"forgive life"

Bunny hasn't been around of late.  if you remember, she's retired.  her mom, me, no longer works at Build-A-Bear - sad, sad thing with her store closing for economic reasons.

now i sell children's shoes.  tough life there.  been written of.  no need to rehash.  nothing's changed.

but Bunny wanted to write to all of her readers.  she's never spoken before, written in her own words.  she's always allowed me to speak to her life.  but she wanted to - for the first time ever.  so here she is:  the Bun

hi.  it's me, Beach Bunny, Bunny, or just the Bun.  it's been quite the adjustment being left at home now.  i hate to see mom go off alone, out there in the world.  she has to drive so very far from home.  and i worry, especially when she has to close the store and it gets really late at night.

 one night she didn't get home until after 2 in the morning.

she was so tired and, here's a secret.  it was the first time i actually slept with mom.

she usually has me sit in my special place on my special pillow beside her bed, next to Dragon,

but she was so tired that night, and filled, literally filled to the brim with anxiety, that she held me close, and cried a bit, and had me sleep with her.

i comforted her all night.  after she was finally asleep, i whispered out loud in her ear so her heart could hear, about how much i love her.  about how much her children love her, and especially about how much her Dragon loves her.

so what does a Bun do alone in the home?

ears up and i help my mom.  i vacuum for her and i plump pillows.

 i take care of my pony friends my mom made. i love them so much.  they are a fun group

and we run around the apartment like crazy chasing mom's scotties.  exercise is very important. 

 i have quiet times, too, sitting and reading to my own little puppy, Snowball.

 and i wait for my mom to come home, home where she's loved and is safe.

see my eyes?  see the anxiousness i hold in my heart when she is gone?

i'm going to tell you something, maybe it's a secret, i'm not sure, but mom read this short story.

mom reads to try and relax and she's going through a lot of old books of hers.  Oscar Wilde is a favorite.  she just reread "The Canterville Ghost" because, as she told me, "Bun, there is poetry hidden in the prose."

her favorite part of the book is Sir Simon's soliloquy about death.

"Death must be so beautiful.  To life in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to the silence.  To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow.  To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace."

 mom read that part to me out loud and then she was quiet, not reading, not talking, just thinking.  and then she said this to me, "i miss him, Bunny.  i think about him all the time.  i'm not sure if i'm supposed to, or if i am to fight that.  but i can't fight any longer.  i'm not a fighter by nature.  i'm a re-router.  i do things my own way.  i have to.  'to thine own self be true.'  Shakespeare told the truth on that one. you can't lie to yourself.'

i stared at her in my own inscrutable way and she said, "no, i'm not thinking about dying dying, like, you know, dying, but i do think about being with him when my time comes.  and i think about being at peace.  i'm searching for it and i have come to sort of believe that peace is our journey, or at least it's mine.  i have moments of peace, but not a life of peace.  i wonder if anyone does.  i do have things that i am upset about - things that have happened to me throughout my life and that's the part of Sir Simon's speech i was thinking about.  forgiving life.  'to forgive life.'  i need to try and do that."

so i have spilled the beans.  mom is a deep thinker.  she is always trying to be a better person as she calls it.  and she is always thinking philosophically.  about everything.  even me.

which is why she went ahead and let me write this time.

because mom and me, we're sympatico.  we're kindred souls.

just like her and her Dragon.

btw, he's a truly lovely person.  i know that for a fact.  i've met him; seen him when he checks in on mom.  she doesn't know.  she's not really looking for signs.  she doesn't think she deserves them so she doesn't anticipate them.  but being the Bun, you know, THE BUN, i have that special gift.  

i've become Real, as in "The Velveteen Rabbit" Real.  and with becoming real, you get special gifts.

seeing the Dragon is one of them.

so to anyone out there who grieves, i hope you believe me when i say this. 

you are loved.

you are watched over.

you are being waited on.  {or for.  i can never get that one right.}

as mom sometimes writes,

peace to all who read.

peace and light to all who grieve.

the dreamer spies the dawn

i have always been a dreamer, a bit too much of a philosopher, and an observer of life and people to the point where i have had to be brought into my own life very rudely.

if i am truly honest with myself, i should have tried to have been a teacher of philosophy and gained tenure with some small liberal arts college. preferably one with lots of trees and mountains, or a college by the sea.

i am a dreamer and as a little girl i had my hopes for my adult life. i wanted to love and be loved. i wanted children and a small house, a cottage really with a yard large enough for a garden. rural was my preference but with love, ah, you all know; you go where your love is.

as a little girl, i had an idea of my love. i wanted G.I. Joe. the Barbie my mother bought me always dated and eventually married G.I. Joe. never Ken. he was too ambiguous. Ken seemed to slick and soft. pasty boy. Joe had a tan and muscles and could protect Barbie. you have to remember my childhood was one of not feeling safe or loved, so Joe was going to come in and rescue me. by 12, i knew it was up to me so i studied and graduated high school early. i was steadily moving through college right up until my mother was diagnosed with cancer. then i quit school and moved into the hospice to live with her and care for her so that she did not die alone.

i met a Ken, not G.I. Joe, but i cared deeply for him, for his cool manner, and his financial stability. we married only for me to find out slowly that he could never love me. my thoughts about Ken dolls had been prophetic after all.

and then i met my G.I. Joe, my Dragon. he was everything i had ever imagined, read about, dreamed about, and wanted. funny thing. he wanted me for the same reasons. kismet.

such a fine man with dreams of his own. and they matched mine. almost too late in finding each other, we lived for each moment we were given. we talked and planned and dreamed out loud incorporating each other's quirks into our sketches for our life together.

we would live by the ocean. there was a home that needed saving, the old fort at the end of the Neck. it was not on our cove but we could walk there easily. the fort was too unique to pass up simply because it did not sit on the cove.
and i would have my studio there. my sketches were detailed and in color. yes, i took the time to fill in with colored pencils.

they are now rolled up in a tube in the closet. i have been unable to look at them. but, dreamer that i am, i do not have to look at them. i know what i drew. i remember all that we wanted to do to the place. i can hear his deep voice in my head speaking about it, even with my eyes open.
he was a dreamer like me, a philosopher, a profound thinker, and one thing more. he was the adventurer i never was. the story of his life allowed me to go all over the world with him. i saw war, walked through jungles, and parachuted out of planes in the night. i ate unusual food and heard him speak languages i never would have heard without him. he introduced me to the wildness that lived inside him that gave him the courage to say "yes" to all the different things our country asked him to do. and through his stories i went with him when he recalled it all.
days were something we welcomed together and sunsets meant nights tangled up together. he returned from his last mission with a fever for holding on to me even more than before. i have recently learned he almost died that last time, closer than he had ever been to being killed. he never told me. i only accepted his need for touch with welcome arms. i love being in his arms, having his face in my neck, and his whispers in my ear.

and now comes the dreamer's dawn. i miss him.

i read. Lord Byron, John Donne, Yeats, Rilke, Gibran. i read a lot. mood reading. Oscar Wilde wrote: "A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world."

my Dragon died on the night of a full moon. it is coming up on 16 months. i read what widows and widowers write to forum questions and i do not feel any compatibility with them. i am not finding any small smiles. i am not coming across any little joys to light my way. i believe there is a bond between my Dragon and i that precludes me ever finding a man that i could feel comfortable with. there are too many Ken dolls out there. the true, old breed of G.I. Joe that would be my peer is a once in a lifetime thing. i had my once in a lifetime with my Dragon.

the forums provide me with enough insight to some of the more vocal others that i feel far apart from them. they are only a infinitesimal slice of widows and widowers but i know i am not capable of joining in with my despondency. i would most likely be ripped to shreds.

my life circumstance is such that it is inhibiting my grieving. arrested grief as it were. can there be such a thing? can so much happen to a recently bereaved person that it hinders the grief process?

often i feel like i am still sitting in the nether-week between his death and his funeral. i am numb with terror at how to survive. i am crippled with the loss of him. never to be in his arms. never to hear his voice coax me along, giving me his support. never to let my fingertips touch his face, his beard, his brow.

in some ways i feel like i have been pushed down a gauntlet that is lined with people armed with canes ready and capable of striking out at any slightest perceived error. i have been struck many times since my Dragon died. if he knew, he would be pissed. he is dreamer but also a man of action. as for me? i am exhausted. life tired. battle weary. 1000 yard stare tired.

i am a dreamer and i am now facing the dawn alone. the moon has set and my Dragon has flown. it is dawn on a world i do not care for.

"Once I beheld a splendid dream,

A visionary scene of bliss:

Truth! -- wherefore did they hated beam

Awake me to a world like this?"

~ Lord Byron

i love my Dragon, my beautiful dreamer, the keeper of my heart, and the other half of my soul. how could they have parted us so cruelly? how could they have taken just you and left me here alone?

the dreamer spies the dawn and has to turn her eyes away. the landscape is too harsh.