Tuesday, July 28th ~ how it all played out

to Widow in the Middle, Suddenwidow, Ann, and J-in-Wales, i've added the photo of the hydrangea just for you. in the language of flowers, the hydrangea showed the earnestness in communicating something of enormous import, ranging from great joy to everlasting sorrow. you can click on it to make it larger. i hope you enjoy it.

thank you all for writing on my last posting of the 6 month anniversary of my husband's death. it was so strange how it played out. i was anxious on Saturday. Sunday, i stayed so busy watching stupid movies on SyFy Channel all day and worked on someone's Memory Quilt, almost finishing the backing. my daughter called from work several times to check on me which was very nice. the woman who's Memory Quilt i am presently working on also called. i started getting upset as night encroached though and i switched work. i set aside the other woman's quilt and pulled my own onto the table. i haven't worked on it since last May.

but for a few embroidery stitches, my Husband Quilt top is finished. i'll post a photo of it on a later blog.

my husband was pronounced on a Monday morning at 12:03 AM. when i went to bed Sunday night i laid there. i had taken Tylenol PM for my aching back and hand and hoped for sleep and though i was so drowsy, sleep did not come for a long while. i just laid there not sleeping but not crying either. no, for some reason known only to my subconscious, my crying jag didn't hit until last night. i think my son calling me and telling me he had gone to see the film, The Hurt Locker, triggered some memory of my husband's years as a Marine.

i was thinking of him and how much he had been hurt over all those years. i was remembering all the meds he was on for arthritis for his back and shoulders. my husband was in a lot of physical pain for all his active lifestyle of climbing on rocks with me and hiking and swimming in the ocean. he had broken his back twice during different combat missions so the pain could be quite intense for him at times. he'd been blown up and his parachute shot out of the sky the other time.

i laid there last night and i was thinking of everything he'd done for his country and for me and for my children. all the money we struggled to pay for my two for college that their father refused, and all of my debt that he paid off that my first husband left me with. my Marine was uncomplaining. he knew the enormity of what he was taking on but he did it with such love. he told me once, "i know the baggage you come with. i've carried a lot heavier for reasons far less than love. you are my world. i'd carry anything forever for you. besides, you're carrying something more important. you're carrying my heart and soul."

and that's when i started crying. he had the heart of a dreamer and the soul of a poet. i was sobbing and talking to God and telling Him that He had to make sure my husband was happy and to lie to him, LIE to him and tell him i'm doing okay. i had all these instructions for God whom i'm sure was listening to me with tears of His own coursing down His face. He can see i'm so miserable without my husband. i'm sure if there wasn't some reason for my husband having to die, God would have let him stay with me. but the reason eludes me except for maybe bringing rest and peace to a man whose body was so weary, that he needed all those meds to keep the pain at a tolerable level.

thank you to all four of you for reading my last post. i want you to know how much it meant to me to be remembered and to read what you wrote to me.