how did i get here?

my husband, my beautiful Dragon, died suddenly at 12:03 AM on 9 February 2009. there was a cold, lovely full moon and 3 feet of snow on the ground. i "slept" for the following 10 months and "woke" to the physical and emotional pain and torments of deep grief. i "woke" to find i had moved the day of his funeral and that i am lost. i am looking for me while i figure out the abstract, unanswerable questions that follow behind any death. my art has evolved. his death changed that as well because i am forever changed and will forever bear the mark of losing the only man i can ever love.
there is alive and there is dead and there is a place in between. i am here wholly in my heart for my children, but i feel empty inside at this time. i miss him. i have not gotten very far in my grief journey. i make no apologies for this.
this is my place, my blog, where i write to tell the universe that i am still here.
Showing posts with label phone call. Show all posts
Showing posts with label phone call. Show all posts

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Wine, Boo, and Song

i wasn't going to get online today. it's the eleventh month. like it's only the eleventh month but it's the eleventh month already. eleven months without touching him, or being touched by him. it's not a year yet but eleven reminds me of twelve and that's a year.

i just watched Boo go through it from afar physically, though not emotionally. i won't be afar from myself and i don't know how brave i'll be emotionally. not going to think about that tonight.

i got an email from Jude. lovely, lovely. she remembered me today.

Suddenwidow has book our flights for Camp Widow. i'm really going. i don't know how to thank my two fairy godmothers for this. so if they look close at the photo, they will see an embroidery frame and beads being sewn on in some kind of pattern, i don't know. it's such a mystery that they will have to wait until August to find out.

but she emailed my flight info and she has a candle lit for my Dragon and me.

my daughter stopped by with a bucket of fried chicken and a bottle of white zinfandel. (i'm a lightweight.) so i poured a glass for myself and for her and we toasted our Dragon. she left and i put on that song, "Whistling Away the Dark." i lit a candle and then the phone rang.

it was Boo. she knows what day it is, too. we talked. we spoke of our men. we laughed about her dogs. we both know it's a hard day for me. she has a candle lit. three candles. "better to light a candle than curse the darkness" never meant more to me than these days. Boo and i both know i have some very dark corners in my life that my Dragon was healing, but didn't have the time to get to every corner. it's up to me to finish what he started. i need to do this for myself, but it will be him that is my carrot.

get it? i was his Beach Bunny? carrot as incentive? yes, i've had a glass of wine.

i miss him. i miss his beard. his laugh. i miss him taking the dogs out when it's so freakin' cold. he'd take them out and then he'd come back, take his shirt off, and put his cold skin right up against me. i loved it, warming him. i loved the way he smelled. he smelled like pine and salt and the cold.

so i wasn't going to get online but i took a photo of my glass, at my chair where i work at night by the lamp. the glass has hearts on it and l'amour in script around it. my son and daughter gave us the set of two with a basket of cheese and crackers and wine for my Dragon's and my first Valentine's together. they were so happy he had found us.

thank you, Jude for the email. thanks to my daughter for the food and the wine.

and thank you, Boo for the phone call, the checking up on me. you heard the catch in my voice and we shouldered on. we laughed and no matter how much quilting i got done today, i'm more proud of that bit of laughter. it's more than i would have managed on my own.

tonight the music is playing and i'm working by the light, by his photo, with my glass of wine in one of our glasses. i'm drinking from it now, on the eleventh month.

it will be too hard to do it on the twelfth month.