finding home

the word home can bring about deep feelings.

we all want a home, to feel at home, we all have ideas of what home is,

of what it looks like.

i have been blessed with the opportunity to create a home for myself.

i am unpacking as fast as my work schedule allows me to.

here is one photo.

 give me a little more time and i will post more.

but back to finding home.

i have my sanctuary now.  it will be where i go to get away from the world.

it's a quiet place IN a quiet location.

just as quietly i love this place.

when i get finished painting and unpacking, it will look like the inside of my heart.

once you see it, you will have seen me.

but home.....

truly home was with him.

in his arms.

in his eyesight.

within the warmth of his smile.

i quietly got through his birthday and our wedding anniversary.

i got through the 5.5 year mark.

i got through another full moon.

i have found my sanctuary here now.

i pray it lasts for a long time.

i need some peace and feeling of safety in my life.

i am still searching for home.

it is him.

so i guess let me say it differently.

i am waiting for home.

i am waiting for the chance to find him.

far too tired ~ part 2 ~ the search for peace

i am struggling.  worries and fears overwhelm me at this time.  i've got things going on at work.  things going on in my personal life.  too much and i am so very tired.

sleep, when it comes, does nothing for me.

personal life:  i've written the VA about my new position, the raise, and i've heard nothing.  i called late last summer and was told that since i wrote the letter, they will process and send me a letter letting me know of any adjustments.  i've still heard nothing and suffer severe anxiety each month, waiting to see if they send me my stipend.  it's going to end.  i know it.  but living in limbo is crushing me.  i struggle and do nothing ~ I DO NOTHING extra.  no movies.  no clothes.  nothing that is not absolutely crucial to my existence.  and i miss fun.

personal life:  i wouldn't mind a friend but the alternative to that is being afraid to find a friend.  haven't had any luck down here with friends.  i'm too poor.  i'm now too busy.  i'm too exhausted to be any good to anyone.  

personal life:  i'm lonely.  i miss him.  i haven't taken off my wedding rings.  i see men coming into the store and i feel nothing.  they are not attractive.  they are not interesting.  nothing stirs inside me.  i miss HIM.  i love him.  i trusted him.  he knew everything about me.  he was too much of everything my heart desired.  he was, flawed as he was, he was too perfect.

personal life:  still working on that quilt.  so much work.  i need to get up the courage to ask her for more money laying out the amount of work she has added to this.  i call this quilt Sisyphus.  i thought i was close and it came rolling back down over the top of me.  so much more work  

work:  i've got a girl who is a part time manager who has become arrogant and a finger-pointer when anything goes wrong.  and it's all her.  at the core of every drama, it's her.  when i speak to her she instantly becomes overly agitated and loud.  she paints herself as a victim and i hate that.  we're going to have a BIG meeting with my boss and my boss's boss, and my other two managers.  it's going to be a meeting of whose going to throw everyone under the bus as far and as fast as she can.  in other words, i think i might have my first drink of alcohol since my diabetes diagnosis immediately after this meeting.

work:  long drive.  longer hours.  young people who have no work ethic.  it's disheartening.

and i am not ungrateful for my job.  i love it.  but this are thorns on roses.  puppies nip.  to make those beautiful flowers grow it must rain.  life is good but people can suck.  love is great and then they die.

i search for peace.  i take too heart too much what people say to me.  i'm not complaining.  i'm relating here what i would curl up beside my beloved husband and say.  i have no other recourse.  it's a way to talk it out and see it.  i read back over what i've written and i can say, "okay, it's out there.  someone knows.  he knows.  i'll find my way.  i'll find guidance, support, my path."

death is an artist.  i wrote this on someone's blog or on Facebook somewhere.  but i think of death now as an artist.  it is a sculptor changing our minds, our way of thinking, molding us into different people than we were before that horrible moment when we turned about and went home alone.

death is a whittler.  it shaves off and out of our lives the people who have closed minds.  it whittles away the people who refuse to understand, or who refuse to stay beside us even while they admit they don't know what we're feeling.  not being able to feel what we are feeling is fine.  admit that and stay with me.  listen to me.  hold my hand.

bring me a cup of hot tea and be silent with me because, as long winded as i can be,

sometimes it still hurts to much to talk.  or worse, i don't know how to put in into words.

would that i had a place where i could go, a shrine or altar that i had created that was simple and profoundly sacred.  i could go there and sit and just be.  not think.  or think.  pray.  sigh.  not read so much as remember poems, psalms, words of wisdom drawn from the myriad of places i've gotten them from.  but i have a place i go to.  that room up there is in my head.  when i close my eyes for even a moment, if i need this place, it's there for me.  i pretend it's all mine in my fantasy house.  i go downstairs and look out the windows at the ocean.  then i turn and light the candles and i contemplate peace.  i try to empty my mind of all the anguish and just focus on the good.  him.  my children.  my dogs.  what i am thankful for.  i try to re-center myself to face all the drama and the worries of THIS world.  

one foot here in this world but my eyes on the later.  i read a book i won't speak to here. it has changed me.  changed my opinion of a few things.  me mostly.  i'll write about it some other time, after my thoughts about it are more cohesive.  

for now, the search for peace continues.  

i wish it for all of you.

unanswerable questions

are you safe and happy?

do you miss me?

can you see me?

if so are you proud of me?

do you still love me?

i've lost so much weight; one third of what i used to weigh.

do you think i'm still pretty, or prettier?

my blonde hair has silver threads through it now.

do you think it looks like moonlight?

are you waiting for me?

can you come get me when it's my time to leave?

were you scared?

could you hear me and understand me?

did it make it easier?

do you know how much i love you?

is it okay for me to live like i am, loving you like i do?

you know i can't do it any other way because i love you so much.

remember what we had?  do you remember the way we were?

how can i live any other way than to live honoring you and simply being the way i am?

i guess that's all.

i miss you.

i wish you could go with me back to the doctor's on Monday.

i'm tired.

i love you.

i have to go to work now.

please watch over me if you're allowed to.

home to the puzzle box ~ my grief at 3 years 3 months

first off, don't be startled with the first "song."  it really is what you're hearing.  i found a fog horn.  keep reading.  it has meaning.

i'm ahead of myself.  it won't be 3 years, 3 months until tomorrow night at midnight, but i have a bit of time this afternoon, taking a break from embroidery work, and i wanted to get my thoughts down.

at this point in my life, i sincerely believe what i wrote up there in gold under my main photo.  i had once thought of my whole life as a journey.  i was arrogant, and so very wrong.  it was simply my life.  now that my Dragon has died, i am truly on a journey.  grief, dealing with his death and all the questions, guilt, and fears that came with it; this is my journey.

in the days and weeks that followed his death i used to ask myself, why did we only get 8 years?  why had all the terrors of my life lead me to the warmth of his love, only to take it away after so short a time?  i told myself, i have convinced myself, that his death was predestined and that his guardian angel was not going to let him die alone.  after the life he lead, the missions he went on as a Marine, all the times he must have wondered, "will i die out here and nobody come claim my body," all the times he came home wounded, the fears he must have had, he died with me holding him, giving him CPR, talking to him, soothing him, telling him he was so very dearly loved.

and it is me left to deal with what's left all alone.

i read once that "death ends a life, but it does not end a relationship, which struggles on in the survivor's mind towards some resolution which it may never find."  in my experience that is true.  my relationship with my husband has not ended.  i still wear my wedding rings.  at this point, i most likely always will.  i cannot take them off without feeling claustrophobic.

i do have my memories of him, of where we walked, of our little place by the ocean, up in the cove.  there was  a small gate off our property that we walked through to get to the beach.

 we had to walk through our gate and across the top of the ridge to get down to the beach because we were set up a bit high.

this view is from the back yard, looking southeast towards Thatcher light.

and this is from the edge of our backyard looking east northeast toward what i always called, my island.

this the view looking out from the den toward "my island" that i saw everyday.  we'd hear the fog horn sound sometimes, especially at night, and know that lonely sound was reaching out to any mariner who was still out there trying to find their way home.  we'd listen to the wind rattle the windows.

i took this set of three photos the day before one Thanksgiving.  a nor'easter was expected that night with high winds.  i loved those nights.

he and i would lay together upstairs in our small bedroom under the eves and snuggle.  we'd hear the ice hit the glass behind our headboard.

i hold onto those memories when i drive the now half hour to work and all i see is concrete and red earth and traffic.  i humbly thank God for my job that pays my way to survive, but when i am back at the apartment with my little Carmen Sophia and my dashing Scootie Wootums, i remember when i could walk them on the beach.  i remember when we would sit and laugh at them bite at the water rushing the sand and rocks.

i remember feeling the sunshine on my skin and the wind in my hair.  i remember the smell of salt and the sound of gulls and water.

oh, and that Thanksgiving morning?  we woke to this.

i miss him terribly.  i miss him and still sometimes cry.  i miss him in songs i hear.  i wish i could tell him things.

i talked to a widow i know who lives across the Pond in Europe, and she agreed with me.  she and i will probably never look for another man.  she is two months longer into her widow journey than i so we are at the same place time-wise, and seem to be at the same place emotionally.

we miss them.  we are doing what we can to make this journey tolerable.  she in her way.  me in mine.

i look for peace.  i try to create it when i cannot find it.  and i tell myself that i'm doing alright when what i feel is sort of the opposite.  i am lonely, but not for anyone but him.  only he will do.  i look at myself and say, "you're out of the box."  we were a puzzle that had two pieces.  he is back in the box.  i am still out here in the world struggling to make sense of what's left.  he got to where he was supposed to be, but it was much too soon for me.  he left me behind.  our timelines were off.

in every life there comes a journey.  maybe we think we choose it, but i don't think so.  i think it chooses us.  i am what i am making of myself with what life has left me with, which, compared to what i had, isn't much.  well, it certainly isn't as scenically beautiful.

i miss the ocean.  i miss the snow.  i miss the wind, water, gulls, and the fog horn.  i sometimes wonder if, when i dream i hear that fog horn, it really is sounding off up there and is reaching out to me trying to call me home.  home to the ocean's edge.   home to the beach i knew and loved.

or maybe that fog horn i still here in my mind and in my heart is letting me know that it is out there in the fog i cannot see through, the fog of what's to come; letting me know i have a sound to walk towards so i can find my way home.........

home to the puzzle box where my darling, beautiful Dragon's piece sits and waits for me.