hitting "the wall"

in any test of someone’s endurance, mostly applied to marathons, there is a saying. hitting “the wall.” it has been seven weeks since the one year anniversary of my Dragon’s death on February 9^th and i think that is what has happened to me. i have hit “the wall.”

i feel miserable. there is a tiredness permeating my body that feels like it has settled in deeply and for the long haul. i cry, still, easily. i worry my worries and fret my fears. i am losing interest in a great many things. i cannot turn my back on him. i cannot put my Dragon or his death in any perspective other than right beside me. i fight against thinking about how he died and my role in being unable to save him. it was so quick. there were no conscious good-byes for us.

“good-night. i love you.” only a moment of drowsiness and then his choking death from a fatal heart attack.

i miss him. i am lonely for him. i would give all the world to be with him or have him come back. i have moments through these days when i lean back in my chair, put my arms across my face and sob for him. i am not here if he cannot see me. i am over-wrought and so very sad.

i see each day play out. get up. take the dogs out. eat breakfast. sew. eat lunch. take the dogs out. sew. eat supper. take the dogs out. sew. take the dogs out. go to bed.

my daughter calls first thing in the morning and last thing at night. my son calls 3 or 4 times a week. i don’t have a car but it seems my library branch has had a stay of execution. i will be able to still walk there to check out my peeks into a world that i’ll never visit.

i am tired. i hurt. i am lonely. i want him back. i miss being loved by him. i feel like an ancient crone for whom her arthritis has taken her energy and grief has taken her life. i am looking forward to Camp Widow but even in thinking about that, i am becoming timid. i have to go, but i am, oh, God, i am really going to say it. i am afraid. i know there will be tears there but as many as mine? some people are going to be joyous there, happy at being united, or reunited, with friends. these people will have lives to talk about, and jobs to complain about. they have taken trips and will have done things and achieved victories i had not. i look in the mirror and i do not know who that woman is. segue to what would my Dragon think?

i look careworn and sorrowful. i look like i am grieving. i look like i have hit a "wall."

i have to remember what my Dragon would say. i need to close my eyes and remember him, his actions, his voice. “Love, you are so beautiful to me.” there would be no hesitation. he would move to me and take me in his arms and kiss me, wipe away my tears with his lips. he would let me see in his eyes all the love he felt for me. and i would feel warm. i would feel the heat of his gaze and my aching joints would become loose. my tattered heart would beat stronger. he loves me. i would bloom under his care.if only. but no more. there is an echo here when i call out his name no matter how many quilts i hang on the walls of this apartment to keep the sound from reverberating.

i pray. every morning. every night. i find i talk to God as if He were sitting in the next room, unseen but listening all the same. He knows how bad this is for me. He has to be trying to let me know that i’ll see my Dragon again if only i would stop crying and listen to Him.

but i am the one who is making this hard. it is me sitting outside, unable to go in. i think i cry so hard for my Dragon that i cannot hear anything but my own pain. thus, i have hit "the wall."

several years ago i found out i was losing my hearing. i am hard of hearing but i am not of the deaf world by any stretch of the imagination. i have one of those phones that will amplify incoming calls so no one knows, but of course, now you know. depending upon the surroundings i can hear enough of the words and read lips to follow most every face-to-face conversation. but at first it was difficult to face.

i was sent to ASL classes and the administrator of the school learned i was an artist. he wanted to hire me to do a mural for the wall outside the school. since some of the students were also sight-impaired to fully blind i talked him into letting me build a wall on top of the wall instead. the results of my labor were fully appreciated by both deaf and blind alike and i was happy with what i had done. what i had wanted to say to them without words had been understood. the wall is a visual and tactile experience. it can be looked at and touched. i had wanted it to say, “i understand.” i took a risk with it but i received a lot of hugs from the children who attended the school, and from the grown-ups, like me, who were having to make some adjustments to their lives.

{it is ironic, isn’t it? i built a wall and now, years later, i’ve hit one.}

when i met my Dragon, i had to explain about my little hearing problem. he was very good about it. he told me he had a friend who had been in artillery. he had to yell at him every time they saw each other so learning to talk a bit with his hands for certain situations wouldn't be a problem. and if he forgot certain signs, he knew how to yell. it was a moment that could have been awkward for me, but he made me laugh and relax.

i told him i had built a wall and he wanted to see it. i did not tell him anything about the design as we drove up. i wanted to get his initial reaction, unprepared and therefore unbiased.

he was amazed at the intricacies. he really liked it. he said when we owned our own home, he wanted me to make one for us. the wall was really the first time he’d seen anything big that i had done. he told me he fell more in love with me because of the person i was that came up with it.

i feel like my wall now. i try on faces to see if i can look better, appear better, or make myself feel better, but i do not. i do not feel better and it has been 13 months now. i have hit “the wall.” i do not know how long i will feel this way. i do not like feeling this way but if this is part of my own personal journey then i can only accept it. i can only keep getting up, walking the dogs, sewing, etc. you know the routine. it does not vary in any way except on Mondays when my daughter comes to take me out. maybe it will be over soon.

and if this is the way i am going to feel from now on, i will accept that, too, for two reasons. one, because no one really knows about grief, do they? and two, because to feel this badly for this long, and longer, our love really was a fairy tale come true. the Dragon and the silent woman from the shadows. who would have thought it could happen?