knives, memories, and the futility of wishes

i cleaned out his "go bag" and found his favorite pocketknife.

one Veteran's Day early in our marriage, a couple of his Marine friends came to dinner and they sat and talked. one had gone on a mission with him. the other just knew my Dragon by reputation. my Dragon was a knife man. it is all tatted together like a silky thin spider's web of how he earned his nickname, Dragon. Marines are taught "one mind, one weapon." my Dragon was very good at hand-to-hand but he favored knives. as a tunnel rat it was his preferred weapon, even above a pistol which made noise. stealth was best in the tunnels. he had an affinity for knives.

when we would go out, if my Dragon would see a pocketknife, and if he liked it, he bought it. knives had saved his life many, many times. during the last mission less than 2 years before he died, it was a knife that got him home. maybe a story for another time. maybe never since it really isn't important to anyone but me.

he had a favorite pocketknife that he had thought was lost. we looked and looked but could not find it. i could feel the loss of that knife coming off him in waves. it is small, easily hidden, easy to palm. the blade tip is broken. part of that other maybe story. and we could not find it. i kept looking and looking for him without telling him, but we never found it.

and then he died.

i found it. i opened his "go bag" and there it was. his "go bag" was not something i had been able to touch except for moving it around the apartment out of my way. move it there out of my way. but never to open. too much of him inside. but then i worried that there were weapons inside and i do not know the concealed weapons laws for this state. so i took a belt of rum and coke for false courage and unzipped the bag.

there were no weapons but i found his favorite pocketknife. it was not in the pocket it was supposed to be in, but down in the bottom tucked under a seam that reinforced the bottom. when i found it i actually called out his name. i held it up and called to him. for a nanosecond i waited for him to come into a bedroom he had never been in from a living room he had never been in, in an apartment he had never seen. i knew where i was. i know every minute of everyday that he will never see this place. he will never come find me. he is not coming home from this mission. but i sat there waiting for him to come into the room to see his knife.

i know widows have been known to do that, but in all these months, i have never, ever called out to him to come to me believing that he would show up. this was the first time.

this is pretty Beach Bunny sitting with some of her Dragon's pocketknives. she has such a sweet face, doesn't she? it's why i use her instead of the real me.

but actually this is closer to the truth. this is raw looking Sock Beach Bunny. she is hurting inside and can only hug herself while she cries a little bit. just a little. tiny tears eeking down the sides of her face.

i miss him. a lot. there are days where i feel so blessed to have had him in my arms. i feel so honored to have been able to be in his life, hear his stories, comfort him in the dead of night when nightmares slammed into his psyche. but then there are days when i feel pulled far under the surface. i pop up but i hear that bell in the fog and i do not know if i am swimming to shore or further out to sea.

i miss walking with him. to me, my opinion, he is a beautiful man. i loved watching him walk. just an adorable man. i loved our walks all over Cape Ann, and miss them very much. he would massage my foot and then wrap it before i slipped it into my hiking boots. then he would massage it when we got back. my stinky, sweaty foot. he always laughed and said, "i've smelled worse things."

this is the path from the house we always started from.

besides being my camera bitch, he was my professional scavenger and pack mule. we had it down to almost communicating without words. i would look at something, like a lobster buoy or a piece of driftwood and he would look at me and lift his eyebrows, nodding, "yeah, you want that?" then he was off, climbing all over everything to bring it to me. such a sweetie.
i miss him. he is gone and i do not know if i really will get to be with him again. i think i could do it if i knew that he was waiting for me. well, i have to do it. there is no choice. but i think i could breathe if i knew he would come get me. i wish with all my might that i could find permanent comfort in that thought. but i also know faith is up to me and that wishing for a sign is futile. i will never get that sign. i just have to believe and stay strong. i just need to find some strength somewhere. Amazon.com does not sell it. ebay, nada. i guess it really does only come from within. damnit.

Judy, if you are reading this, i cling to that story you told me of your grandmother, i think it was. i hold it close in the darkness. thank you for telling me that. it is a light that i keep my eye on in the storms that come as tears of loneliness and sorrow.

i am glad i found his knife. they are all part of my shrine to my Dragon on the mantle. i am glad there are not any guns i have to explain. i think i would have just called the Marine Corps recruiting office rather than the police. i think it would have been easier to explain a "go bag" to a Marine than a cop.

"come to me in my dreams and then by day i shall be well again, for the night will more than pay the hopeless longing of the day."

the bell in the fog

i just got an email from a woman who was reaching out to me. a stranger who gave me her phone number in case i wanted to talk. i do and i don't. what do i say to an absolute stranger? a face i've not seen? i walked to the Loew's that is about a mile down the road one morning for a larger clay pot for my lavender and i broke down to the checkout clerk. for a moment i couldn't find my debit card. i panicked and she was very sweet, a woman close to my own age whose husband worked in the lumber department there but whose sister lived with them, moved in after her husband was killed in a convenience store robbery.

i found the debit card and admitted i was a recent widow for whom little things break me. still. probably will for a while. i'm so poor. so broke. and i work so hard for the little i earn off the quilts and things.

so the reaching out email caught me by surprise. i loved that someone saw how badly off i am doing emotionally and i want to call, but i cry so much. it would be pointless. and there is nothing, nothing they can do for me. and the link that was offered up to a blog that has taken off. so many have huge amounts of followers. they write of friends and family, of whom, "without them i wouldn't have survived this." i have to be honest, completely honest here and say to read things like that brings a bitter laugh. my life has been so much less. and yet i'm still here. so much bad and yet, like that scene in Steve McQueen's film Papillon where he says, "I'm still here, you bastards," i'm still here. but i'm also still getting backhanded, still getting hurt. Job, from the Book of, and i should get together and talk.

two things.

one, my ex-husband is now back on the peripheral of my life and cranking up for the rest of my life, to control, to verbally slap me. in contact with him for financial help for my daughter's wedding. deals with the devil. not even the devil. that's too much credit. he's the ground maggot on the hoof of the devil but he's the one i have to work with. i don't bother with hating him. that, again, gives him too much credit. God, the strings attached to that money and when i read Split Second Single Father's words, and other widowers words for their daughters, i weep for my own. she is a wonderful, beautiful girl. young woman. she wants her step-father back as much as i do. our Marine. my husband. it is so unfair to take him now when the demon is still so near.

two, there is a woman from my husband's high school who found his name on Classmates.com who is hounding me. i've blocked her from every angle but she keeps popping up like a rat finds a way inside a house. she's had one of her friends contact me. she's tried to "befriend" my husband on facebook and myspace. i keep both those sites up because i get contacted by his former Marine mates through there. i block, block, block. but it's her words before i realized what she was. "we were engaged before he went off to Vietnam. i'm sorry you have to tell me, a stranger to you, but not to him, that he has died. we meant so much to each other......." she found him after he died. why she's doing this i'll never know. it's been almost 40 years. she saw his picture on myspace. she was wanting so reconnect. she'd missed him. she knew a wife somewhere had been mentioned in connection with him......... the melodrama. i don't have the time or energy. i also don't have the strength. nor do my tear ducts. why this gets to me i can't explain. why i cry, again, no idea. i'm just low right now. really, really low. i'm treading water as it is and i don't need this weight. and to tell me to "snap out of it, forget her," would be a low blow. i'm trying to dismiss it as a woman off her meds. i block. i'll keep blocking. i don't read anymore.

i know of her. my husband told me of his life, childhood stories, of being drafted his senior year in high school. of worrying he would go to Vietnam and be killed. he told me he'd asked a girl to marry him and had been engaged all of two months before logic took over. he wanted a career in the Marines. he didn't want Vietnam but it was part of being a Marine and he was going because it was his duty. she had told him she hated the military and wanted him to quit. you don't quit the draft. anyway, they broke up and he went to Vietnam for three tours, and had a lifetime in the Marines.

Me? i love him. i have an enormous amount of respect for the Marines. i am proud to say, "my husband is a Marine, Force Recon." he is my hero.

but the fog is all around me now. i don't know which way to go so i'm not going anywhere. my beloved is gone. there is no hand holding mine on this beach, or in this tumultous water. i feel like i've gotten so lost that i'm probably fighting it too hard, trying to find footing, even if it's shifting sand. i'm on constant watch against my ex-husband. i'm having to play an old, old game of "you're not going to hurt her, hurt me instead. i'm the one you want to hurt." i hate that game. i played it for 20 years until i could get away. i'm angry that my Marine had to die. everyone knows that when the situation is hopeless you call in the Marines. i need him.

i got a phone number from a stranger who offered an ear. a woman from my husband's 18th year is wildly hounding me with her love for him that she never got over.

the fog is close all around me and i don't know where to turn. my grief for him, my memories of his smiles and his love are the only real things in my life right now.

there is a story of a blind man who would swim in the ocean while his wife stayed onshore ringing a bell for him to hear so he could return safely to the beach. he swims and swims, confident in that bell and his own independence. blindness will not keep him from doing what he loves. he tires and pauses, treading water. he listens for the bell and hears its comforting sound. he swims towards that sound. ding. ding. ding. it's closer now. the water is getting choppy now and he realizes he's swum for a long time. but the bell sounds a little inconsistent. his wife must be as tired of ringing the bell as he is of swimming. so with renewed energy, love for his wife, confidence in that sound coming through the fog of his blindness, he swims on towards the mile marker in the channel.