the Bunny Legacy

you know her. you might love her. some do. some think she's a little off the wall, but that is the nature of my grief. she is the very expression of my grief. she is part of my art. she is how i cope with losing the only person who knew everything about me and never flinched. she is how i stay sane.

you've seen her completely fall apart.

you've seen her endure those awful anniversaries and birthdays and holiday

with a pensive bowing of her head.

you know the deep, forever love she has for her Dragon.

you know she works hard at giving people a good time at work.

what you don't know about her would fill a book. she is my legacy, i think.

she is all i can leave to the world.

Traveling Bunny ~ Ambassador of Grief and Whimsy.

traveling the world to touch hearts and souls with her singularly winsome ways.

Beach Bunny ~ my alter ego, me, the public face of the woman who clings to the shadows

like a convicted felon.

Bunny in all her guises and poses.

Bunny, who says what i cannot say.

Bunny, whose face is all most people know of me.

Bunny, the brave one, the courageous one who faces the world armed only

with her soft, fuzzy face and her understanding eyes.

she has taken on a life of her own. she was the first thing i bought, beyond food, after my Carl died. she was naked then. i could not dress her because my grief was so raw and naked.

how do you clothe such pain?

black does not celebrate the man he is. color was all wrong for the drowning Bunny i was.

still am.

but i am still breathing so i must be existing.

and existing is exhausting so maybe i should try something to get me through the day.

voila! Bunny bought a sweater.

Bunny bought a t-shirt and jeans and decided to decorate them. just to see.

then Bunny bought angel wings and a white dress for Christmas.

and then Bunny bought a bunny. and another.

all their faces called to me.

all their eyes cried out to belong.

i need a family to live with me. my children are grown. i am alone so much of the time.

it has become crazy. it has become, there are no words, and yet,

there they are.

Bunny's little warren.

Bunny has plans for them all.

Bunny is set to buy two more to gift to two friends.

little clothes are being made.

little ideas are forming in Beach Bunny's head.

creativity.

art.

the art of my grief.

did i mention that this keeps me sane?

because i want him. i want him so much.

but all i can do is play out this life and do so with honor and integrity.

all i can do is try to find some way to leave something behind.

it looks like it's going to be a stuffed Bunny who has a soul.

fear

"no one told me that grief is a lot like fear." ~ C. S. Lewis.

i have both this morning. grief and fear. mine are exclusive from each other. Jan. 1 is my deadline now. he is through and there is nothing i can do. do not tell me what i could do. there are things behind closed doors that i am afraid to make public. accept that i am between a rock and a hard place.

i need the VA to come through. i need a full time job in a city that has closed 16 libraries and are working on a plan to close 12 schools and consolidating others affecting the teachers and staff of 37 schools. how do i find a job when i did not graduate college? i left to care give to my mother who died. then i needed a job first, and one thing followed another.

i am nothing. i have not amounted to anything other than what you see here. i am a mom. i create. i sew. i am tired. i am getting older. i have nothing. i am nothing. i have been betrayed in business dealings and most definitely in my personal life. what is left? nothing. that would be me.

i had so many dreams when i was small. and my dreams were small. i wanted a home and a family. i thought i would be safe married. my husband would protect me from my parents. i would be able to take care of my family and my home. i would have a garden. i would be an artist in and around being a wife and mother. 1950's style dream world that blew up in my face on my wedding night. i was alone with fear and worry and stress and self-worthlessness such as i had not previously known even during my childhood with a volatile mother.

i met a Dragon and we took care of my children and were so poor in the process. we love each other so much. he is everything to me, including protection and another person to help shoulder the pain of merely living. i miss him. i need him more now than i ever have. but he died and i am left alone again with fear and worry and stress and self-worthlessness only i am old and tired and have too many decades built up of feeling like this. my shoulders hurt. my eyes are tired. i sometimes find it hard to get a breath. and what's the point? it hurts anyway.

i need the VA to come through. i call. i write. they say they are working on it. now i have to call them to say, "please, hurry. please. hurry."

i am embroidering a beach on a Memory quilt. i am keeping the young man in my thoughts as my needle goes through the fabric. it must be colorful. it must be peaceful. i want him to look at it, his eyes drawn to the vivid sunset behind the palm trees and be soothed that maybe his dad is there, hanging out, biding his time until the family is reunited; however they believe, however they dream and wish. always how the family wants it.

all i will ever have are the dreams i protect. i am getting far too tired to protect myself anymore. the waves will come and roll me over and over and there is nothing i can do but try to swim to the surface.

what is this anyway? is this life? scratching out an existence in the dirt? i am not alive anymore. there is not even meager happiness. my children are grown. i see my son when he can. i see my daughter once a week. we talk on the phone but i am not involved in their every moment like i was when they were young and still in my care every moment of every day. what kind of life is left for me without him being here to help me, protect me, share with me, keep me warm, listen to me, make me laugh, let me listen to his beautiful voice, hold my hand, touch my hair, love me. i am still so wrapped up in him. and i am so afraid of what is going to happen to me now that he is no longer here to help advocate for me. to help me try to have a life instead of the existence of something akin to a dermestid beetle. i preform a service, like said beetle, but no one wants to take one home and have it sitting on the sofa, or hold a conversation with it. just let it do its job and walk away.

i want to feel safe like i felt when i was in his arms. and since i can never, ever, ever again be in his arms, i just need what most people take for granted. a place to live. food to eat. forget health care. forget the pursuit of happiness. i had it with him and i am not greedy asking for more when i need to make sure i have a place to live and food to eat.

see what i mean about fear? terror? gut-churning panic?

Dragon, where are you now that i need you so?

~~~~~~~~

addendum ~

i just got off the phone with the VA. they are in the "final stages" of processing. i told her my situation. she was very sympathetic and put me on hold to try and give me a ballpark on timing. 10 - 40 days i will hear. it is in the "checking to make sure the information is correct and approval" stage.

please, pray for me, even if you do not believe it in. i do. i need a miracle, a very, small miracle. and i will not ask for anything else. i just want to survive. no big dreams anymore. no goals. i just want to survive.

the dreamer spies the dawn

i have always been a dreamer, a bit too much of a philosopher, and an observer of life and people to the point where i have had to be brought into my own life very rudely.

if i am truly honest with myself, i should have tried to have been a teacher of philosophy and gained tenure with some small liberal arts college. preferably one with lots of trees and mountains, or a college by the sea.

i am a dreamer and as a little girl i had my hopes for my adult life. i wanted to love and be loved. i wanted children and a small house, a cottage really with a yard large enough for a garden. rural was my preference but with love, ah, you all know; you go where your love is.

as a little girl, i had an idea of my love. i wanted G.I. Joe. the Barbie my mother bought me always dated and eventually married G.I. Joe. never Ken. he was too ambiguous. Ken seemed to slick and soft. pasty boy. Joe had a tan and muscles and could protect Barbie. you have to remember my childhood was one of not feeling safe or loved, so Joe was going to come in and rescue me. by 12, i knew it was up to me so i studied and graduated high school early. i was steadily moving through college right up until my mother was diagnosed with cancer. then i quit school and moved into the hospice to live with her and care for her so that she did not die alone.

i met a Ken, not G.I. Joe, but i cared deeply for him, for his cool manner, and his financial stability. we married only for me to find out slowly that he could never love me. my thoughts about Ken dolls had been prophetic after all.

and then i met my G.I. Joe, my Dragon. he was everything i had ever imagined, read about, dreamed about, and wanted. funny thing. he wanted me for the same reasons. kismet.

such a fine man with dreams of his own. and they matched mine. almost too late in finding each other, we lived for each moment we were given. we talked and planned and dreamed out loud incorporating each other's quirks into our sketches for our life together.

we would live by the ocean. there was a home that needed saving, the old fort at the end of the Neck. it was not on our cove but we could walk there easily. the fort was too unique to pass up simply because it did not sit on the cove.
and i would have my studio there. my sketches were detailed and in color. yes, i took the time to fill in with colored pencils.

they are now rolled up in a tube in the closet. i have been unable to look at them. but, dreamer that i am, i do not have to look at them. i know what i drew. i remember all that we wanted to do to the place. i can hear his deep voice in my head speaking about it, even with my eyes open.
he was a dreamer like me, a philosopher, a profound thinker, and one thing more. he was the adventurer i never was. the story of his life allowed me to go all over the world with him. i saw war, walked through jungles, and parachuted out of planes in the night. i ate unusual food and heard him speak languages i never would have heard without him. he introduced me to the wildness that lived inside him that gave him the courage to say "yes" to all the different things our country asked him to do. and through his stories i went with him when he recalled it all.
days were something we welcomed together and sunsets meant nights tangled up together. he returned from his last mission with a fever for holding on to me even more than before. i have recently learned he almost died that last time, closer than he had ever been to being killed. he never told me. i only accepted his need for touch with welcome arms. i love being in his arms, having his face in my neck, and his whispers in my ear.

and now comes the dreamer's dawn. i miss him.

i read. Lord Byron, John Donne, Yeats, Rilke, Gibran. i read a lot. mood reading. Oscar Wilde wrote: "A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world."

my Dragon died on the night of a full moon. it is coming up on 16 months. i read what widows and widowers write to forum questions and i do not feel any compatibility with them. i am not finding any small smiles. i am not coming across any little joys to light my way. i believe there is a bond between my Dragon and i that precludes me ever finding a man that i could feel comfortable with. there are too many Ken dolls out there. the true, old breed of G.I. Joe that would be my peer is a once in a lifetime thing. i had my once in a lifetime with my Dragon.

the forums provide me with enough insight to some of the more vocal others that i feel far apart from them. they are only a infinitesimal slice of widows and widowers but i know i am not capable of joining in with my despondency. i would most likely be ripped to shreds.

my life circumstance is such that it is inhibiting my grieving. arrested grief as it were. can there be such a thing? can so much happen to a recently bereaved person that it hinders the grief process?

often i feel like i am still sitting in the nether-week between his death and his funeral. i am numb with terror at how to survive. i am crippled with the loss of him. never to be in his arms. never to hear his voice coax me along, giving me his support. never to let my fingertips touch his face, his beard, his brow.

in some ways i feel like i have been pushed down a gauntlet that is lined with people armed with canes ready and capable of striking out at any slightest perceived error. i have been struck many times since my Dragon died. if he knew, he would be pissed. he is dreamer but also a man of action. as for me? i am exhausted. life tired. battle weary. 1000 yard stare tired.

i am a dreamer and i am now facing the dawn alone. the moon has set and my Dragon has flown. it is dawn on a world i do not care for.

"Once I beheld a splendid dream,

A visionary scene of bliss:

Truth! -- wherefore did they hated beam

Awake me to a world like this?"

~ Lord Byron

i love my Dragon, my beautiful dreamer, the keeper of my heart, and the other half of my soul. how could they have parted us so cruelly? how could they have taken just you and left me here alone?

the dreamer spies the dawn and has to turn her eyes away. the landscape is too harsh.

is this living or merely existing?

i'm not sure if i'm actually living or merely existing now. i feel like i'm drifting in a ven diagram of three overlapping circles. one circle is fear ~ financial and health. another circle is loneliness and hesitation to call anyone to simply talk, to let someone know i'm out here. the third circle is one of shock and numbness from the toll life has taken so far. fifty-one and i'm alone, without money, and hope is slim. all these circles overlap each other in that slice that is grief. it is the largest by far and the heaviest to sit in. i try to move out of this diagram but there is no map. it's a labyrinth of twists and sudden walls. i can't see over it and i can't find a way under it. i'm walking and walking but i get clubbed in the knees almost every day.

i am short of money, again. i am rationing food, again. my ex has decided i need to learn a lesson so he won't make another payment of the money he owes me until the first of the month. i've done it before. i can do it again, but i'm so tired. i'm tired of living. it's so hard. without the strength of my Dragon, i feel myself sliding down to my knees all the time.

it's ironic how much i want and how little i think i deserve. i want a small home, a townhouse maybe with a small enclosed courtyard for my two little dogs to play in. i want a small car so i can drive myself to the store. i want my quilts to sell, my sock animals to sell, my photographs to sell. i want my novels to be accepted for publication. i want to provide for myself so i don't have to make 5 days of food stretch for 14 days, or until he decides he will lower himself to make a payment.

i'm scared all the time. it goes up into a state of panic every other day or so, but i wrestle it down. i draw on my memories of my Dragon's stories of what he went through as a Marine. i draw on his strength from what i know he endured and transform it into my own strength.

there's no other option but to keep going for as long as life lets me. it's been taking these big bear swipes at me for what seems like forever. i want something good to happen financially, just once. i wished it could have happened while my Dragon lived. he deserved so much more than he got. he deserved a long, quiet, peaceful retirement. if you are a person of faith, it can be argued that he got it. that he's in Heaven right now with no physical pain and a soul at peace from the horrors of this life. i just wish he could have gotten some peaceful time with me here in this life. it's such a beautiful world. mountains. ocean. clouds. sunsets. the smell of bar-be-que. the sight of your daughter trying on her wedding dress. the sound of your son on the phone laughing.

i miss him. he's so handsome. his smile is so contagious. he laughs with all that he is. i could go on but it wouldn't matter to anyone but me. let me just say that to stand next to him was a powerful feeling for me. i cherish him so much. i just wish he were still here with me. i sit in this little apartment and wish for all the world that he were here for me to talk to.

going through each day in fear, loneliness, hesitation to let anyone who knows me how bad it really is, all the shocked numbness that he's dead, and all this heavy, oppressive grief is not really a life. i get up and i breathe, sort of. i dedicate myself to work all day, long hours to try and get it all done so i can have some more money to try to get a foothold, only to have to be realistic and know i'll never catch a break. he was my break. being in his arms was my one break from the tragedy that is my life. he protected me. he carried me at times. he made me laugh. he loved me and there was nothing that felt greater. having his full attention on me made me feel whole. i felt alive.

i answered my own question. is this living or merely existing? he's gone. the one person who cared every minute of every day what i thought, what i felt; who sought me out and wanted my love, he died. so i'm not really alive. i'm existing right now, and for as long as this fear lasts, of dealing with the ex and his payback for the divorce by using his weapon of financial oppression, i can't grieve fully. i can't live. it's so hard and so lonely without him. my mantra isn't working anymore. i'll have to make up another one.

money. i need some. i'm supposed to get a thumb splint. i'll get food before i'll get that. new glasses. you have to shake your head and laugh sometimes, but it's a bitter laugh, hollow if it's audible. i'm out of Aleve. even cutting them in half i didn't make them last. damn. things i can only write about. could never say out loud.

i haven't been able to stay at the widow's meetings the last two times. if i speak, i don't think i'd be allowed to say it all. and if i got cut off, i'd be so embarrassed. i'd hang my head and weep. they'd think it was for him, but it would be for me.

no, i'm not living anymore. i died, i think, when he died. i saw my future without him and knew what it would be like. not pessimism. it was survival skills kicking in. i was being realistic. and it's played out exactly like i thought.

i miss him. i need him. there's so little left for me to work with. i'm tired and in physical pain. if i could just get some food and some Aleve in me. and that stupid splint. i tried it on. God, such relief.

well, pity party needs to end. i need to get back to work. it's only 10 PM. i can get in at least two more hours before i completely play out.

if you got this far, thanks for reading. i'll be okay. okay is better than not okay. i'm the Dragon's wife, after all. he never gave up. neither will i. i want him to smile at me.