a wilder frame of mind

first off, i have a link for you. above. lighthouses amid storms at sea. lovely music. wildly beautiful video. go get an iced tea then sit down and click on the link. enjoy.

i have been very down lately. afraid. tired. worried. i fell off the grief tilt a whirl. i want him back so badly, to touch him, to caress his face, and hear his voice. i want to approach him gently, eyes meeting eyes, and softly kiss his lips so i can both hear and feel him make that sound he always did when i approached him like that. his whole body would go still. his voice was deep, almost guttural at times, and when i barely separated our lips, he would deeply sigh. being with him was as much a spiritual experience as a physical one.

but i need to pull myself up and out of this. i am alone so much that there is no one to check on me to see if i am getting better. and my poor daughter, i cannot wallow as i have been. so from out of despair to melancholy with a hand up to wistful, i want to show you my island and try to briefly explain why it called to us, and to me now.

see it out there? it's not far. you can swim to it if you want to. the ocean gets up to about 48 degrees out there by the close of summer. you can make it. i suggest Crisco under a wet suit. it worked for us. we went at low tide so the current wasn't as bad. i could not take the camera though but, hell, just being out there was what i imagine i'd feel like walking into the Sistine Chapel.

if you put your back to the mainland, all you see is water and sky. you can lift your arms and smell nothing but salt and fresh air. i'm sure at times you can smell dead skates and crabs that the gulls eat. i don't want to romanticize the place. it's an island.
but you can see forever. the old keeper's house is a fixer upper, falling down, but we, well, i am a hard worker.
there is only one place where a boat can dock so we can, i can, know when someone is coming to call. and dogs. i'd have my Carmen Sophia and Scootie Wootums, but i'd also have a couple of big, scary dogs who would patrol the island like my own lovely hound of the Baskervilles.
all the weather hits out there first. the first breeze. the first hint of snow. the first rays of warmth from a morning sun. it all hits out there first. me first. me first. very preschool but i have never been a first in line kind of person. so, on the island, simply because of the grace of geography, it would be me first.
me and my Dragon. my Dragon and me. a couple. a pair. two halves of a whole. just because you cannot see him doesn't mean he isn't there.

alone on my island ~ a poem to comfort me

if i am to be this much alone, let me be alone by the sea

where all the silent nothing i have can be comforting to me

if i am to live a quiet life, let it be on rock and beach

so sun and cloud and wind and stars all seem within my reach.

if my home is surrounded with ocean and sky then i could stand to live alone

so i can feel a part of the earth with sun-warmed skin and hair wind blown.

let me live alone on my island where my home is the only one that stands

on land of rock and scrub and gulls and waves crashing up on the sand.

the lighthouse can be my sole guardian to keep all the bad dreams at bay

it’s light can caress my home at night and brighten the days that turn gray.

my island will stand against the wildest of waves that roar in wild from the sea

the majesty of which inspires awe and belief that my love can return to me.

let my Dragon fly in on the wild night wind and come to my arms like before

and we’ll love as we loved before death took him and left me alone on the shore.

alone in a city is no way to live so let me return to my island small

and there i can live alone where i have all of nature that enthralls.

only on my island can i be free from expectation and strife.

only on my island can i hope to have any kind of a life.

Heaven ~ where and what

see that tree that stands alone in the fog? that's me. i took this photo with my Dragon standing behind me. i thought the tree looked heartbreakingly poetic. my Dragon thought she looked stalwart. little did i know then that that tree would become symbolic of me. my heart is broken. i can sometimes throw a rhyme together. but i am not very stalwart. i am, however, becoming stoic. people never cease to dismay me.

but i am not stoic when i think about Heaven. it was the second thing that hit me when they brought me in to sit with him after he died. first, i thought, "he's so quiet. he's gone. he really left." then i thought about where he was at that moment. was he still lingering? was he seeing me see him? did he know what i did with my wedding ring?

my rings were made by our favorite artist, Jes MaHarry. my wedding ring is hammered copper with a gold heart and silver leaves. it speaks to all the years we were planning together, all the passing seasons, of our hair turning silver with our age, and of eternity. when my Dragon slipped the ring on my finger, the heart was turned outward to him. sitting there holding his hand after he died, i talked to him. just him and me. i took my ring off and turned the heart so that it faced inward, to me. i told him i would always be his wife. my heart is closed off from ever wanting anyone else. no one can walk where the Dragon walked. no one can come close to what he means to me. it wouldn't be fair to anyone to let them try.

i've been told i'm speaking out of turn, that it's too early. i will be 52 years old next month. i've been through all kinds of hell that i would never touch on here. i know my own mind and heart. i will be the Dragon's wife here in this life until i stop breathing.

but i am lost without him here. and where is he? i've always had faith. but then it was easy. "sure there's a Heaven. it's a beautiful place where there's no more pain, or fear, or death. we'll all be together in Heaven."

well, a book i just read said, "there is no marriage is Heaven. you will know your spouse but in the way God intended. but you will not be married to him. you will each have your service to God in Heaven."

i sobbed. not married to my Dragon? what kind of Heaven is that? i have and am combing dogma, scripture, doctrines, everything i can find to get some kind of sane hold on Heaven. but the Bible speaks in symbolism and analogies. it's cryptic. we're not meant to know. and my fear is so tangible. i've tried to be decent all my life. i've prayed. i've sacrificed. i've never sought vengeance. i've ducked my head and turned away from vexing people, from people who would and did hurt me. i pray for forgiveness of my sins, any sins my children may commit, and the sins of my Dragon. i pray for him very often.

i'm alone. always alone. i can do that. the dogs think i'm talking to them.

so why would i be punished? why would i not be allowed to be his wife? why will we be separated? we always worked better as a team.

it is my hope, what i cling to, that God gives us each the Heaven we pray for. i want the sun to clear the fog from around me.

i want it to light the path that i feel most comfortable on and am most familiar with, the driveway to our house by the ocean. this one or something like it:
i hope i get to see a quasi-familiar place that brings such gladness to my soul that i shine brighter than a womanNshadows could ever imagine of shining on earth.
i want to experience all seasons God made. i want to be with my Dragon. maybe God would allow me to paint some sunrises, or sew quilts for the babies that go to Heaven, like my first baby. i wonder if i'll get to ask questions; like ask my mother why she hit me so much, why she made me so afraid of her.

but mostly i just want to be with my Dragon, and to have my first baby back. Quinn. it's been so long since i've told anyone his name. my gift to myself. twenty-six years ago, he was taken from me. i'd like to hold him again. AND i'd like to know that he knows who i am and that he will be allowed to still be my son.

i wish i knew something that someone knows that gives me some kind of faith that families can be families in Heaven. no marriage? no families? how could that book say that? why did i read it?

i should just turn around and go shoot myself in the foot. i really didn't need to read that right now. i was searching for something to hang on to. now i'm struggling to just hang on.
i just have to calm down and think of my island and my Dragon waiting for me. and Quinn. oh, Lord. i have to go lay down now.

the lighthouse dream

I’ve been having a dream, essentially the same one with only small details that vary. It is mystical in the way some old ghost stories are. Not scary, more woven from the longing I feel, possibly fantasies that my own mind shelters me in since I still cry before I go to sleep. I am a woman of faith. I will not proselytize but as a parenthetical reference I need to say that I say prayers plus have a conversation with God and my Dragon because it is solace for me. I tell you this only to expose my frame of mind as I try to find sleep. To distance myself from my dream I’m going to tell it in story form. I call it my “Lighthouse Dream.” The first photo is my shrine to the months that have past. My Dragon died on February’s full moon. I missed March because of tears and grief. I got the others because I am compelled. The second and third photos are of the island.

The Dragon and his womanNshadows had been living on the knife’s edge of poverty. All the money either of them earned was first allocated to her children. The Dragon’s son had been keeping his father at arm’s length ever since his father had married and returned all the money his father sent. It was a very sad but true fact that the boy’s mother had greatly disliked the fact that the Dragon had found someone to love, and someone who loved him. At every turn the young man would relate some statement that his mother had said, some awful perversion of the truth that cannot be unspoken. The Dragon had tried to reason with his son. He’d tried to speak to the complex emotions of a long ago divorce without speaking against the woman who had mothered his son, but there are some things in this world that are impossible to do. There are some minds that choose to remain closed. So the Dragon had grown sadder as the years passed and found family in one not exactly of his own creation.

Fortunately for the Dragon he had been accepted into this little family of three, his womanNshadows and her son and daughter. He felt blessed to be with them and knew only love and tenderness with them. The womanNshadows’s daughter claimed him as her own “true” father while her son called him for “guy” advice, respecting and honoring all that the Dragon had to teach in a way that the Dragon wished his own son had been able to do. In spite of his sadness over what he thought of as the “loss of my son,” he felt truly happy for the first time in his life.

The womanNshadows adored her Dragon. She grieved for him his agony over his son. She listened to him, offered advice if he asked, or kept her silence if she felt he desired only to vent. She kept telling him he had done all he could, and urged him to keep trying, to never give up because one never knew when the young man would escape his mother and learn to think for himself. She worshiped her Dragon and most every day thanked him for his generosity, his love, for just the miracle of him wanting to be with her. She made sure that she expounded on all his virtues to the point where she would see him blush and know that his smile came from his heart. She made sure he felt every word of praise as her truth, her gift to him.

As was said, the Dragon and the womanNshadows were very poor. They took care of her children first then scraped together whatever was left for them to live. He never minded and she always felt safe with him no matter where they ended up. They claimed it was a gypsy life they had chosen for themselves rather than one of poverty that life had forced on them. They danced on the beach. They collected shells, driftwood, and sand dollars like some people determinedly collect Coach purses or clothes and jewelry. Together they lived in a 130-year-old house on a bluff that overlooked a cove. From their bedroom window, the old wooden floors would creak, as they would stand there looking out to sea, across thousands of miles of ocean, directly, as they teased each other, to Northern Spain. That long fetch across the Atlantic brought storms with heavy waves and nothing to block their fury. Immense amounts of water would crash heavily into the granite coastline and the Dragon would watch over his womanNshadows as she ventured out on the rocks to take pictures.

Shortly after they had moved into the old house and started haunting the beach, the womanNshadows fell in love with the solitary island just off the coast. On it was the lighthouse that still flashed every three seconds and had the fog horn that blasted for the fishermen and lobstermen who plied their trade out beyond the Selvages. The lightkeeper’s house was falling down. The island abandoned from the 1970’s after the light went automated. It is a lonely island with nothing but prickly beach roses and small thorny brush growing waist high. Gulls and heron, terns and ravens had claimed it as theirs, but it was the wind that truly owned the island. It was, still is, an austere place where no one is allowed to go. Heavy fines are levied on anyone who tries to visit the island. This is because of the crevices that the ocean and the weather had created. It is a dangerous place for those who are arrogantly careless. It would be perfect for a woman from the shadows and her Dragon who never took anything for granted. The other odd thing about the island was that it seemed to have an invisible caul around it dampening any radio or cell phone signals. The Coasties who still maintained the lighthouse had stories about the place if anyone cared to listen. The womanNshadows and her Dragon listened.

A year long photographic study of the island gave her and her Dragon a vivid image of it even though they had never been granted permission to row out. They often dreamed of living there. Talking about saving the house and going solar, the Dragon had been fully vested in his woman’s fantasy of creating their own sanctuary out there, away from people, away from anyone who might try to hurt them. They would live there alone, the two of them, needing only each other. The woman could sail or drive a boat with the best of them and there was literally nothing the Dragon couldn’t do. He’d lived off the land many times during his years, through all his missions as a Marine. He would be able to create a wonderful life for his wife, his love, his womanNshadows out on the island. Then she could literally stand on the safety of their front porch and take all the photographs she wanted. He would have her safe in a world of his creation, of God and the wind and water’s creation. She would be able to be herself, to bloom, and he would keep her warm and well loved and so very safe. It was a dream that they comforted themselves with; just as soon as the kids graduated college, just as soon as all the bills got paid, one last mission out of the country to earn enough extra money to help out their son, her son who had turned to the Dragon’s in need of money for a medical issue, and then they would move heaven and earth to try to obtain the island as their home.

One week before Valentine’s Day, the Dragon’s heart gave out. His great heart seized suddenly in what his “daughter” later called a “covert mission orchestrated by God.” The Dragon who had once roamed the earth as a warrior for his country, and whose body ached down to his bones from all the clashes and wounds he’d survived, could not survive this final attack. He closed his eyes and died.

For his womanNshadows, the whole world went dark and the only light she sees now, the only one she looks at comes from the full moons; like the one that shone so silvery cold on the night her Dragon died. She prays that he never heard her crying for him. She hopes he never knew a moment of fear or pain, or regret.

Now the Dragon’s woman is alone in a world that seems to forget widows can hurt long after their husbands have died. She has dreamed of him. She had not dreamed of him. Have there been signs she’s afraid to cling to? All she has is the island and the metaphor it represents now. She looks for meaning to her life where the absence of the Dragon has drained her from all desire, at times, to continue. She looks for light in this dark sea of grief. She looks for the lighthouse.

The full moon calls to her. And in her dreams, so does her island with the lighthouse. Lately, when she manages to sleep at all, she wakes on the island. She knows it by heart so her dreams take her there. She’s on the island walking, talking to the Dragon. He is there with her, just out of sight, but she can hear him and she can feel him. The stars shine down on her from far away, so far away that if they have died, she doesn’t know it yet. She can still make her wishes. The light from the lighthouse is her permanent nightlight to fight off the dark that tries to tear at her sense of security. The lightkeeper’s house has been saved by the Dragon’s hands and there she lives with her dogs, her camera, and her sewing. She lives there with her Dragon. He is everywhere she looks. His photos are on the walls. His shoes and clothes hang in the closet. His voice is in her ear and his wings, his great and strong arms are wrapped around her.

Every time the wind blows, which on the island is all the time, it is her Dragon moving to be close to her, surrounding her with his presence, and telling every cell in her body that she is not alone. He is there with her. He never left. He is at peace, therefore so is she.

Once she manages to fall asleep, it is hard to wake her because she is far away. Once she is awake, she feels immense sadness that it was all just a dream but she carries the idea of it with her all through the day. She can momentarily close her eyes and see the lighthouse beam so white cutting through the darkest blackouts. She knows what it would feel like to have that solitary existence of a life on the island with her Dragon, just her and him. The constant wind would wipe clean any bad thoughts and push away any bad people that might try to take from what the womanNshadows and the Dragon share out there on their island.

The lighthouse is the draw. Like a moth to a flame it calls to her. When she closes her eyes she tells herself that at first it will be dark, but then there will be that beacon of light reaching out to her, flashing from the island, drawing her home.

The idea can make the days bearable.

and then there was one

this island is off our cove. it has a name but my Dragon and i named it Isla (insert the Spanish of my name here). we always wanted to try to buy it from the Audobon Society since they never took care of it. the Coast Guard never maintained the lighthouse anymore either. there are unremarkably electronic bouys floating in the water for that now. since my Dragon has died, the island is being given away to anyone who will rebuild, maintain, and commit to live there for at least five years, but they'd love eight. they want daily readings on weather and bird activity. a simple observation of some science data typed into a computer every day. damn it all to Hell. we would have done that in a heartbeat. i am crush and somewhere my Dragon is roaring in frustration.

"man was born to live, to suffer, and to die and what befalls him is a tragic lot, but we must, dear Fox, deny it all along the way." ~ Thomas Wolfe

it sounds like good advice but what it is, is avoidance. i can no more deny that my Dragon has died than i can deny the pain that i am living with because of it. i am alone. i have to deal with the fact that he is gone every minute of every day. and every night.

i was born alone. i did the best to get by as quietly as i could. i was never a noisy person. it was a particular skill of mine to be able to go undetected through a gathering, a room, my life. in certain social situations, i can raise reticence to an art form. but i have always been able to write. i just never say it out loud. writing is a solitary journey of which i am very much at home.

in time, though, i became the mother of two children. the Three Musketeers. i was Athos, the one who carried the hidden sorrow, the melancholy one who took care of the younger two. but then a fourth came to join us, a Dragon; a seasoned veteran to lead us, to guide us, whose boot was the last one left standing in the dirt after we three had entered the safety of the house. it was the Dragon who always closed and locked the door.

the two younger Musketeers grew up and left on quests of their own, to start their own lives. it was me and my Dragon left in our home by the ocean. we were wrapped up in each other. we are each other's best friend, confidant, lover.

the February moon was full. it was four below outside but the Dragon and i were warm in our room. we had finished our pre-bed rituals and the lights were out. there was our kiss, slow, heartfelt. i had a slight headache and the Dragon was tired. i settled my head on his shoulder. my fingers were laced in his hand.

"i love you. good night."

"i love you, too."

i had no idea those would be our final words. seven minutes was all it took to bring my Dragon down.

and then there was one.

how empty my life is now that the Dragon has passed. while living, oh, Lord, you have to believe me, he was larger than life. his stories of his exploits as a warrior were the stuff of legends. he'd shake his head and blush at my awe at his abilities, but his life story is truly incredible. and he always came home to me. now that he isn't here to temper my hero-worship, he has become mythic.

i am separated from him by something i cannot understand. i am depressed. i sew. i try to sleep. it's always fitful and i wake up exhausted. and then i sew. if i didn't have the sewing, i think i would sleep for 22 hours a day.

i think of him. all the time. but i cannot "deny it all along the way." he has died and i have to deal with it, even though i am beside myself, even though i am devastated.

but maybe tonight i will fall asleep a little sooner than i usually do. maybe my Dragon of a man will come visit me. if i dream i can forget. for a little while i am not alone.

forgetting for a while isn't the same thing as denying the truth of what's happened.

{no one has accepted the terms of living on the island. it's too austere. it's too lonely. for me and the Dragon, it's perfect. for me alone, it's too dangerous. with good sense, the terms demand it be two people, no children under the age of 17.}