an abstract life

the moon rises and is a warm color. buff or beige with the craters being the darker mottling on the surface. i've thought of her as a woman. the lonely woman next door who can only shine when the sun shines on her. sort of like me. i shined when my Dragon smiled at me. but i do know that the surface creates an illusion called "the Man in the Moon." masculine and feminine.

i feel a kinship with the moon and sometimes think of her in the feminine. but when i search for the moon, possessively and painstakingly wait for it to clear the trees so i can talk to the moon face to face, it is to my Dragon that i speak. only the moon can pull this off in my imagination. only in my imagination would it have to.
as the Earth turns, the moon appears smaller in the night sky and it starts to cool off in color. to me it looks more silver. it's subtle. maybe no one has noticed and you can't see what i see as a difference between the two photographs above. it might only look that way to me. value, hue; color has always been a huge part of my life as an artist.

this holiday season has been difficult to put it mildly. beyond the obvious of missing my Dragon, i have had to face some very harsh realities. i am alone. not to put too fine a point to it, or one that is melodramatic, but i realized yesterday that if i died right now, only two people would come to my funeral, my daughter and my son.

my brother doesn't speak because i committed the unspeakable. i became a Catholic.

i lived a segregated life before the Dragon and few kept up with me. after the divorce and becoming my Dragon's wife, we lived such poor lives, gypsy lives, that no one could know us, or me rather. the church at his funeral on Valentine's Day had almost 50 people that managed to drop everything to come and pay their respects to a man whom they cared about and deeply respected.

no, it is only me who has managed to get this far and leave no trace of my existence. only in an abstract sense am in here.

i am not pouting. i am merely trying to work this out in my head. seeing it in black and white helps.

people here online will suddenly realize that i am no longer here. my daughter has all my passwords and knows to post a notice should anything untoward happen. i value all i have "met" here and i am arrogant enough to think you all need to know why i might no longer be a "voice" here. that's it. it's you. all of you. and there is no way she would think to do a posting until after i am gone by at least a couple of weeks.

thus my funeral will be an "Eleanor Rigby."

why this horrible missive? what brought this on? a couple of things and i've been thinking about them for the last three days.

one. the woman who gave me the book inscribed to her friend called upon her return from her vacation over Christmas. i had been crying and she thought my voice sounded "rough." i explained and she thought i should try to sound better on the phone. i tried. she talked about her trip and how wonderful it was. i listened and murmured in the appropriate places but i admit i was sad that day. actively sad. New Year's was coming. that whole thing about it being a different year number than the one he died in. but i did listen. i heard everything and told her i was happy for her. but she said i did not sound excited enough for her, and that i should be because it had been such a reversal of emotional fortune for her (my terminology - verbatim it was: "i had the best time, better than i thought i would considering it's my first Christmas as a widow and you should be happy for me, well, sound happier. i'm sorry you're having a tough day but this is my time and i'm trying to tell you about it. you should rise to the occasion.")

i just could not manage to make my voice rise enough and she hung up on me. an email on New Year's eve from her confirmed her anger and criticism of my lack of understanding her needs. apparently i am not a good friend. i failed to measure up to. there is nothing i can do about it. i could not apologize enough nor make her understand that i was having a very bad day and i was alone through it.

second. with my dismissal from her life, i realized that should anything happen to me, only the fact that i would not answer my cell when my daughter called would anyone know something was wrong. no one but her calls daily. no friends check in with me because i have acquaintances. there is one widow who reads my writing and i do not want her to feel berated. she is young and dealing with her own pain. she touches base and i do feel that if i were doing a "Hamlet," a "to be or not to be" thing, i could call her. but you see, i will never get that close to the edge. i fight against that despair every minute of every day. and that is the only reason i would bother her.

i believe in God and in doing so, i have to at least acknowledge that there is evil. evil can be found in despair. it is the absence of all hope and i will not go there. i will fight and struggle and find a way to stay connected to a world that i have managed to leave no footprints on.

yes, i know. the quilts. and my writing. i get emails that instill me with hope that i matter. and i am humbly grateful. but again, it leaves only an abstract mark, like the feeling of a passing zephyr. you feel the gentle caress but then it passes and you will forget that moment. the quilts are tangible solace and once they are made, they are a tribute to the one whose clothes they are made from. that's the foundation of my creations. to honor and bring to a renewed life the clothing left behind. the quilts are for the families. i bow out and move to start on the next one. but i also worry about getting more commissions.

i worry about people wanting what i can make, what i can give them. i think these quilts will be my sole legacy besides my two children who really are enough. but i live such a solitary existence and i believe everyone wants to think that they will be missed. i believe everyone wants to believe that someone will stand in a church beside their remains, whether they be in a casket or as ash in an urn, and know that someone, several someones, knew them well enough to pick out hymns, readings, or composed something from the heart. i think people need to hold onto the idea that they will be missed and that friends as well as family will gather together and mourn them, that losing them will be awful and their life celebrated.

it's something i need to work out in my head. i need to find the lasting power of being abstract. it has just been hard to realize that my life is more abstract than most. the people who might miss me, won't miss me until it's all water under the bridge. that subtle wonder of where i might be. "she hasn't written in a while. i wonder what she's up to?"

sort of like the warm and cool colors of the moon. until someone points it out, you don't really notice.