Valentine's Day ~ Dragon's Funeral One Year Ago

i got the quilt in the frame tonight. i'm working hard i think to bury what day tomorrow is. Valentine's Day.

it had always been a day we spent together honoring our love and our marriage. we did it right. cheap and intimate at home. being me, i made him books. i wrote stories with illustrations inside. i spent a lot of time on them. i loved doing it for him and he always loved getting them.

he told me that he'd never had anyone love him as i do. and i do. i love him. that his funeral was planned on Feb. 14th, what that day meant, never occurred to me. maybe it was fate. for my last Valentine book that i made for him, i'd researched the origin of the day, of the Saint. i read Dan's blog earlier tonight and he mentioned St. Valentine. for my first Valentine's Day alone, i mean the one that isn't his funeral since i was never technically alone, i think i want to relate what i gave to my Dragon two years ago, our last Valentine's Day together.
"Valentine's Day has it's origins in blood, violence, persecution, and sacrifice, all the things that make love so infinite and worthwhile. Valentine's Day has evolved into something that is a mere shadow of the power it once held. except for us. you and me."

i use several pages to explain all about why i love him, admire him, and am in awe of him. i give him the words to make him smile, blush, and shake his head at my adoration. he is so funny when he thinks my writing enters hyperbole.

at the end of this book i wrote and made for him, i tell him why Valentine's Day is so special.

"you, my love, are a warrior and you above all should not be in the dark about Valentine's Day. the priest Valentius secretly married soldiers because he felt Claudius's edict that no soldier should marry was wrong. if anyone should have a blessed eternal, sacred love, it should be a soldier. thrown in prison and awaiting execution, he had hope enough to fall in love with his jailer's daughter and he sent her love letters signed 'from your Valentine.' he was executed on February 14, 270 AD.

Valentius died for love while loving someone. he was a warrior as well, albeit on a different battlefield. we celebrate this day as we do every day. for you and me, for all of us, a priest risked his life for the warriors of his parish and they risked all seeking him out for the sacrament of marriage, for love. love is never a waste. you and i share a love that is a sacrament, that is a bond for all eternity.

never wonder how or why i love you. never wonder why i am here for you. no one deserves love more than you and no one can possibly love you more than me. no one will quietly hold you in the night, stroke your hair, your arm, or speak in low, soothing tones to you like i do and always will. i'll face down your demons and banish them all from your mind.

i am the person your soul talks to in the night. i will always be there....

because i love you."

my Dragon is my life and i was his. we had talked once about what to do if one of us died. we had also talked about how we thought it would feel, how we’d “be” when the other had died. he and i both spoke of it as if we were the same coin and one side had been obliterated. damaged. we spoke of it as if we were Gibran’s “lute quivering with the same music.” yes, we were two individuals but our lives, our dreams had evolved to become one instrument, Gibran's lute. i know if a string breaks on an instrument, the musician simply replaces the string but in a marriage such as ours, the string cannot be replaced. they don't make them to fit the instrument that is us, the Dragon and his woman from the shadows.my Dragon is a Marine, Force Recon. he fought hard for his country and his will to survive was very strong. there were a myriad of reasons he earned his nickname. his inner strength to live and get his men back home was one of them. "Dragon" was an honorable name to be given. his stories are wild and simply incredible to me. he told me once, though, that nothing he did or endured during his years was as bad as the mere thought of having to live without me.

"if you died, i would continue. that's all. i would just continue like a wolf that had lost it's mate. i would lose the sun and the moon and the ocean. i would lose my joy of watching you live. i would just continue and wait to be able to join you."

i feel the same. i have no idea if this Valentine's Day culmination of my first year without him has me so deep in melancholia that i am wallowing, but i will ride this ride to the end. i will feel fully what my heart and my mind give me to experience. i will fully live this grief until it evolves. then i will experience that.

as Jimmy Bufftet sings, "some of it's magic and some of it's tragic but i've had a good life all the way."

i had a good life starting when i met my Dragon. i had a wonderful life with him. and i will have a life as his widow albeit a sadder, lonelier one. i will hold my memories of him and keep his stories safe in my heart. maybe next year i will be able to hold a special celebration for him.

my warrior. my Dragon. my beloved husband. "my immortal beloved." you are worth all this pain. i love you. i always will.

3 AM

i've been trying to sleep. i can't. obviously. i miss him. i miss him lying beside me. when i had bouts of insomnia i could sneak and hold his hand, or snuggle up against him and smell his skin, feel his warmth, listen to his breathing, and see the rise and fall of his chest in the soft light of the nightlight. his hand would always squeeze mine to let me know he knew i needed him. sometimes he would sleepily whisper, "you okay?" i'd kiss his shoulder and whisper, "yeah." there would be a soft smile that played out over his lips and he would settle back into his deep sleep. i would be reassured. i would be able to fall asleep.

i love him so much. i still cry everyday. one week shy of 6 months and i cry everyday. i have trouble sleeping.

i have my work, the Memory Quilts. i am busy helping my daughter with her wedding. i've got sewing up the wazoo to do. busy days. tired at the end. i have a new friend. she called tonight and we made plans to go out to dinner tomorrow....well, tonight. i'm looking forward to that.

but i love him so much i ache. my heart cries out his name. sometimes i can't not say his name out loud. my dogs look at me. they know that name. they recognize the longing i am feeling, the unrest.

it's 3 AM and i'm up writing yet wishing i was reaching for his hand, smelling his neck and feeling his smile at the eccentric behavior. i loved his smell. right at the curve of his neck to his shoulder. he could have showered with the most flowery soap and yet still smell like the woods or Old Spice or something. he always smelled so good. i'm wishing i could see his chest rise and fall. feel him turn to me and wrap his arms around me, or if his back was to me and he didn't want to change positions, pull my arm around him and hold my hand in his. i'd lay my head against his back and hear his heart beat.

he had the strongest heartbeat. until it gave out that night 5 months and 3 weeks ago tonight.

my heart is crying out for him tonight. i wouldn't mind being back in our old, old house in Rockport by Whale Cove with a cold wind blowing outside and him on the sofa where he liked to recline while watching television. i'd sit in my chair beside him sewing, and sneaking pictures of him until he told me to put the camera down and come lay with him. there on that sofa, while he watched television, in his arms, my head on his strong chest, there i could sleep.

i am going to go back to bed and close my eyes and lie to myself that that is where i am. then maybe i'll get a little bit of sleep.

Writing in the Sand

I received a compliment the other day from someone I didn't know. She said something nice about my being nice to deal with and it hit me with such shock that I realized something about myself. I'm very depressed. I also have so few people in my life that I expect to be forgotten unless someone wants something from me.

I hit a very low point one day about two weeks ago. This is actually funny because I'm still at that same very low point only now I'm so used to it that it feels like home, but when I slid into it, it was frighteningly uncomfortable. I broke down and called someone higher up on the deceased spouse food chain. I know I am important to her because it only took her three days to return my call. Her life is very, very busy with a lot of family around, in-laws, her own parents, her children that are younger than mine, and a lot of friends so when she returned my call those few days later it was another compliment in a way, that she would call to see what I needed.

I told her I was very down, very lonely without someone to talk to about my husband and how vitally important he was to me. She commiserated and told me that it would get better and then looked up the phone number of a Presbyterian Church that is within walking distance of me so I might could find a group to join. "You need to find people to be around. Maybe this church has a book group, or a craft group." She knows I'm Catholic and would dearly love to find a bus route to go to Mass somewhere or join a group there but three buses, a 1/4 mile, and needing an hour each way of time is depressing to me and to her this seemed like the lessor of two evils. I thanked her profusely and told her I would check into it. And sadly I did. And more sadly, after I explained my situation, the secretary of that church passed me to the assistant pastor or associate pastor, and when I explained my situation to them that person gave the the phone number of the bereavement group at the Catholic church that I had called 5 months ago to join the widow's group I am currently in.

I thanked this person, hung up the phone, and put my head down on my desk and cried.

I write for an online article database site, trying to earn money for all these words and thoughts I have inside me. I recently got my PIN for my account. A small check ($100) should be issued between November to January. I haven't quit. I still write. That $100 might come at a time when I am completely out of food. I can't afford to give up.

I write this blog here and I read others' sites. So many followers. So many quick and heartfelt comments are left. I've seen one man who has over 500 followers and can leave a quick message about his grief and receive over 70 comments within 5 hours. I saw one widower who has taken his grief to a level of oracle. He is the go-to guy for grief. He has a uploaded web videos of interviews with himself and set up a memorial fund in his wife's name for the benefit of his young daughter. His most recent video interview spoke to his being able to now pay for her college, his up-coming marriage to his editor for the book he hasn't finished writing about his grief and how it affected his life for the better, how he took it and made something wonderful out of it, how if it wasn't for his wife dying, he would never have had these opportunities open up for him. I finally had to stop reading his words and listening to his interviews with himself. I feel to much like a failure with my own grief.

What have I done with my grief? It has been 5 months, 2 weeks, and 5 days 159 days of living without the attention, the love, the notice of my husband. What have I done? I sat helplessly while the man of God at the church that hosted his funeral, out of which he had been head scoutmaster of his son's troop, stepped up to the podium and spoke into the microphone, "His son does not feel comfortable coming to his father funeral because his father's wife would not give him some of his father's ashes before the service." My daughter got her chance to speak at that microphone and said, "My mother received the phone call to pick up my stepfather last night at 6 PM. She wanted him brought to the church whole. She is grieving, devastated. She did not want to drive an hour over to the parking lot of a grocery store, open the bag, and pour some of him out into whatever container his son and mother brought with them. My mother felt his death should be treated with respect. She brought him whole to this house of God, (then casting a disparaging glance at the preacher), she continued, "thought I am now having my doubts."

My husband's son and ex-wife knew the timing of the cremation. They had the phone number of the funeral home. They hung up on me and my son when we tried to explain this timing time and time again. We gave up.

Second thing I've done with my grief. Get up every day. I pretty much do. I have to. I have to earn money. I've stumbled onto the Memory Quilts and it has been a blessing. I can't say anything different about it. I sew 14 - 16 hours a day. I bend over the table or the quilt frame, the boxes of clothes and I think hard, so hard about this one thing: "if these were my husband's clothes, my father's clothes, my son's clothes, my daughter's clothes, how would I want this to look? Are the buttons on this shirt critical to keep together? What tangible thing can I add to this quilt to make it touchable? Zippers to toy with, buttons to unbutton and find a shirt underneath, a waistband with belt loops to leave together and sew on so that a photo can be laminated and hole-punched for a way to tie it or clip it to the belt loop and stick in the pocket."

I listen intently to each story the person bringing me the clothes tells me. I take on their grief in a way so that the quilt stays personal, unique to them and their connection with the deceased. I read their half-smiles, the hollowness in their eyes, and I can hear a little of what they can't speak to. I sometimes sit for minute after I've completed a seam and wait to see if the deceased is around me watching, waiting, to see if there is approval from the one person that this would matter to most. What would he want his son to have? His wife to draw around her shoulders and possible sniff and imagine, and remember? For me, thoughts of the deceased are the most important element of the quilts.

I write this, as I do all my blogs/articles, whatever they are really, and I feel like I am writing in the sand. It will disappear before anyone has a chance to understand the import my words have for me. Or they will see it, casually pass by as we all do on our walks on a beach, and they will see my words in the sand here and it will mean nothing beyond, "ah, nice thought."

My words will disappear from view as they pass on down the page. I'll write something else and there they go, the previous ones slide off into oblivion. New posts become 'older posts.' A different article has a different title. Someone will disagree with me and how I'm doing things, offer up advice. Some will say "I can't understand these feelings of yours but I hope you get better soon. Do something with your life. Get out more."

I'll sigh. I'll log off. My words don't mean anything really to anyone. They will have no affect. I'm not C. S. Lewis with his grief. I have no standing in the literary world. I have written 4 books now and have not taken the time to solicit for a literary agent. I sew. I need the money desperately. In fact, I'm eating lunch as I type this so that my break is fruitful and not really a break at all.

I'm writing in the sand like my husband did for me that day. The photo is above up there. He drew a heart and put our initials in it. He put his arm around me and show me his ephemeral graffiti and said, "I put it above the high water mark. It should stay for a few days, long enough for a few seagulls to see it and know how much I love you."

I woke him up the next day just after sunrise. There was a storm supposed to be coming in and the high tide was coming within that hour. We dressed warmly and went hurrying down to our cove to see if his writing in the sand was still there. It was. We sat on the rocks and watched the rollers come in. Heavy surf. It kept inching closer to his heart in the sand. I got worried about it. I turned to him and said, "Let's put some rocks around it to try and save it." He changed his position, sat behind me with his legs around me and his chin on my shoulder. He spoke in my ear with me tight in his embrace. "Let's stay here and watch the sea take it. So many gulls have already seen it. They mate for life, you know. Most of them do. Like you and me. Gulls have better memories than us humans. They are the ones who will find value in having seen that and in seeing us sit here and knowing that though the ocean washes it away it doesn't make it any less real or true."

He hugged me tightly and said, "I'll always love you, even if the only place I can write it down is in the sand. But the memory of it is here in your heart."

And it is. I'll always remember the moment when that one wave reach up high enough to take it all away. I admit I did gasp. He kissed me then. He turned my face to his and kissed me.

And now he's gone and my heart is so sad. I'm writing in the sand for anyone to see. I don't know if my words impact anyone. People aren't seagulls and there are no gulls to see me now. But I keep writing in the sand and I hope and pray that my Beloved Dragon can see my words before they roll off the bottom of the screen.

Yes, I'm that lonely. Yes, I'm that heartbroken today. Yes, I'm going back to the sewing. I'll write in the sand another day.