intimate thoughts

i miss him. it is not really getting any better. it is just longer between heart-wrenching crying jags.

"being in grief, it turns out, is not unlike being in love. in both states, the imagination is entirely occupied with one person … everything that touches us seems to relate back to that center; there is no other emotional life, no place outside the universe of feeling centered on the pivotal figure." ~ Mark Doty

i had always sort of wanted to wander around this place, inside as well as out. it is an old place that had its exterior done over after a huge storm one season. but i have seen photos of its insides. just a few, in the basement of the Rockport Library where the historical documents are kept. it has its secrets. i always wanted the chance to explore this place on my own. now i only dream about it.

"to live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it:
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go."
~ Mary Oliver, “In Blackwater Woods

"there is eloquence in screaming." ~ Patrick Jones

and i have screamed into my pillow quite a lot of late.

especially with this third bout of pneumonia in this year of our Lord 2011.

i need his care and comfort.

i need his hot tea.

i need his warm body to keep mine warm.

i need his cool cloths to keep my fever down.

i need his big hands to rub that stinky Vick's on my chest that he never minded doing,

so i can breathe.

when i had pneumonia while he was alive,

he would put his large, warm hand on my chest and calm my fears,

help me relax to find my breath.

he would breathe with me,

unison,

symmetry,

each inhale a little deeper than the one before.

i want him back.

3 times in 8 months is too much to do alone.

i think the worst part of this is the incessant remembering that i couldn't save him.

no one could save him.

in this day and age of commercials saying,

"i survived the widow-maker; take this pill and you can, too,"

no one could save him.

least of all me.

and he is better, handsomer, cuter, more needed by me than those actors on those commercials.

i love him best of all.

i need him most of all.

"i have ever since {he died} seemed to myself broken off from mankind; a kind of solitary wanderer in the wild of life, without any direction, or fixed point of view;

a gloomy gazer on the world to which i have little relation."

~ Samuel Johnson

i sometimes wonder how i am doing this alone and then i remember,

i don't have a choice.

they tell you, "just breathe."

easier said than ..........