happy anniversary, my love

"may you live a thousand years, and i a thousand less one day, that i may never know that you have passed away."

i live loving you. i will die loving you. there can be no one but you. it's not that i refuse to try to move on. i am moving forward in my life, with you on my mind. it's not that i refuse to try and find love again. i had done that, with you. i have a fairly gracious outlook on life. i look out on life believing you wait for me.

it's not the years i have lived so much as the mileage. i have seen. i have experienced. i know my heart. i know my soul. i know i want only you.

so.....

"may you live a thousand years, and i a thousand less one day, that i may never know that you have passed away."

but you did die first. and it has been more than one day.

still......

still......

all i want is you.

happy anniversary, my beloved Dragon.

with love, your wife.

my wedding anniversary

"once in a while, right in the middle of an ordinary life, love gives us a fairy tale." ~ anonymous

it's August 11th, my love. our anniversary. we always started it in each others arms so today is already a harsh jolt. i am alone.

i'd sit and watch you make breakfast for me. no breakfast in bed for then i wouldn't be able to watch you cook. we would talk or plan what we wanted to do with our day. i'd watch you, clean up a bit after you to help, but for the most part you wanted to wait on me. i got my own breakfast this morning, as i do every morning since you died.

on our anniversary we'd plan a long walk, whether through the woods, down on the beach, or across the rocks and cliffs high above the ocean, we walked. you'd find rocks, leaves, wildflowers, shells and sometimes the miracle sand dollar that is so difficult to find. we won't find anything together today. i'm not going anywhere today.

supper would be a repeat of breakfast. tonight, i can't think that far. i don't know what i'll do here alone tonight.

and after supper we always sat together and remembered our wedding vows. we'd get our saved little papers and read them again to each other. my vows were for the promise of my hand, my heart, and my thoughts, my whole life. i also promised you one more thing.

"all these things are mortal so i promise you one more thing. i promise to give my soul to you so that you are not alone. never alone."

you told me you were never good with words but, my dear, you were so very often better than i ever could hope to be. my writing is flowery, lyrical. yours is to the point and oh, so heartfelt. your vows to me were: "i love you. i want you. you are my whole world. i thought of you as mine the moment i saw you and held my breath until i saw myself in your eyes. i'll never leave you. i'll always be with you because i'll always want to be with you. you are the woman of my dreams, the one i've been waiting for. and now, i may call you what i've wanted to call you since the day we were introduced and have longed to say. wife."

you would gift me with a story from your secret past, speaking to the danger and adrenalin rush. you would see how in awe i am of you and shake your head and laugh. i'd tell you no spy novel could be better written than the story of your life. john le Carre would be envious of what you've seen and know.

then it would be my turn. i'd give you a book i'd written. a small thing, always a short story. the continuing tale of the Dragon and the womanNshadows, of their love and how a fairy tale could not speak to such a marriage. of how Shakespeare could only come close to describing the depth of our love.

i have kept them all. i haven't been able to read them and i doubt it would be good for me to do so today. it would be akin to a howitzer to the heart. but i took a photo of a few of them to post with my note to you. i couldn't let our anniversary go by without a bit of a story about us. it's too deeply ingrained. you deserve to have your memory honored, the story of our love and marriage told over and over. you deserve only the best because you are the best.

that you died did not mean you broke your promise to never leave me. my love for you is such that even the deep and abiding grief i feel could not tarnish it with anger towards you. you didn't want to go. you were taken from me.

i love you, Dragon. i miss you so terribly that the physical ache threatens to bring me to my knees with my head in the dirt. i may stop moving forward with any noticeable speed, but i'll never stop loving you, thinking only of you, or waiting for you. i may have been your world but you were my whole life.

happy anniversary, my Dragon. i'm alone and longing for you. loving you. unfaltering.

Floss and Beaded Gypsies

it was my husband's birthday this past Wednesday. i didn't know what to expect. i didn't fall asleep until 3 AM and my little dogs have little bladders so i was up at 7:30 AM. first thing i did was get hit by a wave of pressure on my throat. my chest started heaving and the tears came flowing, exactly like they had done when the ER doctor and nurse took me in to see him after he was pronounced dead. i lay there for i don't know how long. eventually my little Scotties dancing and licking my face forced me to get up. they had to go out. they day had to start. both my children called me several times that day. my son who lives in Florida especially felt far away from me. his voice broke on the phone when he knew i'd been crying. "mom. i wish i could be there with you. i miss him so much. i sometimes don't know what to say. i love you, mom. i'll be up for a visit soon."

i bent my head and worked all day on quilting the current Memory Quilt that's in the frame. i went back and forth between it and the embroidery work for my daughter's wedding. but i ran out of floss. i switched back to the Memory Quilt and worked until after midnight.

then it was Thursday, my daughter's day off. we went to a discount fabric store that sells embroidery floss 3 skeins for $1. i bought 48 skeins - getting all the colors that i had in my head for the design i needed. if you click on the photo you too can delve into my tiny wonderful world of floss. i got back home and my daughter had to return to her home. i was alone again so i bent my head, as i do every day, and worked.

today my daughter stopped by before she went to work. she had been cleaning out a drawer that had her old jewelry box in it. she opened the box i had gotten her as a young girl and the little ballerina in the pink tulle tutu twirled on her little gold spring. and lying on the pink felt inside was the beaded gypsy earrings and bracelet that my Marine had made for her when she was still in high school. she gave me the earrings and wants me to keep the bracelet with her wedding things. she's going to wear the bracelet when she changes into her going away clothes.

i cried when i saw it. another punch to my stomach. so much love and thought went into his beading these little things for her. he knew her so much better than her own father. my Marine is Native American and Russian heritage and he had attended powwows where he danced. [he had always said he was just an Indian but i am trying to be correct as not to offend anyone who may stop by to read this.] he knew my daughter was a free spirit, artistic, emotional-heart on her sleeve kind of girl. he knew i had called her my wild gypsy baby when she was an infant and toddler. he found the pattern somewhere and beaded it for her 18th birthday. that photo also enlarges with a click.

and now we have it again. her finding it was a lovely surprise. we both cried as we looked at it and touched it. he's here in so many ways and yet he's gone from me and all these lovely memories come up and slam into me. but i wouldn't trade the tears and pain for not having had him in my life. he gave me everything. he gave me hope and gentleness. he gave me laughter and love. i could go to him at anytime and say, "i love you so much. i just need you to hold me for a minute," and he would smile. it always reached his eyes. he would open his arms and i would sit in his lap or he would come lay with me on the sofa or bed and we would just hold each other and talk quietly about the most important thing in our universe. not money. not our what the future will bring. we talked about how much we loved each other.

next Tuesday, August 11th, is our wedding anniversary. if his birthday hit me like a seizure i am not going to try to imagine what i will awaken to on Tuesday. i'm just going to bend my head down and quilt, and sew, and embroidery. i'm just going to dream of him whether asleep or awake and i'm going to keep going.

i told someone that i will be grieving for him for the rest of my life. i will get past this painful gut-wrenching part eventually. i will keep working. i will do things. i will laugh. but there will always be a part of me that is with him in a very profound way. i've been through too much with the first marriage to have to tell someone else what happened and why i have so little self esteem and too much happened that i could not not tell. there are too many very obvious scars. and my marriage to my Marine was too deep, too wonderful to be repeated. he was too much of everything that is good and decent and loving to ever replace. no one that moves into my field of vision could even slightly dim the vivid memory of his smile, his touch, and his voice in my head and heart. i adore him. i miss him.

so, the floss and the beaded gypsies came at a good time. i've come up for air between his birthday and our anniversary. i'm going to wear the beaded gypsies all day Tuesday. and if you're reading this and all set to worry about me, don't. Tuesday is my daughter's day off and after she goes home and i am alone, i have my Marine living in my heart. i'll never leave him.

very rough spell

i'm going through what my grandmother used to refer to as a "rough spell." it was used in her day for any time when a family or person was having a hard time due either to financial hardships, ill health, or grief. i've got two out of the three. i am having a hard time financially but that is just something to endure and keep working my backside off to cope with. the worst is the grief.

i don't know if i was ever actually doing "better" in the six months since my husband died but i know i am definitely doing a bit worse. i am having a very difficult time vocalizing my feelings because i look at someone and can't say it. here i am alone and can write it. it's not my voice but my heart that is saying it and there is no one for me to look at and feel any kind of connection to start the tears.

i'm crying all the time again. it's been 6 months. his birthday is Aug. 5th. he would have been 57. Aug. 11th is our wedding anniversary. it is also the anniversary of our first date. together 8 years, married for 7 years. only 8 years with a man to whom i gave my whole heart and soul. i would have given my life for him but i wasn't given the option.

i'm planning my daughter's wedding and i'm trying hard to feel happy, but i cannot right now. maybe on the actual day i will feel something other than this deep intense grief. for the short time that i get to actually be with my daughter making plans, fitting her to her dress and veil, going with her to pick up the fabrics, ribbon, and things she wants, i can fake it. i swallow hard and tell myself she is my little love and very much deserves a mom who is all there and doesn't unload on her. it can wait. she knows though. she knows that i'm hurting and she's been so good. i try to make her laugh which is easy to do. i am a very good liar. always have been.

i lied to my children when they were little about why their dad didn't seem to like mom. i lied to myself that i could take it one more week, one more day, let the kids get a little older. i lied to him to save myself from harsher beratings. and now i'm sort of lying to my children about how i'm feeling inside. maybe if i lie enough even i'll start to believe it but i don't think so. all i have to do is look at his picture, see his smile, the laughter in his eyes, and his broad back in the photos where he's walking ahead of me and i crumble.

crumble is the perfect word.

"i sat evaluating myself. i decided to lie down." i'm not sure where i read that but i was still in junior high school and i remember it was during the summer of love - '68. i think it was the poet Rod McKuen. whomever wrote it, it also fits my mood perfectly.

intense grief has taken over again and all i want to do is lay down and cry. i miss him so.

"oh, come through the darkness and save me

for i am alone."