i will follow you into the dark

i watched the movie, "Hachi," the other evening.  i knew in advance what it was about but i chose to continue on that path of plot awareness.  i needed to see loyalty.  i needed to be reminded that my dogs are probably {not} going to miss me like that, be that devoted to me, should i pass away before them.  {but i do pamper my soul; tell myself that they will sit and wait for me just like Hachi.

dogs can sense when death is approaching.  it is a natural thing for them.  they are not complicated like humans.  they accept what cannot be changed.

i accept, but i do cry over it.

in all the reading i've done since he died, i have not really fond one that explores the fear, wonder, worry, curiosity of what happens when we die, after we die.  where do we go?  it is based on faith or lack of it but really, i have been thinking of this off and on ever since i saw the life leave him.  doing CPR ocer someone, knowing you are losing, seeing/feeling them "go" marks you.  well, it marked me.

what is he doing right now?  what is he thinking?  is he happy?  is there an ocean?  is he on some cloud?  can he see me?  does he know that i am sobbing as i type this?  he is alert?  cognizant?  did he keep any memories of me?  is he with his dog?  has he told my dogs i still love them?

has he met my son who died?

is there light where he is?

or dark?  just dark and empty?

i believe in God.  but.

i don't know where he is or where i will go or if i will get to be with him and eventually my two beloved children.

will i lose myself when i die; the stuff that makes me me and so irritating to the masses, yet so interesting?  {<~ that interesting part is sarcasm}  but will the thoughts i think vanish when i die?  will i know him?  will he still like me and want to hang out with me?  will will we be able to find each other?

or will it be dark?

as a child i was never afraid of the dark.  i was afraid of what was in the dark.  i was afraid of my mother.  i was afraid of my brother.  i was afraid of Voldemort.  i was afraid of all the evil that lurks out there; like the DMV if they think you filled out a paper wrong.  {got a $50 for filling out a paper in correctly so when i went tot he DMV to pay the fine the woman said, "effing ridiculous.  most people ignore that paper and you tried.  so you checked a box wrong.  no, i'm not taking the fine.  here's a receipt.  keep it in your car."  i feel like a rebel.  i feel like an outlaw.  are they looking for me?  will they find me driving down 485 some night after work and pull me over; arrest me?  see?  i worry.}

i don't mind the dark.  you can see the stars at night.  you can see the moon.  the night breeze can be soft or wildly blowing leaves that crinkle and sound crisp, much like potato chips on a plate.

when i die, will i be okay, finally?  after all i've been through, will i be okay?  will i be safe?

when i die will there be that light and will i hear his voice?  will i feel that old familiar calloused roughness of his hand clasping mine, pulling me towards him, towards an eternity of love and safeness {i don't think that's a word but i'm crying and i don't care}?

i have written 3 books.  a friend of my daughter's is an English professor at a university.  she sent him a burned CD of one of my books.  he said he despised my ability to write as i do.  he told her he has tried to write like that all his life.  he also said i was, and i quote, "a shining golden god in a kingdom of mice, who is afraid of the mice."  he told her to tell me to get off my shy butt and start searching for a literary agent.  i don't know where to start searching or how to do it that my work won't get stolen.

so question, forget this life, what about the next?  will i lose my mind when i die?  will i lose everything?  will i close my eyes and there will be nothing?  will God forget me?  abandon me?  send me to Hell for the things i've thought?  wanted to do ~ the bad things like tell someone off?

there are times, God forgive me, when i sleep in on Sundays.  i hurt physically so badly, am so exhausted that i stay in bed.  i pray every day, but is that enough?  will He really accept my excuses?

or will He, seeing as i am not an entirely heinous person, just leave me to fumble around in the dark?

as long as i don't run into my mother, or my ex, or threats from the DMV, or people from work, maybe walking around an empty landscape in the dark for eternity will be my own kind of peace.

"if heaven and hell decide that they both are satisfied, illuminate the NO's on their vacancy signs.  if there is no one beside you when your soul embarks, i will follow you into the dark."

 i'd like there to be light.  i'd like there to be snow in the Winter and warm Summer breezes.  i'd like the crinkly, potato chip sound of leaves falling in the Fall, and the smell of flowers and fresh cut grass in the Spring.  i'd like there to be an ocean with the water swelling over stones that sounds like the rattling of bones.

but if that is not what i have earned, then i will follow him.  into the light.  into the dark.  i will close my eyes here and start my search for him there.  and if that search takes an eternity, searching for my dogs, waiting for my children, calling out to him, i will at least be spending my eternity doing something.  my soul has a calling.  i want to be with my family and my dogs.

the scenes in the movie of Hachi's face as he aged, the whiteness of his fur as he got older and older, so magnificent.  the intentness in his eyes as he heard the whistle of the train and his steadfast gaze on the door as people spilled out.  and his sadness, his loneliness as he settled back down to wait for the man who would never come back was gut wrenchingly, poignantly beautiful.

people move on.  dogs can grieve forever.  the other day i called out for Carl.  and both my dogs leap off the bed and raced to the door of the apartment.  Carl has never been in this apartment, but they ran to meet him because i called out for him.  i felt like a dick.  they came racing back to bed and cuddled around me.  they laid across my legs as if to say, "we'll lay on top of her so she won't go away."

i don't want to suffer anymore.  i don't want any more pain.  i would like the afterlife to be peaceful and calm and surround by my children {eventually} and my dogs, and in his arms.  i want to hear his laugh again.  i want to walk with him again.

i want to die and then my soul soar to him and a few fuzzy faces who dance and race to meet me.  who lick my face and rub their noses against my skin.

i want to be met.  greeted.  even if i do follow everyone into the dark, at least we will all be together.

the unanswerable

i have been meeting and talking to the Matriarch of Grief and Joy as often as my work schedule allows. trying for once a week, but sometimes it is only once a month. still i am blessed to have the opportunity to talk to her.

i brought it up. i was crying, admitting to missing him. i told her he was wonderful. i listed his qualities: handsome, intelligent, irreverent, kind, sexy, funny, generous, intuitive, ah, we all have the same list. i told her i have not been sleeping. so little sleep these last couple of months. Christmas, New Years, the pneumonia, my birthday, then the 2 year milestone and his funeral anniversary aka Valentine's Day. i am exhausted.

see me above, eyes wide open. so very tired yet sleep eludes me.

the full moon is tomorrow night. my eyes are always on the night sky. and all of it is sitting on my chest. all of it. and so i brought it up at my session. i heard myself say what i knew she would have no answer to.
where is he? will i see him again? does he think about me? what's going to happen to me after i die? will he be waiting? oh, where is he?

i am not asking it as a question of faith even though it really is. i want him back. or i simply want to know if i will see him again. now people will tell me, "of course you will." but we do not know. we will not know until we take that last breath.

i remember his.

i miss him. i miss his smell. i miss his voice. i miss the feeling of him being in the room. i am feeling the weight of his absence. i am feeling down, both emotionally and physically. my only real fun is Bunny. she keeps me entertained. she keeps me feeling creative.

and being creative is all i have, all i am. it defines me.

"womanNshadows? do you know her?"

"yeah, she's the creative one. she writes. she takes pictures. and she sews."

Bunny has her own projects. she has sent off her clone, the Traveling Ambassador. we both keep up with where she is in the world.

her new project is her Great Sparkly Moon Book Project. cleaning out a closet, she found a journal i have not written in yet. she came sashaying in and told me she wanted the book for her moon photos. the "gallery" of moon photos on the wall is getting a little out of hand. they keep reminding us of the passing of time. so we have taken the photos down and gotten others printed at the 6 cent Tuesday at Wolf Camera. now all she has to do is put them in order and put them in their sticky photo corners and put them in the sparkly book.
then she will write in the book all her own private thoughts and poetry. the cover of the book is beaded with stars and the sun and a moon, hence the name of her project: Great Sparkly Moon Book. {like Bunny really needs another project.}

and while she quietly puts photos in sticky photo corners, and then puts them in the pages of the book, we will both be thinking of the unanswerable questions that plague us both.

where is he really? is he happy? is he safe? does he still think of me? will i see him again? will he be waiting for me?

it comes and goes, these questions. most of the time i can ignore my more philosophical side, my deeper thoughts, these unanswerable questions. but there are nights, like when a full moon is near.........

Bunny / Wall*E

tired. Bunny is very tired. so am i. we both are. Bunny and me. me and the Bun. one and the same and yet, one is stoic while the other is the sensitive one who allows herself to cry out loud. in private, of course. Bunny may be sensitive but she is not an exhibitionist.

Bunny has fun at work. i keep up the pretense so that i can hopefully keep the job, make it permanent. it is a good place to work. fun. toys. dressing up bunnies and bears and dogs. i am, at present, typing while i watch Wall*E. i love this movie. i have never gotten to see the whole thing, but tonight i am. he is so interested in his job and yet so soulfully lonely. Bunny feels a little like him. she works very hard, but she carries within her such longing for her Dragon. Bunny is lonely like Wall*E.

pssst. see the photo of Bunny below? she is limp. she has gotten her Cube of Love and is just lying there. her Dream Journal has slipped from it's spot and smacked her little face. yes, Bunny has had so many nightmares of late that she is keeping a journal. the Matriarch of Grief and Joy thinks there may be a pattern there, there may be something there. of course there is. Bunny already knows the direction of the undertow in her psyche. she will not say it here but, Bunny knows. Bunny is not so blind that she cannot see the gauntlet in her own life.

*sigh.*

Bunny gets home and first takes Miss Carmen Sophia the Wild Gypsy Girl and her lovely brother, Mr. Scootie Wootums, Lord of the Dance with the Stardust Eyes out for walkies. but then she flops on the sofa and wilts. tired. ears ringing. limp like a noodle. and thirsty. oh, my gosh, have mercy, Bunny is thirsty from all the talking and all the heart ceremonies she performs every day. and then she has to coddle her Scotties. they have missed her fiercely so she talks them down from their fears that Bunny is never going to come home.

'nother *sigh.*

Bunny is very weary these days.

ruined Christmas. Bunny's son cannot come for Christmas. he had said he would since he missed last Christmas and he missed this Thanksgiving. but the Great Puppet Master did something or other and my son is going north for Christmas for 7 days. so sad. so tearful. if Bunny thinks about it too much she crumples into a little Bunny heap and cannot function for a while.

okay? if she does that, is that giving in, or expunging poison? hmmmm. the great debate over that may commence.

Bunny came home from work the other day and found a gifty at the door. a big box with a little Christmas tree in it that had little wooden ornaments in it. she fluffed it and decorated it and put it on the bookshelf by her bed.
it smells all piney in her bedroom, which is poetic since Bunny pines for her Dragon. {Bunny is so funny even when its kinda sad.}
Bunny misses her Dragon very, very, very much.

Bunny has a big query to put out there for her dear readers. Bunny was at the post office last Tuesday to mail a quilt to someone. while standing in line with her daughter, the man behind starting talking to Bunny. he overheard where Bunny worked. Bunny was polite. Bunny was nice. Bunny's daughter said Bunny was a polite, nice person to the man and that the man was flirting with Bunny. Bunny scoffed at her daughter and said, "next, the grocery store."

BUT, the next day at work, this man showed up at Bunny's store and bought a gift card. he talked to Bunny again, making little jokes. Bunny took the second to talk to her store's "guest" very politely and while she did this she touched her wedding rings. the man did not seem to notice. today, the man came back and Bunny pointed him out to her manager. now both of us girls think this is a little much. the manager made sure that Bunny did not have to wait on this "guest" again, but he sort of hung around until she had to. he bought another gift card. nice for Bunny, but kinda creepy. when Bunny left this afternoon, the manager called for a security guard to sort of follow Bunny out to make sure she was not followed.

still another sigh. is Bunny being paranoid? her manager did not think so. he has been nice but very much hovering on the periphery. cannot put her finger on it but Bunny gets an Off Feeling about this.

any thoughts for the Bun?

okay, Christmas Day ~ she has her Christmas Day plans all set. she is not going to tell anyone, not even you, dear readers, until the day of. she is accepting of and satisfied with her plans. it will be what is best for everyone concerned. no worries about Bunny. she knows how to put one little fuzzy foot in front of the other.
but she is very, very sad these days. crawling up on 2 years. 365 days x 2 = 730. *sigh.* she is quietly, deep inside kind of sad. the kind of sad that only someone who knows Bunny can see. but you have to see her to see it. and she wears her glasses to hide it. Bunny does not wear rose-colored glasses. she wears shades. as in "so much pain her dazzled eyes refused to see." Bunny protects her eyes from the dazzling, burning pain that looking at her life, and her future, can do to her little Bunny retinas.

Bunny sometimes thinks of the day when she will no longer be tired. she will be free to fly away with her Dragon. she will not hurry it along, but she does think of it, of what it will be like to no longer worry, to no longer be so tired.
just "fly me away with you my love."

~~

oh, no!! Wall*E is hanging on for dear life to the side of Eva's rocketship! he is leaving his little cockroach friend behind! ohhhhhh! another lonely soul. Bunny has to go and watch Wall*E, and see if he can find Eva, and then get them back to Earth so the little cockroach is no longer alone.

*sigh* i hope it works out for Wall*E and the little cockroach. no one should be alone in the world.

impasse with God

Warning: This post contains thoughts of religion and the afterlife. Herein are my beliefs and worries, thoughts and hopes. They are based on my chose faith, Catholicism. I have already been punished by the family of my childhood for my conversion. There is no need for anyone to force himself or herself to read and then condemn me as well. Their job was thorough. Well-thought and well-meant comments are welcome. Spiteful and cruel arrogance will be deleted. I do not need anymore of it in my life than I already had, and have.

what happens at the moment of death? where did my Dragon go? this has been crushing me since that moment when i knew, before the paramedics came through the door, i knew he was leaving me. no one can look like that, no one can struggle so to breathe and be saved. was he gone during those moments when he became red in the face? was he gone when they sent me from the room? did he leave his body at the hospital? before he got there? where is he?

did he fly past the moon that night? fanciful i know but there is a poet in me that wants to write about it that way. did someone he trust and love come to get him? his mother? i have to know and yet, it isn’t for me to know, is it? or we’d all know. it would be taught to us as children. Jesus would have clarified.

as a child i believed in Heaven. i accepted it as quickly as i did everything my mother told me. there was Heaven. there was Hell. Hell was spoken of more to me as a child in reference to the punishment waiting for me should i not go to sleep, or if i couldn’t, what would happen if i woke my mother up. “There is a trapdoor under your bed that leads straight to Hell. If you are loud, or wake me up, demons will open the door and reach up with their long arms and grabbed your hands and drag you straight to Hell.”

to this day, at the age of 52, i clasp my hands when i attempt sleep so that they are occupied and the demons cannot grab them. that they can grab my arms or legs or neck is something i cannot do anything about. but my mother only ever mentioned my hands and it’s my hands i keep filled. i used to hold my Dragon. he understood and quietly wept for the child i never got to be. now i am back to holding my own hands.

and i am weary of this particular worry.

when i lost my son 27 ½ years ago, i knew he went to Heaven. he is innocent. he is my little baby, my sweet, Sweet Little Star. each of my children has a nickname that i gave them when the doctors first let me hold them. they were born and swaddled and given to me to hold for a moment before being taken for their Apgar scoring. i whispered each their name against their soft cheeks, letting my lips brush their skin for the first time. my Sweet Little Star. my BabyLove. my Little Boy Blue. i was determined to never be the mother my mother was. i gave them all so much of myself. my Sweet Little Star is in Heaven. i am sure. and i will see him if i am allowed to go. but will i get to go?

what will happen? what has already happened to my Dragon? he felt he would go to Hell for all that he did in service to his country. i told him he killed for his country but he was not a murderer anymore than a policeman who saves people from the bad guys are murderers. i told him that what he did, he did for God and country and that his honor and integrity, his worries for his soul would grant him his place in Heaven. he fought for his country. he fought for an idea and an ideal that was, at the heart of it, good and decent.

he would smile at me but i hope, i think i saw, relief in his eyes. he felt i knew what i was talking about. he called himself a heathen. i called him my lovely Dragon who saved my children and me.

but a year has passed and i am so alone and so tired. while worrying about money and health care, i still wonder and worry about Heaven and he is really there, and if i would be allowed to be with him. was what i always told him correct? nothing can shake faith like the loss of someone so important. after everyone goes back to their lives, and the alone time comes, the exploration of the dogma and the examination of faith starts. how to you keep to your faith when it is tested to this magnitude? my Dragon is somewhere i cannot go yet. i am not even allowed to know. when it is my time to go, will I be reunited with him?

to comfort myself, i try to create the image of my sailing out to find him. since i am so tired of life, i am too tired to believe i could fly. but he is my Dragon and he will come out of a beautiful sky to find me. he will take me up with him on his great back and we will go off to Heaven where i can rest for a moment.

however my inner child, the one that was religiously threatened with a trapdoor of demons under my bed begs God to let me be with my Dragon with promises that i will work so very hard in Heaven. please, oh, please just let me be with him. i won’t touch him if i’m not supposed to. i will just look at him while i work for You, listen to his deep voice, wait for his smiles. but, please, let me just be near him.

{it is a pathetic little prayer, isn't it? "When Rabbit Howls." a book i studied my first semester in abnorm. psych. i thought it then. i think it now. sometimes things can happen to a child that changes them forever. they become something different than what they were meant to be.}

so many theologians and philosophers have written their interpretations of Heaven, when it starts, who goes, and is there marriage and love there. some believe we are reunited but only insofar as we know each other but never look at the other because we are looking at God. some wrote of marriage being an earthly institution that cannot continue in Heaven because all things of this earth die. Catholic bishop Wilhelm Schneider predicted that God would bless the holy sacrament of marriage and that couples would reunite in Heaven, meeting joyfully, and that their unions blessed on earth through the priest, would now be blessed by God. he went on to touch on physical love saying that in Heaven, “we are freed from inordinate passion,” but that our reunions with our spouses would be “a spiritual union and will continue in the purest and most delightful interchange.” i've known priests who had a hard time discussing physical love. i've known others that were salt of the earth men who knew there was such a thing as sex and their counsel was wise indeed.

i cannot imagine my Dragon restraining himself, even in Heaven, especially in Heaven, where all good things come to those who have waited. he was a man of great passion. Heaven would have to make allowances for him.

i like what the chaplain to the queen of England, Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) wrote of his marriage to his beloved wife, Fanny. “All I can say is, if I do not love my wife, body and soul as well there as I do here, then there is neither resurrection of my body or of my soul, but of some other, and I shall not be I.”

there is a poem called “The Blessed Damozel” by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. in it he tells of the reunion of lovers in Heaven. in Heaven couples have similar clothes, hair, and faces. they hug, kiss, and gaze lovingly into each other’s eyes. when Damozel arrives in Heaven, she cries because she cannot feel whole, such is her love for her husband. God makes her complete, but it is through her husband that she will feel all of Heaven. the poem creates a kind of quad-eternity rather than the Holy Trinity. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, and the Divine Couple that were joined on earth through their pure and eternal love. they are God’s children and Damozel needs to know that they will be reunited when her husband dies and comes to Heaven.

the last verses have the appearance of the figure of Mary. here She is not merely the mother of Christ, but a sacred person who understands women and the role their mates and children play in their lives. She is the Blessed Mother of all. Damozel proclaims that it will be Mary who will bring her and her love to a sympathetic and loving Christ and it is Damozel who speaks last.

There will I ask of Christ the Lord

Thus much for him and me: -

Only to live as once on earth

With Love, - only to be,

As then awhile, forever now

Together, I and he.

it is my belief that God created an enchanting world filled with what i see as miraculous, awe-inspiring beauty.

He wants us to be happy here. He gave us the gift of being able to love. He gave us marriage. Jesus loved to go to the celebrations of marriages so why would marriage be taboo in Heaven? and if someone, say someone like me, who had lived their whole life praying and being quiet, and worrying about the trapdoor of demons under the bed, why would they be as instantly relegated to Hell as her mother was so willing to do? i’ve read William March. i was not a "Bad Seed." i was a little girl who thought the world was beautiful and liked to collect rocks and blow the seeds off dandelions. i still do those things. sadly, i also still feel that if there can be demons under a little girl's bed to keep her silent, then God is going to have a hard time deciding on me. if my mother could firmly stamp that into my child's mind, what hope would i have of God's grace?

i am at an impasse, of sorts, with God. i would like to know, very much like to know. i know i will not know until it is my time to know. when i fear too much what will happen to me, i think of what i said to my Dragon. when i worry about my Dragon who is apart from me, maybe not hearing me tell him i love him, not hearing my assurances that he is a good man and worthy of the Heaven he feels he denied himself by being a Marine, i remind myself of two things:

we are all God’s children and Jesus asks the children to come to Him.

i also remind myself that God is above all else, a God of love, and love has many definitions. after all, He gave me the sun and the moon……..

.....and He honored me with my Dragon.

Christmas Eve ~ my poem

i started this poem after my son left on Black Friday. i finished it last night. i was going to wait to post it but i know some of you are going away for Christmas. you will be other places and won't be reading here so i am putting it up now.

today i am feeling a little blue and it seemed like a catharsis to post it. i hope you like it.

twas the night before Christmas

and all through the place

not a creature was stirring,

not one little face.

no stockings were hung

no tree was in sight

just a wreath on the door

and one string of small lights

the children were elsewhere

they had others to see

while the widow inside

had no place to be.

she lay silently inside

in the dark on her bed

with two Scotties beside her

and all her prayers said.

the night lay outside

both cool and real dark

while the widow's dreams

to an island embarked.

the waves would splash high

'round the rocks so very old

and waiting for her

stood her Dragon bold.

scarred hands on his hips

he waited for his wife

to come on the wind

to live their dream life.

she came to him each night

and each morn' she'd leave

but tonight was different,

tonight was Christmas Eve.

that she'd come was a given

that she'd rejoice made him smile

for the strength of their love

gave them this power for a while.

by day she would live

a quiet, solitary life

but night brought her dreams

of not widow, but wife.

in her dreams they were joined,

were together again

and she could pretend like the horror

of his death had never been.

they would meet and embrace

and then they would kiss

then he would hold her while

she talked of the day that he'd missed.

he knew she was sad.

he knew she was weary.

death kept them apart

and she was often quite teary.

but her dreams let her be

with him wild and free

on their island quite safe,

on their own sanctuary.

so here on this night

she closed her eyes tight

to be taken to her Dragon

to spend a calm night.

she missed him so much

while he longed for her

and only through dreams

could their meetings occur.

her mind set the stage

she suddenly appeared

on the island where her husband

had spent almost a year.

and now it was Christmas

in his arms she was held

because no Angel in Heaven

would their time have withheld.

they know it's been hard.

that she feels so weak.

that it "should have been me,"

and "my world is so bleak."

the Angels do cry

each time that she does

but sleep is all they have

to give her what was.

happy in dreams

with her Dragon so bold

and his love for her

fights back the raw cold.

they need each other

in this way that's not real

because even Angels know

they both need it to heal.

the Dragon needs her, too.

he needs his sweet wife

only she loved him so

and took away all his strife.

so especially this night

on this dark Christmas Eve

the Dragon and his wife

should not have to grieve.

for them to sit and look

at the soft Christmas lights

and feel nothing but sorrow

on this holiest of nights?

would be wrong to deny them

so to their island they fly

to be with each other

'till the morning sun's high.

and for a love this strong

the Angels will continue until

she lays her head down

and her own heart stills.

then together they'll be

even when infinity falls away

for not much is stronger

than a widow who prays.

so on this night before Christmas

the widow sleeps deep

and dreams of her Dragon

while she cries in her sleep.