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 just a few, in the basement of the Rockport Library where the historical documents are kept.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 ..........

do justice to this life

and it cost me almost, almost as much as my rent. i couldn't swing it, not even with my son's contribution. going to have to wait for the bill for the amount i could not pay and do the payment plan.

but, he was nice. the office was clean and soothing. the nurse was funny and sweet. they talked to me. really talked to me. answered questions. the lab vampires were hysterical. everyone was so very nice.

so, yeah. i have diabetes and high blood pressure. slam, bam, thank you. that's unless my blood work comes back with some horrible, unnamable disease on top of all that.

how can i live as timid as i have become and live well? how can i do justice to this life i have if i am always worrying, always pining for something i can't have?

i want a friend who i can call on to do stuff with, like go to that doctor's appointment when my daughter could not go. i want a here in my face pal to come over and eat with, laugh with, do the occasional thing with. not all the time. just once a month or so. i wouldn't be a burden.

i want to know what some of those women out there are thinking,; the ones i went on that retreat with, when they see on Facebook that i am struggling, and they ignore it. i thought we had connected. i called us a "tribe." i photographed the whole thing. i felt like there were others out there who understood, more than just that "get it" thing i always hear and see being batted about. what happened to them? was just me not enough? and why? why am i not ever enough without all the sewing and creative stuff? just me.

i want him back. i want him to whisper in my ear and feel his warm breath. i want my skin to tingle again and my body to come alive. i feel so dead inside that i wonder if, in all seriousness, a huge part of me didn't die with him. i tried taking my rings off. i froze. i couldn't leave the bathroom. when i put them quickly back on i felt like myself again. married to my Carl. i still feel so very married. i only want him.

a lot of men come through the store. nice looking me of a certain age. divorced mostly. buying for their children. they talk. they flirt. i am not aware of the flirting until they leave and one of the other girls i work with comes over and says, "hey, he was nice looking and he was really flirting with you." i do the furrowed brow thing and say stupidly, "huh?" never knew it happened. i only see single men as fathers buying for their children, never as men. i see them as handsome, too, but from a drawing/artist point of view. never as a woman. i have my Greek god and he died, but he is still mine and i am still his.

i am scared of living and scared of dying. living is mundane now. there is no ocean. there is no life as i relate to it here in this city. living is bills and money worries and health scares and worries. living is waiting on people to notice me and then watching them ignore me and then forget me. living is too hard to do and yet, living is what i have to do to get to where i want to go. i am trying to live with a kind of rumpled and messed up grace that honors my children and my Dragon. ah, my lovely, lovely Dragon. just the words echo through me like a song that i am struggling to not sing out loud.

i an scared of dying. what if i don't find him? what if i am lost in some horrible blank, colorless world like my nightmares? or, oh, God please forbid, stuck as a lost soul in my tiny apartment to haunt the next tenant. i'll end up being a made for tv movie on the Chiller network or SyFy Saturday night, "the most terrifying night on television."

i want to go "home," to live and when i die. i want to win a lottery so i can take that money and go live on the beach. to hell with rising ocean levels. i need the sound of the surf. i need the peace of walking with my feet in salt water. and when i die, i want to go "home" to the Heaven that is offered. i want to be forgiven for being a wimp all my life, for being hurt all my life and feeling so badly. i want to find my Carl and hold his hand and find the beach in Heaven, and live forever with him there.

but first, i need to find a way to do justice to this life. i need to just get past the lab results, find the food i can eat and not be so flippin' hungry, {i've lost 8 pounds in 5 weeks}, and accept that working to make toys for people is, though a humble job, a sometimes profound one for some. my heart ceremonies matter in some way to the sea of life. one tiny ripple expands to something that touches more than i can ever know.

i need to see a way to do justice to this life; even if i go against the grief time lines and stages ~ wearing my wedding rings, and feeling married to him forever.

“We are all longing to go home to some place we have never been — a place half-remembered and half-envisioned we can only catch glimpses of from time to time. Community. Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak with passion without having the words catch in our throats. Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power. Community means strength that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done. Arms to hold us when we falter. A circle of healing. A circle of friends. Someplace where we can be free.”

Bunny in a bad, bad place

very tough night for me tonight. so many thoughts vying for front and center. thinking about my life with my mother. thinking about my life with my first husband. with my Carl, and now that he's gone, with my two children. so hard to sit and type it when words just want to spill from my mouth. but this is all i am allowed. i read of so many who get grief counseling and i wish the person i am writing to who has offered to hear me but who lives 10's of thousands of miles away; i wish we could do this face-to-face.

i emailed the grief counselor who i do not think was vested in my well-being. i am still working on her quilt. it was part of the deal even though i no longer see her. she was just not really there for me. she kept changing appointments or i'd show up and she would have forgotten me. i apologized for the slowness of the quilt, but with work and not feeling well with this high blood pressure thing and diabetes, ...... anyway, she did not answer me. i think she is angry. i can't be a part of that. so many people lined up to be pissed at me for something. get in line. and i say that without really having any kind of a list other than first husband, his entire family, my brother who has disowned me......i am hurting so badly tonight. those "old sorrows that rise up to beset me. old doubts make my spirit their own."

i am lonely for him and yet i am in such darkness tonight that i wonder if his dying wasn't just a way to get away from me. my children are so busy with their lives. i get small parcels of their time, and you know, they ARE grown up and they ARE busy, but i gave up my whole life to move into the hospital when my mother was dying. i sat there for 6 months and took care of her until she died and she despised me. so i'm not dying. not that i know of yet. i just want my son to come visit. i want my daughter to make a little time for me in the physical sense of coming over rather than relying on the phone calls now. but she IS so busy and has moved 30 minutes in the complete other direction. i feel alone up here. i am anxious a lot of the time. i feel like i am in an airport terminal waiting on them to call my flight. "Bunny, board at Gate 2. Dragon is waiting." but Murphy's Law will dictate that that voice will say, "Bunny, why are you waiting. get to work. no one wants to spend time with you. you are only a commodity. not a real person."

but i am supposed to be doing better, right? at least better than i am. i am supposed to be working on my self-esteem and empowering myself. but it's hard to do that when someone tosses those platitudes off over their shoulder as they walk away, or hang up on you. i wish i could move to an island and never have to see anyone again. if i am on an island, no one CAN come to see me. it would be a great inconvenience. i am "patted" on the back via emails and phone calls from people i do all this stuff for and yet, no one really knows how much i hurt. no one. i cannot really tell anyone everything. there is so much. there would be that yawn and that lack of interest. or they would be appalled and not want to hear anymore, or not believe me. so many times doctors did not believe me. or lawyers. "go fix your marriage." "he makes this amount of money and you want to divorce him? can't you just take it?" it was my turn to be appalled.

i did try to talk to someone back in August in San Diego. she was horrified. she did not want to hear me at all. she wanted it all to be free and fun, to cut loose and get away from sorrow and trouble. i cannot risk being shut down like that again. i cannot risk opening my mouth and seeing that look on a person's face. widow or not, no one truly gets all of it, off of the individual. everyone has their secret darkness that haunts them. being with other widow's like that, it was the wrong time and place and people for trying to find someone to talk to like i need. 2 years, 3 months and i am still searching for someone to talk face-to-face to. there is something wrong about that. where is the empathy? where is the compassion?

i want to move away and become a hermit. if i become a hermit, there can be no expectation of company therefore no feelings of abandonment. me and Bunny on a small rock off the coast of somewhere. i am supposed to be thinking how wonderful i am and proud of the things i do for others but i don't. i have no good feelings for myself at all. i do for others what i'd like to have done for me. i do for others because it is the right thing to do. it doesn't make me special. i don't do anything for anyone that anyone else couldn't do. i write to other widows who rely on my honesty about grief via my hubpages that i write for. i have several people who write to me, lean on me. i have to give to them because it is what i have wanted, someone who answers their cries. someone who is not too busy. someone they can trust to be there for them. i cannot let them think that womanNshadows would be cavalier with their feelings and their pain. i have empathy for them all. i give them my words, my honest and soulful words but how can i see that as something of value when it is so obviously and simply the right thing to do? it is not about my self-worth. it is about being there in the dark with someone without thinking of yourself. no fanfare. no fireworks or speeches. it is not empowering to me. it is draining. see, i just need him back. i need Carl. i want to know if he left me because he was sick of me. like my kids who have so little time for me. i want to know if he still loves me. i want to know if i am still interesting to him. to someone. no, valuable. do i have value simply because i breathe. not for what i can write or make or do for someone. i need to know if he still loves me. would stay with me if he could.

i am so tired and hungry and not sure what i can and cannot eat. the diet needs of high blood pressure and diabetes is like a venn diagram. yes for this but oh, no for that. i need that small arc of space where there is overlap to become clear. what is in there that i can eat without fear of coma or stroke?

i want to leave this cold, uncaring concrete place and go back to the ocean. maybe like Henry Beston did in when he moved to the Cape and wrote the Outermost House. but i need money for that and i will never have that. i will never have all my things back from storage. i will never have a life, only an existence.

posting all this, this is a shot in the dark to see if anyone is really listening; see if anyone has this depth of pain, too. {{hugs}} or "thinking of you" is sweet but it comes from a place of not knowing what else to say. but in their defense, how can they know what to say to someone who is sobbing so hard they are silent. raw, overwhelming, powerful grief racks the body and cannot all come out. no sound can issue forth because it is too loud to be heard. how can anyone know what to say to someone whose darkness is so vile that they can never tell anyone everything.

i want him back. or at least to call me. tell me why you left me alone down here. tell me that it was the worst thing that could ever have happened to us. tell me that you miss me. tell me that you ...................... are still capable of loving me?

i want to eat with you. i want you to cook something for me that i can eat that won't kill me. please just come back and have dinner with me. and then just tuck me into bed and stay with me until i fall asleep. just one more night together. please. i promise i won't ask for another thing.

i wish for peace to all who read this whether the overwhelming sadness of it renders you speechless or not. i am glad i have sent the Traveling Ambassador out into the world. i want her to help others as my own dear Bunny helps me get through the days and nights. i love all the photos of Bunny, all the places she has gone. the snow in Canada, the crazy fun times in London, the peace of Wales. i love her Aussie thongs, as Boo called them. her Australia pin. i am going to cherish this journey of hers for all my days.

and the ocean. my Bunny got to go to the ocean. when she comes back to me i am going to smell her, to see if there are any leftover smells of the ocean. and i will close my eyes and fantasize. that's all i have left. fantasy and nightmares. i try to make the fantasies push the nightmares away.