never be the same. my Dragon and i are like a Fisher-Price puzzle for preschoolers. there are four pieces to the puzzle. there are 3 pieces that form a triangle around a center piece. the daughter piece on the lower left touches the son piece that sits on the lower right. both of these pieces reach up to touch the wife/mother piece. the shape of a Dragon is in the center and that piece is now missing. and the wife/mother piece of this tragic little puzzle has had to swap places with the daughter piece for the simple reason that she has fallen to her knees in such grief that she cannot stand it sometimes.

there times when it is almost too much to bear. like now. tonight. all i want is to be touched by my Dragon again. i want to be enveloped in his big strong arms and feel his lips on my ear; his breath whispering to me that this has all been a bad dream. i want to hear his deep whiskey voice tell me that he is “not going anywhere, love. I will never leave my Bunny. Dragons live forever, remember?”

“hey diddle diddle the cat in the fiddle is a lie like all the rest. the astronauts killed the man in the moon and growing up took care of the rest.”

“Dragons may live forever but not so little boys.” they grow into men who have to die and leave their Bunny. do you see that? Dragon died. Bunny lives. can you hear that Sesame Street song play in your head? “one of these things is not like the other. one of these things just doesn’t belong.” Dragons are strong and eternal. Bunnies are weak and are supposed to only cry once, on the moment they are killed. i am crying all the time. okay, not every minute of every day, but every day i cry for him. if he could hear i wonder if it sounds like bunnies dying all over the place?

i have cut up a lot of his clothes for two quilts, the one on the wall that i need to fix and the one i just finished, plus the pillowcase i made for me. i cannot throw anything away. off and on i have worked on this late at night. i am piecing all the bits and pieces together, for a quilt? it is going to be another quilt. i plan on embroidering flowers on a whole bunch of the pieces to follow a poem i wrote to him a long time ago. this quilt will recite that poem in the language of flowers. this will convey a deeply personal message.

one day it will amount to something very special, like I never did, except that a Dragon once loved me.

i pray he does not see this hollowed out woman in the shadows that i have slid back into being, but i also pray that he is waiting for me. i pray he will come and get me when it is my turn to fly to the other side of the moon. i pray i will feel his warm, steady touch to guide me along. and finally, once again, and this time for all time, i will be allowed to be who i am. i will get to be wild and free. i will be safe. and most definitely, i will be loved.

she danced with the dogs and then she cried

it’s been 17 months. i can still hear his voice in my mind. i can still smell his scent. his eyes, his laugh, even his walk, his stride ~ it is all still so crystal clear in my mind. nothing has faded. no memory has started to fray. his body language for all of his moods is still right there for me to visualize. i only have to call it up. our daily routines call out to me to perform making a mockery of my life now.

i vividly remember how we would wake each morning. no matter how large the bed, we woke pressed against each other ~ entwined.

during the day we both had our individual pursuits but we were nearly always pursuing our pursuits in the same room.

nights still crush me. i used to love going to bed because i went to bed with him. now it is a task to perform, like laundry, or eating. i turn out the light and i can see his broad shoulders next to me. his arms are open waiting for me to curl against him, to be drawn into his embrace, to be warmed by his love and lulled by the sound of his lovely, lovely heart beating strong.

i know him so well. i know how he thinks, and if he could see me now i know what he would say to himself………

She’s just going through the motions of living. She looks so tired, so hollowed out inside. It’s been 17 months that we’ve been apart and she looks like it has been 17 years.

So this is the face of grief. This is what I would look like if it had been me who was left behind.

She’s exhausted with worry. The dark circles under her eyes only come and go with intensity, but they never go away. She needs sleep but her worries and stress keeps her from getting anything that closely resembles healthy sleep. When I was alive and she was worried I would take her in my arms and make love to her. I would soothe her. I would lull her into a deep sleep with the knowledge that I was there watching over her; with the promise that I would never leave her. She trusted me. Now she trusts no one. She believes she will be hurt, and she has, over and over again. She has no one she can call on to come over like women do. She has no friends. Only our son and daughter are there for her and she’s fighting against being a burden. So she doesn’t tell them how bad it is unless she is falling apart, when it’s almost too much for her to withstand, when it’s real work to ease her anguish.

She talks to me a lot. She talks to God all the time. I don’t know if these kinds of conversations are prayers. It's more like she thinks God is the only one who will listen, and care about what she says. I listen, too, but she doesn’t expect an answer from either one of us. Her voice just trails off.

She tries so hard. She works so hard. She sews and sketches. She thinks if she suddenly dies like I did that when they find her, there will be all this work around her and people will suddenly see she had some value. It breaks me to know that she has fallen back in to her old way of thinking. She told me once that I was the only one who saw that she had any value. She said the children love her because she is their mother and she protected them. But that I was the only one who thought there was a reason she was here. I know now she thinks her reason for being is over with. She thought her reason for being was to love me. And it played out that I had to leave her behind, and she is devastated.

When I died she sat utterly alone for 20 hours until our children could get there. No one scurried over to help her, to sit with her, or to feed her. There was no influx of casseroles or soft voices as background so she would know she wasn’t alone. She simply sat and stared out at the ocean. She watched the sun rise and climb the sky. She saw the shadows of late afternoon reach across the snow. And she saw night drag its blanket of stars and the full moon back to watch down on her while she waited for our children. She had only moved to walk the dogs. She had not fed herself nor even gone to lay down to ease her stiff spine. She was alone until our devastated children came, and she is alone still.

She is retreating into her shell again. I see it more and more every day. The children are worried about her and what they don’t know is she acts the most alive in their presence. They don’t see her there alone hour after day after week after month.

But she does try, just not overly so anymore. Every once in a while, blue moon or so, one or two from that group drop an email, or send up a flair. 'How is she doing?' 'Thinking of you.' And she is always so quick to respond to them, but then nothing. It’s like their obligation is done and if anything bad happens to her they can safely say, 'Well, when we checked, she was fine.' They go back to their busy lives with their friends and family while she sits alone sewing, day after night after day after night.

She's saving for a car so she can go to Church and maybe make friends there. I would love to see that happen for her. It's in the works. All she needs is the VA and more commissions.

She’s trying. Today she danced with the dogs. A song came on that she liked. Its melody was catchy and the lyrics were fun. She tried to create a moment of whimsy. She picked up Scootie and danced with him. She cuddled him and twirled around. Then she set him down on the sofa and picked up Carmen. Crazy Carmen put her paws on my wife’s shoulders and licked her ear. She laughed. I heard her laugh for the first time in a long, long while. She sang and spun around and her eyes settled on the folded flag in its case on the mantle. Her mind flashed back to a time when we danced.

I used to love to dance with her. When I met her, she hadn't danced since high school. I’d sing and pull her in my arms and we’d dance ~ in the kitchen, in the living room, the bedroom, and always on the beach. I even caused a scene by dancing with her at the end of Bearskin Neck on our anniversary in front of a whole bunch of tourists. She wasn’t expecting the dip and she squealed. People clapped and smiled. We love each other so much. It was our last anniversary together.

Our second anniversary apart is coming up and I know that’s what she was thinking of. She was dancing with the dogs and then she cried. She had to sit down. Missing me caused her such pain that even after 17 months of enduring a life without me, she isn’t there yet. And I know I wouldn’t be either.

She’s still breathing for me and for our children. She’s sewing to try and leave a legacy, something of herself behind when she goes, or comes to me, depending upon how you choose to look at it.

My wife looks broken in half, but it takes a strong person to continue to live with a broken life and a missing heart. She wrote about it once and it is very true. I have her heart. She did, indeed, give it to me. And she was right; I do need it because I'm not as strong as she is. I cannot live without her. She is so utterly alone, and with the knowledge that there is no one out there who will come sit with her. But she is so strong. She has no options to live any differently. I am so proud of her. She is making such beautiful things to leave behind her. Her daughter and son are also very proud of her and a little in awe. They are of an age now where they can appreciate her art.

I miss her. I love her. I worry about her. But she is my wife, and I know she uses her powers of memory and her deep love of me to bring forth images of our life together. She’ll survive.

~

that’s what he would say, or something very close. he has said it to me before in one way or another. as i have written, our life was financially very hard due to bills and putting the children through college. but our marriage is everything I had ever dreamed of.

it is my belief that i will never feel any intense joy again but i have felt the stirrings of happiness. i was happy when my son and daughter and i were all together for the July 4^th holiday. i am back to the monotony of every day life and almost robotic motions of getting through it. but i try at whimsy. at times.

i will go to Camp Widow and put my best foot forward. i am praying for commission work that can build up and carry me through. and then i’ll come back and settle in to work again.

i will always actively miss him. if that’s not “transitioning and empowering myself through the healing power of embracing my widowhood” then so be it. i will join the minority of those who cannot do anything more with grief than endure it and try to get by. i sew for others and that to me is a good thing. i do make pretty things. i will sit in my cave and create things. i will write because, like a burp, it is better out than in. who knows, maybe i will find some wisdom in all this solitude. it worked for the Oracle of Delphi. Jesus went out into the wilderness alone. Thoreau did okay as did Beston. being alone is not scary at all. with the exception of my intense love and life with my Dragon, i have been alone my whole life. for me, it is the awareness that i have been seen by possible friends, but then passed over. that has hurt deeply.

i hope God sees me. i hope He knows how hard it is and is proud of me making the Memory Quilts, or trying to. i hope St. Jude (you know, lost causes), makes a pass over Camp Widow and there will be interest that grows and grows, because it does not have to be quilts for the dead. babies are born every day and couples get married all the time. children grow up and go off to college and need a quilt made from things from home to help them through their homesickness. i can make quilts for anyone for any reason.

i will try for a moment of whimsy again someday. i will dance with my dogs again, but i know i may cry. missing my Dragon is an art form in and of itself. many artists suffer for their art. i can do no less.

lost soul

i feel like a lost soul these days. because of circumstances, i exist in a very limited way and space that makes me feel like a wraith in my own life. i wake. i work. i sleep. i do not go out. i am taken to the grocery store, for work supplies, and the used bookstore. then back. mondays allows me 3 – 4 hours out and away. clerks see me because they are the ones who finish the transaction i initiate by bringing what i would like to purchase to their counter.

i am lonely. would i like a woman friend, a peer to talk to about woman things? yes. it is hard here. i think the drawback of befriending me might be my lower financial situation, my lack of having a car which makes my company a burden, and my having come into already established lives that are flush with friends and extended families. i can only bring me to a friendship and so far i see that i am not enough.

my phone has rung twice since before Christmas that it was not my son or daughter. there are not many from anyone i have met here who check to see if i am okay and i have stopped calling. it feels too much like i am begging. it breaks my self-esteem. i did it for the first 11 months after i met a few widows but i was continually put off due to their busy lives. it lead to few of my calls being returned to none. like the song says, “I can’t make your heart feel something it won’t.”

i did get one “curiosity” call about my issues with the dentist. i said “hello” and the woman immediately advised me on what i should be doing, explaining that i was a fool to go back. she closed with, “See, you get phone calls. I just called.” the dial tone prevented even my chance to say “thank you,” and “goodbye.”

i do have a constant friend, that’s what i call him, my constant friend. he is my pen pal if one can be called such a thing when communicating solely on the computer. he is my husband’s Marine “brother.” i want him to know i am most grateful to him. one, he tells me stories about my Dragon which adds to the painting i had started in my head. two, he talks to me and has yet to find fault with me.

the stories. i seriously wish my husband’s friend had come for a visit. i would have plied them with alcohol and then taped them reminiscing about all their “adventures.” i would have been allowed such a legacy in that tape. two men whose lives were spent serving their country in places like Vietnam, Angola, Beirut, and Afghanistan, dancing on the tip of the iceberg. they have so many stories, both separately and together. some are wildly funny. some are just wild. listening when my Dragon told me things, i was always studying his body language to make sure he was okay during the telling. listening to my constant friend, i can continue my visions and empathy of what my Dragon and he went through. i can sense the fear they sometimes dealt with as well as the adrenalin rush. i can close my eyes in wonder at what these men were asked to do. most of all, i am continuing to learn what my Dragon and my constant friend live with.

i miss my Dragon. as each day passes, each week, i miss him more and more and yet, oddly, i am becoming more accustomed to feeling this way. it is not any easier. i am doing what has to be done to continue. I am adapting.

i am lonely for him. i miss the thrill i got when he smiled at me. i miss flirting with him. i miss his presence. i miss his words, his brooding, his nightmares, his laughter, and his breathing next to me in bed. i miss his warmth and his love. i miss his legs, arms, hands, mouth, and his eyes looking at me.

i wish he had not died. i sometimes want to go back to where we lived so much that it breaks me. i wonder if i could find peace back there. it was more a small village than a town. people knew us, they knew me and liked me. it was okay to be exactly the person i am. like my Dragon, they saw me, listened if i spoke, and liked what i made. i wonder if i had had the wherewithal to stay, if my grief would have been more poignant and less stressful as i settled in to wait to be with him rather than being here with this lonely gut-wrenching pain and not having anyone to talk about him with. the pull to go back to the cove is so strong inside me but is also one that, even with all the money in the world, would be impossible to fulfill. i cannot explain. the pain is so great that taking the time to explain would send me to bed. accept that it is beyond my reach. to quote another song, “you can spend your whole life working for something just to have it taken away.”

it was all taken away. it is for everyone who loses their spouse. i am not worse off than anyone else. i am simply trying to find a way to be heard. i am saying it was the same for me. here is the only place where i may try to express what i am feeling with any hope that someone will hear me.

when my Dragon died, i did not ask for any of my love to come back to me. i do not want it back. it belongs to him. i gave it all to him a long time ago. but i also lost my place in this life. i lost people seeing me, realizing i hurt as well. i lost our location. i lost our cove, our small slice of the ocean, our island, and all our dreams.

i lost the love of my life, the one i am meant to be with. it was sudden and he went quick. i did not get any last words. i wish i had. just to hear his voice again. once more.

sometimes, when i first wake up, or in the early afternoon with there are still hours and hours of living still yet to face in the day; i can get tricked into believing he is not really gone from me for the rest of my life. for a second i sometimes think that he should be back from his errand. but then i look out the window, not at the ocean, but at asphalt, and i remember.

Easter ~ John 3:16

i have been through an Easter without Dragon; i just do not remember it. my memory has always been creepy. i remember everything. everything. i remember being 3 years old and pissing my father off by crying. he wanted me to grow up. i remember what i was wearing. i remember the sun on my legs and arms. i remember his angry face. he did not want to deal with a crying child, and a little girl? he had wanted a son.

i remember everything. all through my years.

but i do not have much of a memory of day-to-day life from my Dragon's funeral on until about Thanksgiving. i don't even remember being at my daughter's wedding. i know i worked my tushy off. i know i made everything. i remember snatches of being with her and selecting fabrics and colors of embroidery floss. but they are more dreamlike memories. nothing clear or lasting.

i know last Easter my son got to come up for the short weekend. i don't remember what i cooked. my daughter tells me i had a dazed or distant look in my eyes for months. they worried about me. but i do remember Thanksgiving. i remember everything up through Christmas, and on until now. i guess my mind was protecting me as best as it could.

and now it's another Easter. without my Dragon. another.
old photos. you've seen them. they are generic for so many emotions. the one above is what i wish i were doing right now. the one below is my reality.
but it is Easter and i had gone to be early. i had finished Suddenwidow's quilt sort of early but i was very tired. i went to bed to read and try to sleep. {if you're reading, i'll email you the tracking number tomorrow night. so Dan, Tuesday the Michael quilt will be in full swing, my focus totally on it. and Supa, i have my sketches set for your daughter's jeans. i am going out tomorrow with my daughter for some floss i'll need. sparkly floss. i think she's going to like them. =0) }

since i went to bed earlier than i usually do, my dogs wanted to go out fairly early this morning. dawn was still a suggestion. birds were still silent. i looked up and saw the waning moon to the west and one single star. Shakespeare wrote in Romeo and Juliet, "o, swear not by the moon, by the inconstant moon....." he was pointing out the moon's constantly changing appearance and path across the sky were an unreliable vision to swear by. but it is not the moon that changes, it is the sun and the earth that make the moon seem inconstant. it is there, waiting, patient. like i must believe my Dragon is, or i will hit the ground, hit the wall, and never recover.

it is Easter and being outside so early, seeing the constant vigil the moon keeps over us, over me, and seeing that one single shining star brought this to my mind. shame. shame to have my fears. shame to doubt. shame at myself when others have such assurances.

"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

it is Easter morning, Dragon, my love. and you are constantly in my thoughts. as constant as the moon.

human nature

i had a good day with my daughter yesterday. we only had a couple of errands to run and then we came back to my apartment. i showed her all that i am working on. i showed her sketches of plans for future projects. she gave me jeans to repair. she gets embroidery and patches done for free because she's my BabyLove.

and we talked.

my background on my computer is ever-changing photos of my Dragon. our Dragon. she was watching them change and she'd ask where we were when i took this one, and that one. she knows the stories but she knows i need to talk about him. i love to talk about him. and that's human nature.

it is human nature to miss someone so deeply that your life is forever changed if they go.

i ventured to tell her some truths about me. she told me she could handle it. she's an adult now, 26. God, i remember 26. i gave birth to her on my 26th birthday. but growing up as she did watching me divert, dissuade, and deflect her father's --- attitude --- gave her a maturity some more sheltered and nurtured children do not have. so she wanted to hear.
i told her his dying was terrible. terrible to see and terrible as i face living without him as i grieve the loss of the one person who loved me unconditionally. i told her i will always be this way though i will improve as time passes. i will smile more and laugh more. she knows i am better than i was at this time even 6 months ago, but she also is aware i am different. and i won't be able to go back to the person i was when i was safe in his loving arms.

i told her dreams die hard and that we had found a house we loved. the backyard, of which is in the photo above, backed onto the harbor and we could see the island from almost every window of the house that faced south and east. i told her that i will always love that old stone fort and wish we could have lived there. i told her i would not have moved here if he and i had lived there. i told her i would have stayed and lived alone always surrounded by him, my memories, the ocean, and the storms that rolled in.

i told her there can never be another. i know that they say never say never but my Dragon was such a man that i do not believe anyone can move into my view. i won't see them. i can't. my Dragon was an adventurer at heart. he was a closet intellect and as voracious a reader as me. he loved being outside as much as i did (do) and he showed me that i could climb out to a world i would have previously been afraid to. he gave me strength and hope and loved away my scars until i did not see them anymore. now that he is gone, i see them again. and i feel the loss of his loving gaze very much.

i told her he made me laugh. and i made him laugh. he thought i was funny, and sweet. he liked that i got "drifty" - his word for my absorption at the beauty of the world around us. he said he loved being my "camera bitch" and taking care of me, making sure i drank enough water, didn't walk off the edge of a cliff, or fall into the ocean. he got use to my adoration of him. i told him every day how much i loved him, how handsome i thought he was, and he didn't mind that i told him multiple times a day. i hero worshipped him and he was humbled by it, but he needed my loving attention as much as i needed his. we truly were meant to be a couple. "if two were one then surely we." from the poem. we were one; finishing each others sentences, starting the same sentence at exactly at the same time and always laughing, marveling that our minds were so alike. it sounds stupid and untrue but i don't care. no one was there with us to hear it. but i know it's true and i feel the loss of that kind of unity very much. i will never be the same.

i told my daughter that i miss him as much today as i did the moment he died. i told her i believe i will miss him as much 10 years from now as i do today. that will not change. we married for love. i am not a young woman anymore, middle aged. he was my second husband. and i will say it again. i married him because i love him so deeply that being without him was unimaginable. and it still is. but the reality is i have to face each minute without him, each one knowing i won't see him again in this lifetime. and i can only pray and live my quiet kind of life trying to earn the privilege of being allowed to be with him again.

my daughter is fully aware of my self-esteem issues and how our Dragon was healing me. but since his death, and my having to deal with my ex without Dragon's protection, i have suffered a loss of my hold on where i was. i feel a little guilty that i have not drawn on my knowledge of my Dragon's love to fix this but i try to be kind and remind myself that i am just coming out of the first year of shock facing the fact that he is really gone. this year i am setting myself on the task of not letting him destroy what my Dragon was reviving in me. what is said will hit me. i cannot prevent that, but i will try not to let it tear me down. i know now that i can be loved. my Dragon loved (he loves) me. i just also need to work on the concept that God loves me as well.

human nature is what it is. this is my nature. it is in my nature to always love my Dragon. William Tammeus wrote: "You don't really understand human nature unless you know why a child on a merry-go-round will wave at this parents every time around - and why his parents will always wave back." who knows why one person will choose to live alone and grieve for someone for the rest of their life, and wait until they can be together again after this life is finished?

don't answer that. only i know the answer. and my answer will only pertain to me.

ah, Dragon, my love. i miss you.

the Dragon on the Pedestal

i find i am in a position of needing, no, wanting to defend my Dragon on the pedestal.the above photo is my symbolic one for him on a pedestal. he is pewter here, and his pedestal is an old wooden spool of thread. it is merely a visual.

anyone who writes their own blog knows they will get comments and emails. so many are supportive that they seem to create a slender thread, much like the one that developed between the characters in the film of the same name. for someone like me who does not own a car and has no real contact with the outside world, this virtual contact is a slender thread of sorts that connects me to a world that i sometimes feel has largely forgotten i still live. if someone leaves a comment, or email, then someone knows i am out here, still breathing, still adjusting to a life without my Dragon.

i got an email from a woman who, under the guise of an eager expert, insisted that she knew my life and thoughts better than i. she felt my marriage to my Dragon, and even the Dragon himself, wasn’t as i remembered him. she wanted to tell me that in my grief i was not seeing him clearly. “He was not perfect,” she said, and neither was my marriage so i needed to, let me paste it in here, “tell it like it is, why don’t you?”

i think because i have related that my life is one where i have been beaten down, and now appear weak due to writing of my deep and lasting grief for a man the likes of which i will never find again, there are a few people who believe i am spineless. i am not. i am tired of life. i am exhausted from grief. i am not, however, deluded or insane. for all the creativity I am capable of, for all the dreams and fantasies i have shimmering in my mind, i am an intelligent, introspective, and pragmatic person. my personality leans towards a calm, quiet demeanor. but i know my own mind. like sees like and i think my Dragon saw the smaller, quieter dragon in me. i can become terse.

late last spring, this woman’s email would have made me cry because i was in shock over my Dragon ‘s sudden, tragic death. last fall, i would have recoiled in horror due to the seeming immense cruelty and perverse ego that thinks it knows someone it does not. between Christmas and Valentine’s Day, i would have been wounded as i was reeling from the many firsts that hit through that 2-month period. now, when i opened the email and read her words of infinite wisdom from the planet of It Has Never Happened to Me but I Know Some People and I Know How I Would Handle It, i shook my head at her naïveté. she feels she has magic vision and knows what went on behind closed doors.

allow me this time to pull up my keyboard and open that door.

the quick and ugly is that up until the moment i met my Dragon when i was 44, i was exhausted from being on guard. i had learned that the best way to go around was to sneak around, and the best way to get along was to adopt the bobble head strategy of “Yes, you are right and i am wrong. i’m sorry, so sorry. Please forgive me.” let me assure you it was merely a strategy to survive. i did lose a lot of myself. chipping away at anything means pieces are lost; sometimes a lot of pieces. but you have to remember that i got away. i got away from my mother and i got away from my first marriage. it took time but i left both of them with some a shred of dignity and my hands still pushing up on the heels of their boots. no one touched my mind. no one affected what i believed to be true nor changed the person i was when the Dragon saw me deep inside me. i was still very capable of fighting for the survival of my children and myself.

i still can. i can also speak to what is my own personal truth. so to the woman who believes she knows it all, let me address your concerns. this time i am not typing from my knees in grief. this post comes from standing beside my Dragon that i keep on the pedestal. i am protecting what was and what is. he will stay there because i, and only i, know what went on behind closed doors. i have been behind quite a few in my life and trust me, no one knows better than the person behind the door.

i never said my Dragon or my marriage was perfect. no, i have not gone back over each and every post. i do not have to. i know what i wrote. i have an eidetic memory plus my retention for the written word, especially my own, is excellent. i am grieving. i have not suffered brain damage.

what i said was my Dragon wasn’t perfect but he was perfect for me. our life was hard but our marriage was fantastic. i agree that no one is perfect but i believe there are degrees of acceptance and tolerance of another’s eccentricities that can turn them into mere quirks that quickly make them come to be cherished. this kind of acceptance can be seen as a necessary part of love so it can grow with the people who are involved, and can withstand the pressures and tragedies of everyday life. understanding a man or a woman is, i believe, required to make a relationship not only last, but be all encompassing, spiritually, emotionally, as well as physically.

my imperfect Dragon is on the pedestal. that seemed to put you in a dither. i had written that i had put him on a pedestal during our marriage, while he still lived, and i wrote that he is there now. i want to express clearly that, to me, and only me, he has the right to be on my pedestal.

within my Dragon, no one thing stood out as a glaring character flaw i had a difficult time accepting. i am one person who knows about character flaws. i was whipped, struck, and locked in a small room all before i got to third grade. i was cornered, choked, hit, pinched, grabbed, shaken, and other manner of things all before i met my Dragon. i know a character flaw when i see one.

but for the sake of argument let me try to relate some things i had to adapt to for the honor of being the Dragon’s wife.

his voice was loud. it would reverberate around any room. it could be heard over the roar of an angry ocean. i had to adapt to that voice. i have never liked loud voices. they can give me flashbacks to times when i was physically helpless and someone was in my face. when my Dragon was angry his voice was a very powerful instrument. if he was upset with me, though, he deliberately kept it soft. he knew what i had endured. i had told him before we married. he and i both thought it only fair to open our baggage along the way as our love for each other grew. that is another reason for, or defining evidence of why we love each other so very much. we were adults. we had both experienced a lot. we knew what we wanted for ourselves and for each other. if he needed to explain his side of something, he kept his voice softer. he related his being upset without sounding loud and intimidating. he didn’t want to add to that particular script in my head.

he was fearless while i was more timid. he would walk out on rocks that i had no business trying even with my graceless crawl. but he would look back at me with his adventurer’s smile and offer his hand. i would be afraid of falling but i wanted to go with him. i learned to trust him and reach out to put my hand in his. i am glad i conquered my fear for i got to see and do things i would have missed. and so would he because he would not have left me there.

he ate things i thought were gross. he had been all over the world and eaten bugs and slimy things that are considered delicacies, but to me seemed to need a shot of Raid. i never learned to eat that stuff. i just watched.

he wasn’t tall, dark, and handsome. he was my height, powerfully built, and staggeringly handsome. it’s a personal preference. no one needs to agree with me. i didn’t base my continued dating or marrying him on his looks. i went with my instinct. i went with what he said. i brought my children into our growing relationship based on knowing his character. i asked questions and i watched his answers as much as i listened to them. i love the physical man but i also love the man he is/was inside.

he...i am struggling with anything so horrendous that it was tedious and frustrating to have to live with him, to make me think, 'he is soo imperfect.'

he is/was a good man. he was sweet and kind to me. he knew my whole story and kissed all the hurts away. he was helping me build myself back up stone by stone. in turn, he gave me his dreams and his thoughts. we shared everything. we talked books and movies, foreign policy and religion, crime and punishment, God, Mohammad, and Buddha.

he never got angry at me, only angry at what had been done to me and the lasting effects. i would scare him if i stayed at the beach alone too long. he was afraid that with my new sense of security and faith in his abilities, i would get into trouble. then i would see The Face. intent upon finding me. am i all right? am i being crazy trying to lug some honking big piece of driftwood up to the house by myself? i had quite a large commission for my driftwood sculptures and i would go hunting after storms. he knew i got lost in my work plus i always got dreamy while at the beach. i love The Face. that's it up there at the top, the main blog photo right now, intent upon finding me. such intensity. when he saw me, he’d smile, and the sun would come out no matter how dark the day.

he had flashbacks but that’s not a character flaw. the dark recesses of his mind replayed things from his life as a Marine and i would wake to help him quiet down. i would love him back to me. i was grateful he wasn’t alone, that i was with him to be able to do this for him.

he was stinky when he was sweaty but his neck always smelled and tasted good even when he was stinky. i don’t mind dirt and sweat. i was usually dirty and sweaty right along with him.

i love his mustache and beard and he kept them year round just for me. he did like to keep his hair short and i learned to cut it for him. i like him with longer hair but we compromised every June. facial hair stayed. hair was buzzed boot camp short.

he let me play with him, touch him, caress his mustache and beard. i got to touch his muscles and his scars. some were rigged. some were smooth. he didn’t tell me how he got them all. i always wanted to know but some were too difficult for him to talk about. now that he has died i wish with all my heart that i got to enough of his stories, to enough of anguish to have brought him peace.

he could be a silent man but then i knew how to be silent with him. he was in awe of the majesty of where we lived as much as i was. he knew to look down and up whenever we were out walking. he carried the sack of shells and stones we always picked up.

it seems i cannot find a great many negative things to say. c’est la vie to the woman who seems to know it all.

he took over the enormous debt my ex left me with. he complained about my being screwed but he never called me stupid or reckless for not fighting for my financial rights. he knew i was fearful about the threats, or promises as they were referred to, for my children. he also didn’t go vigilante and make my ex disappear off the face of the earth. the paperwork would have been monumental.

my Dragon is/was my best friend. he was my confident. he knew more about me than my doctor. he was my mirror when “you stupid, fat bitch” echoed out of the past into the forefront of my mind. he had wonderful, ridiculous terms of endearment for me but the one he called me by most was, “love.”

his singing voice was deep and haunting but only when he sang our song to me. he loved to sing in this terrible voice he affected just to make me laugh.

he is the love of my life after a life of not ever being loved. i never felt safer or more valued. through introspection, i know i had to have more irritating habits and annoying quirks than he ever did. when he finally found me i was so tied up in knots that i was a very closed off and tense woman living in the shadows. he was taking the time and gentle care to untie the knots and set me free.

he was setting me free to fly with him wherever life was going to take us. that was one of his wonderful gifts to me, our gift to each other. being there for each other when our memories tried to wound us was another defining aspect of our marriage. we knew what the other had been through. we cared deeply about each other's spirit, each other's soul. we love each other.

so i put him on a pedestal. not many of us get to have someone in our lives for whom a pedestal is warranted. a Dragon found me. he is/was the most awesome sight to see. he had the powers of healing abandoned souls. he healed my soul. he gave my children someone to look up to and adore. so i put him on a pedestal. it is my pedestal. i built it for him. it will stand as long as i am alive. he deserves something much more grand, but a pedestal is all i own.

and after i am gone, he will still stand very tall over a world and a society who will never know all he did for it. but as long as i am here, i will write about a Dragon who saved a woman from the shadows. that i can talk about.