to the people who don't understand

here are some words to the people who don't understand.  be forewarned.  there will be sarcasm.

some of them may also be widows, widowers, people who have lost someone dear to them.  some of these people don't understand those of us who do grieve for a while longer than expected, than is the norm.  outside influences may affect the grief journey.  yes, it's true.  it shouldn't be big news.  sometimes medical issues and/or financial issues may exacerbate, or hinder, the "wishing they were here" part of this life without them.

some people feel such a bond with their loved one who died that they live their lives missing them, talking to them, and even creating great works for themselves to help bring about comfort and closeness to them.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/9397478/Farmer-creates-heart-shaped-meadow-in-memory-of-wife.html

some people spend their lives living, yes, i'll say living because if we get up, go to work, raise our children, are involved in the community, we are living.  people who have read my blog have left comments about others they knew who grieved/missed/"didn't move on with their life" as some are want to put it.


"I don't know if I ever told you, but my Grandmother was widowed at 48--she never "dated"--said she never would. Roy was her life--she always felt like he was just around the corner. She was a widow for 30 years and yet a happy person. She didn't need any other man then Roy in her life.

The day she died, she sat up in bed, looked at the door, smiled and said, 'Roy has come for me', laid back and died. I know for a fact that my grandfather came to get her and walk home with her."

some have left me quotes that they agree with and feel inspired by.  they either understand this particular journey that i am on, or they accept that i am on it without feeling the need to correct, criticize, or condemn me.

"I am not anxious to give you the truth. I am very anxious to have you understand that all truth and power are feeble to you except your own." - walt whitman 

i have also written in a previous blog about a man i knew.  he "grieved" his whole life and no one thought he was odd, or wrong, or "not moving on with his life" or anything bad.

http://womannshadows.blogspot.com/2009/08/hard-dreaming-mortality-and-widower.html


i guess back in the old days of grief, it was acceptable to live, {<~~ see that word?  live}, live your life alone and missing someone.  you laugh.  you work.  you celebrate the holidays.  but you do miss the person you loved.  you do not feel the need to date or remarry or, as someone once put it to me, "go out and have sex to at least feel alive."  if i had the money i would take trips and see the world.  i would take hundreds of thousands of pictures.  and i would miss him in Rome, Paris, Edinburgh, on cruise ships, wherever i may roam.

it is perfectly acceptable, lovely, wonderful, all the good things i can say, for a widow or widower to find someone new to love, get married, even have more children.  congratulations.  i am thrilled.

it is also perfectly acceptable for me to still love and miss my husband.  this blog is mine.  it is my journal that i do hope for feedback, contact with the world at large, but do not, do not, do NOT criticize me for still loving my husband, feeling the strength of our marriage vows, not feeling the desire or inclination to date, and still missing him while i go through some of my medical issues, my worries over money, and my wistful desire to talk to him.  do not presume to have been there, even if you have.  do not presume you know my life and how i am affected by things.  you do not know what has happened before that shaped the woman i am today.  you do not really even possibly know my exact age, 54.  now you know.  yes, there are over 50 singles sites.  i'm not interested.

and if you have something that will hurt my feelings, say it with grace and gentleness or don't say it at all.  cruelty is you loving being hurtful and that speaks volumes about who you are.  i would rather be on this grief journey missing him as i do than be you in all your lofty cruel glory heaping your opinions over everyone.  they will say about me, "she loved him immensely and missed him all the days of her life."  they will say about you, "what a bitch."

that expression, you need to walk a mile in my shoes, is true.  to fully understand that expression you need to know that if you walk a mile in my shoes all the scars inflicted on my body and all my nightmares of the past will come rushing around you.  beware.  some of it is horrible.  so before you criticize a widow or a widower, whether they've "remarried too quickly" or "grieving too long and need to get on with their life," you truly need to "walk a mile in their shoes."

to the people who don't understand, who say to me, "get on with your life," i will take those words and hand them back to you.  "get on with your life." stop wasting your obviously frustrated time fretting about me.  get on with your life.  go on, and don't look back.

as for me, for right now, and as far as i can see in the distant future, i will grieve the loss of my husband.  i will LIVE, work, laugh, love my children, plan things, wait for holidays, write, take photographs, sew, paint, all that i used to do when he was alive, but i will do three more things.

1. i will miss him, love him, talk to him,
2. i will take pictures of and commune with the full moon,
and 3. i will see dragons, however subtle, in ephemeral things throughout the day.....

everyday, maybe for the rest of my life.

"Love is the only thing that we carry with us when we go......"

~ Louisa May Alcott 

 

the art of grief

i've been down, really kinda scary down.  ashamed of my meager life and my little retail job.  tired of explaining that Marines don't make 6 figure salaries.  worried about my physical health.  i have a doctor's appointment about my diabetes and my broken foot and broken knee on Tuesday.

it's been three years and i miss him as much now as i did the moment he "left" me.  i remember sitting beside him in the hospital after they pronounced him gone.  i couldn't believe his body was there but he was gone.  he was gone; just gone.

i sat there holding his arm, trying to get his fingers to close around mine but it was all wrong.  he wasn't warm anymore.  and he was getting cooler.

sadly i still remember this with clarity and detail that astounds me.  but then i've always been cursed/blessed with a great capacity for memory.

i've held many jobs over my life.  when i was 16, i was a model.  i never told anyone that after i left my hometown.  but i was.  i was a little local model for a boutique.  it was my mother's idea and i always did what she told me to do.  but the one thing i have always been is an artist.  i was called a shy child, extremely withdrawn.  i wasn't really though.  i was just careful.  i never wanted to get into trouble.   when i was 7 my mother was told to get me involved in some activity after school.  i asked for art lessons.  she allowed it.  and i've never stopped being creative, artistic.

Antonin Artaud wrote:  "no one has ever written, painted, sculpted, modeled, built, or invented except to literally get out of hell."

i can tell you, from my experience, that statement is true.

i still paint.

 

footboard of my bed that i don't use but it's leaning against the wall in my hallway with books slowly building up underneath it.  so i guess it's a glorified book end.

 the headboard that i actually use as a headboard.  i also play my ocean waves sounds to try and go to sleep with.

 my shark board.  it's leaning against the wall of my bedroom on my dresser.  i love him.  such a flawless machine.

my embroidery piece that i am working on for a Memory Quilt.  it has taken me hours and hours,

and hours and hours to do this and i am still not done.  there is still so much more shading and highlighting to do.  i'll take a photo when i am done.

and of course, Bunny's clothes and her bags i wear, the way i use her as my alter ego, is all my art.

and my words.  my writing.  it builds up inside me and i have to let it out.  i have to tell someone about what i feel.  you guys are it.  you are all i have.

i am grieving still.  i get along okay.  i am fighting this slump with all that i have inside me,

which is my love for him, and my children.  i can't let them down.

and my silly little dogs.  i love them so much.

now i need to try and love myself a little bit. more than self preservation.  more than, "i'm doing it for him and my children."  i need to try and like myself.  i need to find something inside me that my mother never saw, that my father ignored, the my brother turned his back on, that my first husband turned cold towards......

i need to find something inside me that only my Dragon saw.

my children?  aw, they love me because i am their mom.  they imprinted on me and they know i would die for them.

but me?  just me by myself?  what am i worth?

i need to collect my thoughts and remember all the things my Dragon said to me when we were courting, and we were courting right up to the moment he died.

i love him.

but i need to like me, to find something in myself i am proud of.

maybe,

maybe i can be proud of my art again.

maybe i can try to pull myself out of this hell of my own creation.

get it?  i "created" my own hell?  how's that for irony?

home

i am really in  rough place.  i know the reasons.  can't, no, won't tell you.  i don't think it really matters anyway to anyone but me.  just know i am in a rough place.  but i am still here.  won't quit.

will never quit.

my Dragon never did, and he had been in some very rough places, actual, physical rough places and times.  'cuz, yeah, he was {is} a Marine.  those guys are sent to rough places and rough places stress you out.   my Dragon never gave up.  so i'm not.

i also have my two children, grown though they are.  never going to lay down and quit.

but i am low.  tearful.  exhausted.  worried.

a man my Dragon and i had gotten to know during out walks about Rockport was Paul St. Germain.  he is the president of the Thatcher Island Association.  he is also spearheading the renovations to the lightkeeper's house on my island, mine, as in all mine ~ Straitsmouth Island.  or as i like to call it, mine.

anyway, i opened email this morning and he had sent me 12 photographs of the island and the renovation that is going on.  i smiled.  so bittersweet.  he said if i ever get back up there he will take me out to my island.  we'd walk around and i could take pictures to my heart's content.  he said, "dawn to sunset.  the island will be yours for the day."  he said the town still and the island association still refer to it as my island.  they just remember all the hours i spent staring at that austere and secluded piece of real estate.  the lobstermen would be hurrying in and spy me out on the rocky point off Whale Cove at the start of the big nor'easters taking photos.  they would head in.  i was staying out there.

it's home to me.  and when you're in a rough place, all you can think about is going home.

fading away

the doctor was wrong, i think.  i feel worse and worse.  i've woken up crying because i am awake.  i feel lost and alone at this time.  no plans for the future except to keep my head down and work and scrimp out a living.  no dreams big or small except hoping i get time to see my daughter next month, and my son after that.  no dreams at all for anything. 

when a person stops having hopes and dreams, little plans for a future fun or day off, are they even a real person anymore?  i don't know how long these feelings will last, but i guess i have to last.

i wish for a break from this:  physical pain {i have a day off next month, doctor visit that day for diabetes, going to talk to him again about this}, loneliness, lack of energy, sleeping too much, worry, stress over money, fear of not having enough to pay my bills, introspection at what it is about me that does not endear myself to anyone....any one person.  and the one person who could stand me has died.

i wrote that my brother died, and not one comment, no reaching out, not one, "i'm sorry for the loss."  grief again magnified by not being good enough for him and not even a {{hug}}.  and in real life?  "can you work?"  yes, of course.  i will work.  i am working.  i will always work.  if i don't show up for work, either my child has died or i have died or a meteor has hit the earth.

maybe if my body didn't hurt so much, physical pain, i could rise above this. 

i feel like i am fading away and .......

only my two children will know.

if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear, does it make a sound?

if a person is abandoned, ignored, forgotten, let behind, is she really there?

i hope he remembers me.  i hope he still loves me.  i think God knows i'm here, if only to see if i need to be punished for being bad.  hope slipping away is a little like losing faith.

fading, fading a bit more, maybe not writing anymore, i don't know anymore since i don't plan anything anymore, pulling back and in, not reaching out to get forgotten or dumped as in the past, fading,

                            fading,

                                                        fading away until....

                                         gone.

what death takes away...

i have to be honest with myself, and since this is my place, i am going to be honest here.

i am living as a quasi-hermit.  i go to work and deal with people all through my shift.  then i turn the smile off and get myself back to my place, shut the door, and check out of life.  i haven't had time to try and find any outside for me.  i am too tired.  i hurt too much.  i sit and work on my other job.  i sit and sew for someone else.  my daughter checks in every day; my son checks in every other day.  but i see no one else.

i do not have a friend to talk to.  i have given up finding a counselor.  i have tried so many times and they all leave.  i am the common denominator so it has to be me.  i am not someone to be friends with.

and yet, at work, i can pull it off.  strangers adore me.  i make people laugh.  i relate to them and pull them out of themselves.  i can get someone to spill their secrets inside of 30 seconds and then give them a heart ceremony to remember forever, to bring them back to me at the store time and time again and ask for me.  i cannot get someone to stay in my life as a friend for longer than a couple of months.  duration?  do i wear people out?  is that what happened to my Dragon?  did he wear out?

i've hit a road block in the journey.  i need him back to talk to me.  i haven't told anyone, well, one person i told, actually told in an email.  this road block is a big deal to me and i don't know what to do with it.

my brother died.

yeah, i was once someone's sister.  and he abandoned me because i didn't have money to give him to help him pay for his twins' college tuition.  i just didn't have it and he got mad.  he stopped speaking to me.  when i lost my Dragon, he hung up on me.  almost 2 weeks ago, my sister-in-law emailed me to call her. i called.  my brother had died.  he had not wanted to have contact with me, even while knowing he was going to die.  i was not worth it.

my sister-in-law did not understand why my brother was so harsh.  she had encouraged him to get in touch with me.  she was very sorry, but, oddly enough she did not wish any further contact.  apparently she and my brother had marital troubles and she has a new boyfriend.  such is my life.

what death takes away

no man can restore.

truer words......

what death takes away, we can never have again.  we can never have answers to our questions.  we can never have an understanding of the relationship.  we can never find out what went wrong, or why, or how it could have gotten so far away from us.  and lastly, death takes away any chance at a resolution which, without that person, we may never find.

i need to talk to someone who loves me and can respond to me with clarity and logic.  my daughter called him an asshole.  my son, pretty much the same.  my Dragon would have walked over to me and embraced me while i cried.  he would have let me talk, vent, rage about the insane injustice, about the wasted years.  and then he, in that low gentle voice of his, he would have gone over why the failure was not my fault.  he would have held me and caressed my hair.  he would have let me taken the time to grieve; to talk about it over and over until i accepted that there will never be a resolution to this.

friend/grief counselor/brother ~ i wish i knew why and how i was so dispensable.

i did ask my doctor about my melancholia/depression.  he asked me some very hard questions.  he said he felt i had a healthy view of my husband's death and of my life since.  he said i was logical, rational, and taking care of myself.  i am holding down a job in which i got a promotion in record time.  he said i had a deep bond with my husband.  he said that it was not unheard of but rare enough to make people wonder at it.  he admitted to me that i probably would not ever be effervescently gleeful again, but then few people really are and to not worry.  bottom line, i do not need medication. i am handling my grief appropriately.  he said to keep writing about what moves me.  he believes it is best that i continue finding time to be creative in whatever medium i need to ~ writing, photography, sewing, etc.  i told him i always would.  i will always miss my Dragon.  it has been 3 years, 4 months.  time has not dimmed the ache.

i saw this series of pictures of a male bird trying to revive his mate.  the photographer who sat and took the pictures said the male waited beside his mate for hours crying, calling, nudging her.  hours.  the intensely interested photographer said he waited and watched.  the male finally flew away but within 20 minutes had returned and protected his mate from anyone who walked too closely to her.  the photographer wrote that he finally braved the pecking and picked up the little female and buried her at the base of a tree.  the male flew up and waited for him to finish and step away, then he flew back down to sit on the ground beside the freshly overturned dirt.  the photographer left and came back the next day.  the little bird was still there but with fresh bread crumbs having been thrown at him by passersby.  people has seen and knew what had happened.  the photographer returned everyday for two weeks.  popcorn, bread crumbs, and even a little pan of water had been left for the male bird.  everyone was trying to comfort and offer their support for the tiny creature.  he continued to sit there beside the little grave of his dead mate.  people stood and watched him, and talked.  no one had seen him fly anymore.  dogs were kept away when walking past so as not to stress him further.  finally, one day, the photographer did not see the male sitting there.  the pan of water was gone but in its place was another fresh pile of dirt that had been overturned.  a small popsicle cross was in the dirt between the two mounds.  written on it was "together forever."

the male bird stayed with his dead mate for two weeks.  that is a long time for an animal that most people claim does not have a soul, does not even have feelings, to grieve and mourn.  it was also a remarkable testament to the average, everyday person to notice something extraordinary in nature.  no one tried to get the male to move on.  they did encourage him to take care of himself.  how the male bird passed is a mystery to the photographer and now to me, and you.  but his remains were taken care of respectfully.

i don't sit beside my Dragon's urn.  i don't sit and mourn, cry, and not go out.  i work.  i laugh.  i try very hard to endear myself to strangers.  strangers are all that like me well enough.  i am fantastic, intelligent, wonderful, incredible in small doses.  but for the long haul, only my Dragon.

only my Dragon.

only my Dragon.

what death takes away..........

the further away the tides of time take me from the sound of his voice, and the warmth of his touch, i have to be honest and say, i have no earthly clue why he loved me.  and now, i never will.

outside

there was a comment left on my last posting, one about finding love.  and she knows there will never be anyone but my Dragon.  no, she wrote to me about finding my love of life again.

i used to love life so much; the moon, the sky, dogs walking along the road or the beach on some private doggy agenda, seeing the gulls fly overhead, standing on a bluff overlooking Gloucester Harbor on a frigid New Year's Day watching a dory sail safely home with a huge Nor'easter on his stern.

i used to love life so much.  there are the wonderful smells of fresh flowers and fresh salt air, and horses, friendly horses who love to have their manes finger-combed and their ears scratched, and kisses put on the velvety end of their noses.

but i need to get outside.  the things that make me happy, that make my soul sing are all outside.  i don't like shopping.  i don't care that much about going to the movies.  dining out is nice but it doesn't make me feel alive.  it doesn't make my heart feel any joy.  walks do.  long walks around places that have spirit, natural beauty; place where others have found some kind of meaning to life.....

there are little public parks and walkways around here but they bustle with runners and joggers and are filled with smoke.  yeah, a lot of the runners and joggers here smoke, or chew and spit.  there's tobacco juice stains all around the paths.  that odor rising in the heat doesn't lend itself to meditation.

but i saw a touch of beauty yesterday morning while making that long drive to work.  it gets a little bit rural and there are stands of trees.  the morning sky had low clouds from heavy rains the night before but they were lifting with the sun.  and i saw fog, or clouds......wisps of white moisture rising to the sky like spirits on their way home.

they glistened and shined and swirled like gentle whirlwinds.  and i swear that one of them, for a moment, looked like a dragon.  the whole scene was ethereally beautiful.  they thinned out as they climbed to the sky and then disappeared into the Heavens.  i was in awe and wished i had had my camera.  but i know i will remember this bit of visual magic and mystery for a long time.

this vision and what someone wrote to me about maybe finding my love of life again has me knowing i need to find the outside again.  i need to find a place where i can be away from people.  i want to walk and be with the things that are free and simple and naturally beautiful.

grief has almost killed me.  his death has left me staggering under the weight of knowing i'll never have him back again.  but nature is still out there.  the outside is still there waiting for me.  i'm going to go outside and find it.

and who knows, maybe i'll feel my Dragon's love better with a freer mind.

the inconstant moon of my life

O swear not by the moon, th'inconstant moon
That monthly changes in her circled orb,
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.  

i will swear by the moon though it is inconstant.

it is my lifelong companion now and means so much to me.

i watch it as it seems to watch me.

as God does not answer me, neither does my moon.

my "inconstant moon" is one that is forever a fixture in my heart and mind.

waiting for it to be full, i worry about cloud cover and yet,

and yet, the clouds provide such a sight if they move with the wild abandon of a fearless night.

but my nights are both welcomed and feared for dreams or lack of rest.

the double-edged sword of getting the sleep i need against the dreams that might come

versus the lack of rest i need to hold the demons of insomnia at bay.

i love the moon.  i hate what it reminds me of.

but it is the only thing in my life that allows me to speak about him.

it is the only thing in my life that offers no advice, only keeps vigil with me for the countdown of my life.

i need him, still.

i wish he were here, still.

i miss him, still.

i always will, i think.

i was asked when would i take off my rings, allow the world to see me as a single woman.

i said, "but i am not single in my heart.  rings off, rings on, my heart is taken,

so i might as well keep the wall up that the rings represent until such time as he leaves me from there, too."

the way i feel at this time, it would hurt me more to force myself to live and think of myself

as a single woman, than to let my memories of him haunt me as they do.

so the moon and i continue our vigil over each other.

and when i am very old and frail,

i will carefully, slowly, ease my weariness and aches outside each night of the full moon

so i can gaze upwards and pine for,

speak to,

weep for what i cannot ever have again in this life.

and in my elderly befuddled mind,

i will call out to him and hope my beautiful, fierce Dragon,

who is curled up on the dark side of the moon,

will peer around its cold, silver-whiteness to gaze back down at me.