material things & esoteric dreams

i am still out here, still working on my place, ahem, my home. i am gradually going through everything and bringing some things back with me from my daughter's garage.

all this stuff, these material things that were mine, are mine, are now being sorted through as if i died, or am dying.

"don't need that anymore." "do you want this? no? then toss it." "put this in the box to donate."

holding something close, studying it; something that used to bring me such joy and fill my previous home with the common clutter that we fill our lives with, weighing it's importance now that i no longer have the space. it is a difficult thing to do. sorting through the debris of my life and seeing it from this side of my husband's death. i feel as if we are getting things settled before i die, doing this sorting of who gets what so that it won't be hard when i am gone.

my daughter is taking a lot. we are setting off in a corner all the things we know my son {her brother} will want. and i am filling my little car, Midnight, each trip with things to bring back here ~ back home......

like my piano shawl. have i ever mentioned that i used to play piano? i started lessons when i was 4. by the time i was 6 i was pretty good. by the time i was 8 i was competing. at 11 i was entered in the Van Cliburn Competition. that was a long time ago, a lifetime. my teacher gave me the shawl then. it was an antique back then. it is more so now. very old. beautiful.

i sat in my old chair and held it around me tonight while i listened to Beethoven's 7th, the 2nd movement. a beautiful piece i learned to play when my hands could barely make the octave spread. i was never without a piano until the divorce. i sold it to pay for things my children needed. it was an old studio piano of blond maple. my mother bought it second hand in 1961 when i first started playing. i sold it in 2002 for $100 that i desperately needed to keep the phone on after V. refused child support for a while. it killed me then. it is a hauntingly ugly scar now. i miss my piano.

i miss my Dragon. i remember him going to the church in Rockport to talk to the priest to see if i could be allowed a couple of days during the week to stay after morning Mass and Rosary to play the piano there. he was so happy to have gotten the okay. he and i would walk to church for Mass, and then we'd stay and i would get to re-visit a past that had once been my own. i got to close my eyes and play for my own soul the music that has always haunted me. classical. mostly Beethoven, JS Bach, GF Handel, and other more deeply spiritual composers. music moves me. i played the scores that seemed to reach for something no one could ever have imagined without that music to take them there.

looking at all my material things that i am going through, getting back, i find myself more somber. i am so relieved, humbly so, but i am also wistful and melancholy over all the dreams that no one but my children and my Dragon shared with me. there is no one in my life anymore, besides my daughter and son, who knows me. there is more to me than my sewing, my writing, the work i do for others, and my grief. i am a woman of depth that no one really takes the time to get to know.

i do have my Marlene Dietrich friend, and she is lovely to know, but she does not live close so we have never met.

i have a widow who lives fairly close, and we have lunched, but my work schedule, and tight budget for things like that, keep me a little on the humble side. i do not talk as much about myself as i probably could, or should try to. i am so afraid they will abandon me as others have if i talk too much, say what's on my mind.

i am a wuss.

no one ever knew me but my children and him. oh, God, i miss him so much tonight.

would that i could play for you. i guess my writing is a form of music. silent lyrics to feed my own needs, to echo through time to announce that i was once here. i am leaving a legacy of lyrics behind that can never be put to music.

some dreams do not come true. some were never meant to. the difficult journey in accepting that carves away at me,

but,

i am so very blessed that once upon a time,

i did dream.

referenced from Not Even A Wren's site......

the song from youtube is posted on Megan's Not Even A Wren site. it hit me in the stomach, the lyrics. i love this so very much and needed to hear this song. thank you so much, Megan.

Love Is Our Cross to Bear ~ John Gorka

I didn't know where to look for you last night
I didn't know where to find you
I didn't know how I could touch that light
That's always gathering behind you

I didn't know that I would find a way
To find you in the morning
But love can pull you out of yesterday
As it takes you without warning

I want to be a long time friend to you
I want to be a long time known
Not one of your memory's used-to-bes
A summer's fading song

CHORUS:
It's from me, it's to you
For your eyes
It's a weight, a wonder that is wise
I am here, you are there
Love is our cross to bear

I know I'll think of us upon that hill
With the golden moon arising
And the stars will fall around us still
While the love is realizing

And so it is until we meet again
And I throw my arms around you
You can count the gray hairs in my head
I'll still be thankful that I found you

Soul Widows Spiritual Retreat ~ Eight ~ Saturday ~ Wine, Women, & Song

the afternoon closed our alcove gathering for the day. it was time to think of food. we had fed our spirits. we needed to feed our bodies. what to do. what to do.

we went out to a beautiful restaurant called the Lake Lanier Tea House. the building is a huge log cabin and when we first walked in, i thought, "he would love this place." the food was fabulous. i loved that we sat at a round table. like Camelot, no one was at the "head." no one's face was obscured from another's. we were all equal. we were all seen. we were sisters in the round.

the photos started, of course. flashes. giggles. ordering. talking and talking....

we were loud. i was for a while as well. i know. i was surprised as well. but it felt safe to let a little of myself come out. let me explain that.

i felt safe saying a lot to my tribe. there are things i will never speak of to anyone but Dragon. he knew it all. it takes time to build trust. my Dragon loves me. he loves me and he was fierce. he needed to know these things if our relationship was going to grow as we evolved within our lives. these women i experienced this weekend with are genuine human beings. they are in deep pain and struggling to make sense of it, and why this happened to them in exactly this way and what they are to do from now on. live, of course, but that is a 50 cent word thrown on the table when someone does not know what to say.

i trusted this tribe with several things about myself, but to completely open up and be myself was frightening. i did not want to be too much myself and risk losing them, seeing even one of them turn away. i wish i had the fearlessness to tell you who i really am, who my Dragon saw, but in these last 21 months i have had too many other widows turn on me and turn away from me. i will be myself slowly. until then, i will stay quieter. i want to be part of the tribe for as long as i have breath.

at the Tea House there was a woman who sang. Daryle Ryce. her voice was achingly whiskey and blues and jazz. she held her guitar delicately but firmly; a precious and dear friend who will not forsake you but cannot follow you on their own. they must be carried. she played and sang from having been there. soulful. joyful. mischievous. mournful.

we closed the restaurant down and i walked over to buy one of her CD's. i saw her guitar. it is old. not a few years old but it is maybe the first guitar she ever owned. the case is battered and frayed. i believe her guitar is for her like his dog is to Siddhartha. when Daryle passes away, she will take her guitar. if the guitar is not allowed into Heaven, then she will smile sadly, but a smile all the same, rueful, and thank St. Peter at the Gate. she will walk away carrying her guitar to find another place to play. it will be Heaven's loss.

Daryle herself has the face of an angel. one of St. Michael's legion. she has seen things no woman should ever have had to see. just my impression from looking into her eyes. she played a song for me. i told her i was widowed, that the tribe at the table were all widows. i thanked her for playing "Fly Me To The Moon" even though she was unaware of the significance to me. her husky voice said this: "Sister, I want to play a song for you if you'll let me. Now, honey, It's a sad one but I think you can handle it. We're together on that road and a song is all I can give you."

she played a song of loneliness and misery. she sang it to the air. she sang it to the lake outside the windows. and she sang it to me. i watched her hands grace the strings of her guitar with a loving and familiar touch. they knew the way to the music of heartbreak. i watched her eyes. she was smiling at me as she sang and her eyes got misty. this song was not only for me. it was for herself and she was sharing it. if i never meet her again, i feel that Daryle is a sister in sorrow. i told her i loved her. she told me she loved me. it was expressed as only kindred spirits can when they know their meeting is brief and the only one they may have.

when i am here and i feel the panic rise up inside me; when i feel the familiar pressure on my chest and the crushing weight of my life on my lungs and my shoulders, i will put on a Daryle Ryce CD and listen to her sing to me. somewhere out there, someone else understands.

we went back to the inn and put on pajamas. we congregated in the room of the Goddess Diana to watch a movie about two 9/11 widows who are working to help the widows in Afghanistan. it was moving. it was difficult to watch. two of us had to leave and not finish watching. i was one.

there was one moment in the film when one of the Afghanistan widows said, "we were destined to be widows." all the widows were standing in line waiting their turn for handouts. it hit far too close to home for me. the pressure in my chest was building. my shoulders ached. i am no where close to the hopeless situation that they are in but the begging, it got to me and i did not want to start sobbing, to close my Saturday in such a deluge of tears when it had been filled with art and laughter and good food and music.

the miraculous to me though by Saturday night it should not have been, the tribe understood. my sisters knew that the Storyteller and i were affected and needed to leave the film unfinished. and that was okay. we were not abandoning them. we were only retreating from something that was a little more than we could stand at that moment.

sisters understand. they are intuitive. each of us matter to the other.