the unanswerable

i have been meeting and talking to the Matriarch of Grief and Joy as often as my work schedule allows. trying for once a week, but sometimes it is only once a month. still i am blessed to have the opportunity to talk to her.

i brought it up. i was crying, admitting to missing him. i told her he was wonderful. i listed his qualities: handsome, intelligent, irreverent, kind, sexy, funny, generous, intuitive, ah, we all have the same list. i told her i have not been sleeping. so little sleep these last couple of months. Christmas, New Years, the pneumonia, my birthday, then the 2 year milestone and his funeral anniversary aka Valentine's Day. i am exhausted.

see me above, eyes wide open. so very tired yet sleep eludes me.

the full moon is tomorrow night. my eyes are always on the night sky. and all of it is sitting on my chest. all of it. and so i brought it up at my session. i heard myself say what i knew she would have no answer to.
where is he? will i see him again? does he think about me? what's going to happen to me after i die? will he be waiting? oh, where is he?

i am not asking it as a question of faith even though it really is. i want him back. or i simply want to know if i will see him again. now people will tell me, "of course you will." but we do not know. we will not know until we take that last breath.

i remember his.

i miss him. i miss his smell. i miss his voice. i miss the feeling of him being in the room. i am feeling the weight of his absence. i am feeling down, both emotionally and physically. my only real fun is Bunny. she keeps me entertained. she keeps me feeling creative.

and being creative is all i have, all i am. it defines me.

"womanNshadows? do you know her?"

"yeah, she's the creative one. she writes. she takes pictures. and she sews."

Bunny has her own projects. she has sent off her clone, the Traveling Ambassador. we both keep up with where she is in the world.

her new project is her Great Sparkly Moon Book Project. cleaning out a closet, she found a journal i have not written in yet. she came sashaying in and told me she wanted the book for her moon photos. the "gallery" of moon photos on the wall is getting a little out of hand. they keep reminding us of the passing of time. so we have taken the photos down and gotten others printed at the 6 cent Tuesday at Wolf Camera. now all she has to do is put them in order and put them in their sticky photo corners and put them in the sparkly book.
then she will write in the book all her own private thoughts and poetry. the cover of the book is beaded with stars and the sun and a moon, hence the name of her project: Great Sparkly Moon Book. {like Bunny really needs another project.}

and while she quietly puts photos in sticky photo corners, and then puts them in the pages of the book, we will both be thinking of the unanswerable questions that plague us both.

where is he really? is he happy? is he safe? does he still think of me? will i see him again? will he be waiting for me?

it comes and goes, these questions. most of the time i can ignore my more philosophical side, my deeper thoughts, these unanswerable questions. but there are nights, like when a full moon is near.........

you know what night this is....

my camera ~ the one my Dragon got me, it's still hanging on. i'm saving it. no more photos of anything else but the moon until i can get another. tonight i kept going outside looking, watching, waiting for him. and there he was, in all his battered glory, just like my Dragon, all scarred and beautiful, and eternal. a Blue Moon. the second full moon this month ~ March 2010.

i watched the skies. i went back in and punched up the radar. clouds. i knew it was going to be close. and though they would pass, i'm tired tonight. i can't stay out here all night. i stayed out and took as many photos as i felt my camera could do and not expire. i don't want it to leave me. i'll get another camera and put this one on the mantle, amongst the things that are my Dragon's; add it to the shrine.
i captured, for another month, my moon, my lonely orb that floats across a silent night and taunts me, or haunts me with dreams of my Dragon in flight. his one way trip to a place i cannot go yet. Heaven. beautiful places. places so wonderful that i cannot even imagine. everywhere but here with me.
and the clouds came right on time. i watched them glide across the sky and slowly shroud my moon. they were taking it away....
slowly taking away my dreamy view of Heaven. such beauty. it could only be more beautiful if it were reflected on the ocean's undulating surface. shimmering. pieces of silver light moving on the surface of the water like sparkling scales. looking for all the world as if a Dragon had come out of Heaven for a late night swim.

so many months. gazing from top left and down, then right to the next frame, over and over that way for five frames. the first is 8 February 2009, barely 3 hours before my life ended, the night he started dying. then March 2009 and so on until the fourth frame. November and two full moons in December 2009 ~ a Blue Moon on the 31st. then the last frame. January 2010, a new year ~ the start of a whole year where the moon and i face 12 months without my Dragon. the middle moon is the One Year Moon, and then March.
tonight's moon starts another frame of moons. i wonder how many moons i'll have before the last moon of my life?

my daughter said today, "I'll always keep your moons, and I'll take over, taking photos of the full moon. It won't end with you. It will be something the Dragon's girls will be known for."

Halloween and beyond

it's happening again. every night i go to sleep and the world doesn't end. the next day comes, time marches on, and i have to get up and live. my daughter got married. Halloween is coming and after that...... i can't cope with after that.

i had to go get more embroidery floss and i always feel a small level of thrill at the thought of looking at all the colors. i'd love to have one of each. can't but it's a dream. walked through the doors and, though i anticipated the early arrival of snowmen and Santa, trees and ornaments, i didn't anticipate the sudden inability to breathe.

it's going to come whether i can cope with it or not so i better put on my big girl pants and start practicing. i'll start with Halloween.

he loved Halloween. said it was the one day he didn't have to put on a mask. funny man. he was always a pirate. he said it was his true nature. he'd do the "arrrrr" sound deep in his throat and it was never hokey. the man could pull it off.

we'd go to the farm stands. they are all over New England. out of the larger cities, you can't throw a stone for hitting a small orchard that has a farm stand. i love them. i'm going to miss them. the photo is of the one we could walk to. yeah, an orchard close to the ocean. the man's land has been in his family since America belonged to the King of England. it sits close to Dogtown and isn't large by New England standards but is delightful to see considering all the terminal moraines and granite outcroppings that litter the coastline north of Boston gratis of the last ice age. the owner has enough dirt to maintain apple trees and a host of other vegetables. also bees for honey and, as a sideline his daughter brought in, a small shop that sells to the tourist crowds with things brought in plus art from the locals. she took in and sold my driftwood sculptures there. i was just getting a foothold in the community with my art - my sculptures, my stained glass, and my textiles.

we were going to have a good, quiet life by the ocean. we would go out after storms to find the driftwood and treasures the ocean had thrown back. i would create art from the things abandoned by even Mother Nature.

but he died. the only dragons i have are the ones i'm embroidering. he's around, i guess. but i hope more and more that he doesn't see me like this. i pray he's happy in Heaven and doesn't know how lonely and sad i am; that he doesn't see me ache for him like i do. i'm trying so hard to "get better" as it's been put, but i am slower i guess than others. i'm taking my time to "get better."

us finding each other was a miracle. i thanked God everyday for him. i told him every day how handsome i think he is, how much i love him. he knew. he knows. it's me that doesn't know. so much of my family has died. i'm so very alone. my two children are so great at making sure i'm alright. i just can't talk to them about some things because they are my children however adult they are.

i miss him. i got my full moon photos printed. all 9 of them. the one from the night he died and the other 8 that have occurred since he died. the man at the photo store said, "very nice moon photos. i can see your passion for the full moon." i didn't tell him it marks the passing of another month since my husband died. this "passion" seems too eccentric to put my face and name to it.

i saw the weather this morning. there's a hard freeze warning out tonight for Rockport. wind off the ocean will be chilling.

frost on the pumpkins. oh, Lord, how i miss my Dragon.