how did i get here?

my husband, my beautiful Dragon, died suddenly at 12:03 AM on 9 February 2009. there was a cold, lovely full moon and 3 feet of snow on the ground. i "slept" for the following 10 months and "woke" to the physical and emotional pain and torments of deep grief. i "woke" to find i had moved the day of his funeral and that i am lost. i am looking for me while i figure out the abstract, unanswerable questions that follow behind any death. my art has evolved. his death changed that as well because i am forever changed and will forever bear the mark of losing the only man i can ever love.
there is alive and there is dead and there is a place in between. i am here wholly in my heart for my children, but i feel empty inside at this time. i miss him. i have not gotten very far in my grief journey. i make no apologies for this.
this is my place, my blog, where i write to tell the universe that i am still here.

Monday, May 4, 2009

Dead Like Me

i have no descriptive language tonight.  i'm tired and i still have hours of sewing to go before i go to bed and not sleep.  i'm always complaining it seems.  not complaining, grieving.  since writing is the only way my voice can be heard and i need to be heard tonight, i'm taking a break from sewing and i'm at the keyboard.

i miss him.

i can describe to you exactly why i love  him, his qualities and his quirks.  you can see his photo on my blog, but you can't know him enough to do more than empathize.  you won't feel the sense of loss that i do at his being taken from me.  that's how i see it.  he was taken from me because he would never have left me willingly.  we needed each other.  we weren't two halves of a whole, nothing greeting card-ish.  we were more than that.  we were two people who had found each other, found something in each other that we needed, longed for, desired.  we each had something the other wanted to be close to, like pulling up a chair to a hearth during a bad winter storm.  it doesn't matter if you're in a palace or a cabin.  frankly the cabin would be the best.  you're comfortable.  stew on the stove, warm fire, and each other.  i think people get lost in palaces.  too many rooms to separate yourselves into.  my husband was my cabin.  i was the warmth.  i entered into his life.  i warmed his lonely soul.  

i wonder if he's lonely tonight.  i wonder if he pines for me as i long for him.  my mind tries to remind me of my faith but my heart is broken and sitting in the shattered mess of itself sobbing like a lost child.

i miss him tonight.  its raining.  we seldom watched television.   we read.  each on the sofa, our feet entwined.  okay, that sounds kinda Hallmark card-ish, but its what we did.  bibliophiles, no.  bilio-holics.  we would go to the library and check out armfuls of books and read, interrupting each other with a particularly wonderful passage.  discuss and then read more.  i miss that.  facing each other with our legs all jumbled up.  never again have to untangle to grab the phone.

i've been encouraged to join a group, any group, outside the widow's group.  Bible study, craft group.  something.  anything.  "make friends in your new city."  i can't make the effort.  i'm able to converse within the context of the perimeters of a meeting but to reach out and make friends?  i can't do that.  i am more of the commodity type.  people call on me for things, not to do things with.

i went to a grief counselor.  she only wanted to talk about my first abusive marriage.  why?  what for?  i married a man who dropped his mask during the first six months and trapped me financially and physically and emotionally.  he hurt me.  i protected my children.  i finally got away - naked, stripped of everything but custody, but i survived.  grief is what i don't feel like i'll survive.  getting choked is a lot less painful than death taking the love of your life.  i wanted to talk about loneliness and Heaven and my husband.  my soul mate.  i wanted to talk about the present pain.  she didn't feel it relevant right now and her curiosity for something that has been long ago set aside is irrelevant to me, so i won't be going back.  so that's an extracurriculur activity i quit.

i'm so tired of not sleeping.  i am so tired of my love being gone.  i want him back.  i know it's wrong.  it's not God's plan but i don't think God really had a plan per say.  i think my husband's heart wore out and  God is just as sad as i am.  i think He's crying right now because He knows i'm hurting so badly i want to crawl in a hole and stay there until my husband can come get me.

but alas, there's always an alas, i can't do that.  that's called quitting.  q-u-i-t-t-i-n-g.  i hate that word.  it's so closely associated with failure.  i guess you could say i failed grief counseling but i look at it as she failed me.  grief counseling.  not abuse counseling.  i can't quit living and i don't want to fail my husband, so, breathe in, breathe out.  

i hate it when people offer you, "you should be doing it for yourself and not for him.  he's gone."  i want to curse.  if i can't do it for myself right now, at least i'm doing it for someone.  and "he's not gone, he's just away."  saw that on a card, too.  breathe in, breathe out.

i never sent anyone a condolence greeting card.  condolence and greeting card seem like an oxymoron.

i'm rambling.  this is sounding more and more like a monologue from that show on television Dead Like Me.  the irony is that i feel dead inside.  i have to go sew now.  breathe in.....

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