soul mates

i didn't cry today. not yet anyway. that's not progress. i was with my daughter and her future mother-in-law and we were out in public. wedding stuff. i did feel heaviness in my heart with each smile that i knew wasn't reflected in my eyes. it's getting closer to her wedding day. all the different human variables are moving into place. i will enjoy the day while i work to make sure everything follows my daughter's plans. i am the photographer so i will be moving about, being able to keep the camera in front of my face, hiding. i will be so busy that it will happen and i won't have time to face that he is not here. not until that night after it's over.

he is my soul mate. if i haven't said it or made it clear, let me say it now. he is my only mate. i do not see how, at this point in my life, where anyone can reclaim any part of me. i will be honest. i am 51. i am tired. i know the odds of finding a soul mate, a true partner that claims every part of you is rare. and now that i have him, i cannot believe i have to face the rest of my life without him. i never understood the full definition of a soul mate until i met him and i cannot believe i was allowed to have him come into my life. i've never been blessed with an honor that bold or profound. my children are gifts from God. my Dragon. i have no idea how or why i was allowed to be found by him.

and to see him die and work so hard to save him, to do CPR and call to him, to race to open the door for the EMT's and then be useless, not be allowed near him to whisper to him. gut-wrenching. did he ever open his eyes with awareness of this world and look for me? did he call for me and i wasn't allowed in there to respond to him? they took him into a room and i was left alone in another.

and then he was gone.

i've never been blessed with any honor as profound as having him in my life. the fact that i lost him reinforces the fact that i will never have an easy life. but i had him. for a little while, i had all i could ever want. we heard music only we two could hear. we had a short-hand way of communicating. side glances. secret smiles. no one knew what we heard, maybe only a faint echo played as we walked by, but i think people were aware that we were an inseparable pair. the music was ours and belonged only to us. now all i have are memories and dreams. it's not that i want it again. no one can take even a small place in my heart. it's that i once held all i could ever want and then had to watch it slip away. i want to be with him again. i miss him. the loneliness i feel cannot be fixed with someone else. it can only be erased by him.

to continue to use the ocean and water metaphors and analogies, i'm still moving through heavy, dark waters. the skies are sullen and it's almost dusk. i'm tired and feel like, for now, at least until the wedding is over, that i've put my oars down and i'm letting myself drift. i know that means i'm not following any real direction. i'm being taken whichever way the wind and current takes me. i'm lost in grief but i think it's alright to allow yourself to be lost.

one does not have to accomplish something on the "grief journey" every day. i think some of us don't have a destination. after a soul mate dies, i think a destination gets set aside for quite some time. it has for me. i just want to get through each lonely moment as it hits me, however hard or soft it hits me. it really is just living one day at a time. looking too far into a future without him is not something i can do, not something i believe i will ever do.

he is my soul mate. to be without him is entirely too painful and the only way to heal would be to be with him again. and right now, that is not available to me.

my daughter and me ~ missing my husband and our cove

our cove. i wish somehow i could have managed to still be there. but i'd be more or less at the end of the world out there.

today my daughter and her fiancee's mother and grandmother picked me up and we went to order the wedding cake. so much talk about everything. i stayed quiet and listened. her fiancee's grandmother wanted to pay for the cake. so nice of her. her contribution is most gratefully appreciated. but both women were telling my daughter what she needed to do, what she should want. they neither one were really listening to her.

i took one of the napkins the lady had given us to taste some choices and i started drawing while listening to what my daughter wanted. i drew the cake she was dreaming of. i silently nudged her the napkin and signed quickly under the table, "this is what i hear you saying. if so, get what you want. it's your wedding. yours."

she smiled and nodded, then took the napkin and placed it on the table and said, "this is what i want. it's understated. it will be less expensive but it's also perfect for me. this is what i want." and that's what was ordered. both of the other women were simply being overly helpful and my daughter needed to just step up a little bit.

after the bakery, my daughter and i were taken to Michael's to get other things for the wedding that i really have no idea what for. they bought nothing. i think today was just an excuse for shopping but it was 5 hours away from my sewing and quilting here. my daughter and i followed in the wake of her fiancee's mom and grandmother. we talked when we were spoken to, otherwise we signed to each other so no one would understand our conversation.

i wasn't doing well today and my daughter, of course, sensed it. she and i are very close, always have been. she learned ASL with me/for me when i started slowly losing my hearing a few years ago. i have horrible tinnitus that goes through my head like a nail sometimes. nothing to do about it. my husband used to do this cool thing with my feet, rubbing them and flexing my ankles to either distract me or help me relax and it always worked. it didn't diminish the tinnitus but it made me feel so much better. i can't do it for myself. it was just something he did for me one day when i couldn't hear him over the din in my ears.

the pressures of this wedding that i'm keeping off her, shielding her from, playing mediator, and shielding her from her dad as much as possible is wearing me out with the depression i feel over this weekend's 6 month milestone of my husband's death quickly being followed by his birthday and our wedding anniversary.

i'm so tired. i feel bad when i'm told that i need to remember how much he loved me. i do remember. i don't want these blogs, my writings of grief to give the impression that i sit here and wallow day after day and think he stopped loving me because he died. i am simply grieving for him. i want something i can't have. i want him and it's not childish behavior or being petulant or sacrilegious to wish he were here with me right now.

i'm tired of the money situation.....the fact that i don't have any. i work my tail off for so little and make it stretch so far. i'm paying for so much of this wedding and making so many things for my daughter simply because i can't afford to buy them. her dad, Lord, her dad just....what do i say? i've had to sit alone on the phone and literally beg. i've had to cut deals and be dictated to, be criticized about my Memory Quilt business, about how little orders i have, should be better at marketing myself, how i'm failing in getting it off the ground faster. every time i have to talk to him about something it's like i've been hobbled and forced to run a gauntlet being beaten by horse crops and coat hangers. don't ask me how i know what that feels like.

but i do it for her. i'd do anything for my children. the job isn't over just because they are grown. they still don't know what to do when they see it coming. they still get afraid. or they get too hurt or angry to strategize properly. it's an acquired skill. i wasn't born knowing how to do this. i learned from a very early age to read calculation and anger and malevolence in people's body language and voices.

i wish my husband were here. all this would go so smoothly. my husband would have figured a way out for him and i to pay for this. he always did come up with the money my children needed. he always answered the phone if "he" called so "he" would know i wasn't vulnerable anymore. my husband would sit beside me when i had to do my thing. then he'd take my hand and we go for a walk down on the beach of our cove.

the wind, the salt air, the gulls, the waves. it soothed me. his hand in mine as we'd walk out across the rocks and look northeast to what i thought of as my island. isla womanNshadows. i'd tell him we just needed to move to the abandoned light keeper's house and live there away from everyone. he'd tell me everything was going to be alright. he'd tell me we were in this together, that no matter what hell life brought us, it brought it to us. us. our lives may be hell but our marriage was a blessing. it was everything i'd ever wanted my life entered into that sacrament to be. i love him so much. he inspired awe in me. and he loved me for exactly who i was. it amazed me that he found anything of value in me. but he did and i now know that one person loved me. i have that on my resume.

my children love me because i am their mom, because they know what i've sacrificed for them, and that i would give up my life for them. they love me because i'm cool to know. but they have their own lives also. i gave them that. self-sufficiency and freedom. they just need me for this one last thing. protection.

it's still my husband and me. it's still us but he's the silent partner now. now it's me that has had to get back up in the line of fire for guard duty. and God forgive me but i am so tired. i miss him more on days when i've had to beg and think so fast on my feet. i sit at home and look at my husband's picture, that smiling face of his and i want him back so much. i'd handle it every day all day long....i'd endure anything if i could just fall into bed with him and fall asleep beside him. if i could just feel his fingers combing my hair as i closed my eyes. have his deep voice in my ear telling me everything is going to be alright.

the tinnitus is pretty bad tonight and i didn't get to go to the cove after dealing with "him." i'm no where near the ocean anymore. i just have to endure this. it's the gift that is my life.

i love you, husband. one minute more. i'm going to hang on one minute more. i learned how to do that when i was a very little girl. i endured childhood. then i endured the first marriage. then i was blessed with you and hanging on one minute more was easier with you beside me. i love you. i'll love you forever. i'm still hanging on.