i'm beside the ocean again

i'm living beside the ocean again. i can hear the waves and this time the water is warm. it's Hawaii. i've never been but Suddenwidow has and she sent me a Hawaiian beach to help me through this week. i've taken photos and i hope Suddenwidow doesn't mind being protrayed as a nurse. TLC. that's what some of us need sometimes. flowers. emails. cards. and now the beach. now if only my Dragon could come back i'd invite everyone to my apartment to sit by the beach and we'd have a party.

okay, i'm not 100%. i need to get through Valentine's Day.

here is Suddenwidow, the nurse, and me, the clown since my life is a farce. but i'm still in disguise. that's why the mask. still have the self esteem issues. sorry. =*0( Dragon was helping. now he's gone and i can't see myself in his eyes. but i'm trying to rebuild myself myself with the memory of his eyes.

anyway..............
meet "bowl of ocean." it comes in a box and the sand, rocks, and shells in little packets. it's a zen garden of beach.
it comes with instructions on a card for the uninitiated but i've been on a beach before. i'm a rock stacker from way back. i know what to do.

see? two pals by the beach.

a bowl of ocean. my own zen garden. i can rearrange it anytime i need to go to the beach.

i know, i used trolls. no inference intended with regards to the lovely Suddenwidow. i wanted to convey friends and the nurse troll is so small she got lost beside Beach Bunny.

February 9th ~ Bunny gets flowers

i wasn't going to post today since i feel so drained today. i said it all yesterday in anticipation of last night and today. but at a very weak moment, breaking from sewing for lunch, there was a knock on the door. there was a nice man with flowers. so beautiful. they smell so good. and i smiled. how can you not smile at flowers? so i set Bunny up and took her picture. i wanted to show them off as i did the flowers i received from Boo on my birthday.

thank you, Split Second Single Father, for the flowers. i love them. they helped and join all the comments and emails offering support. all of it, all of you are what are getting me through this because i have to be honest, i'm not very strong today. i'm suffering. so it's a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, munchos, and a glass of tea. then back to embroidery. comfort food and pouring my heart out into a Memory Quilt. and knowing all of you are out there and understanding what it feels like.

even though my heart and my words are all i can give, when you need me, they are all yours.

365

tonight at 11:30 pm, the memory will become the most vivid. at 12:03 am, his death will become one year old and the second year of the nightmare begins. the anguish i feel over his death is as acute today, and all this past weekend, as it was on this day one year ago. i know it will continue unabated until after Valentine’s Day, the day his funeral was held. i usually have something in mind when i sit to write but what do i write about a milestone i never thought would happen, that i didn’t want to have come to pass, and one that i want to end as fast as it can? grief is a solitary journey. what we each feel is as individual as our relationships are and as we are. what i may come up with may or may not be familiar to those ahead of me. my writing is unique to me. so here is my attempt to honor a man none of you knew.

his death certificate says 9 February 2009. when the funeral home gave it to me and i saw the date, i thought, “no, that’s wrong. it was the 8th.” then i remembered. he started dying on the 8^th. it was over on the 9^th. 12:03 am. it’s a small thing that means nothing to anyone but me. on the 8^th and the 9^th of every month i feel hollow, as if there is nothing inside me. no stomach, no brain, no lungs, and no heart. i barely eat. i can’t think. breathing is hard at times. and i cannot feel my heart do anything but miss the heart it used to beat beside.

i am told this will get better with the passing of time. i leave this alone as i do accept that there may be improvement in my feelings, but i will need to see when and by how much for myself. today, these are my thoughts and i will say unequivocally that i will never get over losing him. he will always be in my heart, on my mind, and his name will forever be on my lips. because i adore him. the candles have already been lit.

how long is a year? “short if you sing, but long if you sigh.” all i’ve done this year is survive 365 days without the only man i’ll ever love. i’ve cried every one of those days in one form or another be it great, heaving sobs or blinking back silent tears.

three hundred, sixty-five days i’ve had to live without his winsome ways. for all his strength and fierceness, he was also very charming. it’s the truth that he kept his promise of a daisy a day. if he couldn’t pick them or buy them, he’d take his finger and draw one on my inner wrist. i always liked those. sitting side-by-side, leaning into one another with our heads touching. he’d take my hand and start to draw. if i’m really tired and hurting for him, i rotate my hand and look at my empty wrist. sometimes my mind lets me see one there. dream world.

he deserves so much better than he got in his life. he deserves to have the world know what he did for his country. he deserves a huge memorial. but his life cannot be talked about openly. his sacrifices have to be inferred. not every death gets a big candlelight vigil with mourners lining the walls of the church. a lot of us simply get a night full of stars and oceans of tears shed from only a handful of people who will grieve forever such a loss.

not many knew of my Dragon whose hidden life was given over to patriotism for so long and with a great deal of silent honor. he died unexpectedly on the night of the full moon. there were no orators at his funeral. all the words spoken were the ones i wrote. there were few flowers. his funeral had a scattering of people who had known him and were willing to relinquish the morning of Valentine's Day. all were in shock. all came to me and clung to my arm and asked me “how,” “why,” “i can’t believe it,” and “he can’t be gone. he’s so strong and alive.” i could not speak so my daughter responded for me, "heart attack," "only God knows," "neither can we," and for the last, even her strength broke and her voice fell silent.

he got a folded flag, a broken arrow (he is half Sioux, half Russian) and his destroyed wife and her two equally devastated children. a horrible little, plastic, black box held the ashes of the Dragon. i found an urn that spoke to the life we had and the life we wanted. i put that black box far back into the closet. i will, however, never get rid of it.

“my husband died.” that doesn’t sound real even though i know it to be true. my Dragon’s body was too powerful and his spirit too enduring for me to think he could ever be conquered. i know he wasn't bullet proof, but the scars from being shot and stabbed repeatedly, all his years of combat sketched out on his body like a wild tattoo, lead me to believe that i would die long before he would. i’m weak. he’s strong. he’s the Dragon. Dragon’s live forever.

“he’s in Heaven.” that haunts me because i’d like to know. i am so lost without him and i cry as i pray that he is there and well and at peace. but that’s faith for you. it’s not for us to know. i have to admit i've had the “my God, my God, why have You forsaken me” moments. i do this when i feel vulnerable, when i’m hungry, and when i worry that after i finish the commissions i have that i will not get another one, and when i have to roll over and beg my ex for my stipend. but then i have these moments when i’m outside walking the dogs and i feel a sudden breeze. the sky is beautiful and i see an early moonrise, one where the moon and the sun look across at each other and i feel strongly that he just has to be there, on the moon, flying through the universe, up in Heaven.

“my Dragon has gone ahead.” that one will have to be the one that stands because it sounds like its part of a story and i’ve always liked stories. i like the ones that start with “once upon a time.”

Once upon a time there was a handsome, fierce Dragon who was looking for someone to love and someone to love him. he found a woman who lived in the shadows. it was true love from the start, “true” as in the definition culled from Shakespearean times. she found in his arms and heart a paradise on Earth that only Heaven could outshine. he found in her arms and heart a love so deep that his nickname became, no longer a curse, but a term of endearment. they found common respect, admiration, and a blazing joy so white hot that they had started to believe in “happily ever after.”

it was the night of the full moon. their kisses were soft. their embrace was serene and intimate. their “i love you’s” exchanged before closing their eyes to sleep were tender. legs were entwined and fingers were laced together when the Dragon started gasping for breath. the woman from the shadows sensed it before she heard his difficulty because one of her hands was on her Dragon’s chest. she flipped on the light and saw her husband choking for air. gut wrenching terror filled her as she called 911 and started, then saw she was failing at, CPR. she cried his name. she talked to him praying he heard her, “love, can you hear me? you’re gonna be fine. okay? you’re going to be fine. don’t be scared. please don’t be scared. they’re coming. hear it? they’re almost here. you’ll be fine. please be fine.” she knew what was happening to him. she was a realist. she said to him, to God, “don’t leave me.” the last thing she whispered to him was, “i love you.”

they made her leave the room while they worked on him. then she saw them putting him in the ambulance. the police drove her to the hospital because they said she was in shock. she waited alone in the ER for someone to tell her what was going on. it was only 10 minutes. at four minutes after midnight, they came. two nurses and a doctor were walking towards her as the woman from the shadows tried to back away.

her heart started screaming. not her lips. not her mind. her heart. she heard it in her head. she knew what was coming. but why no one heard her heart flying to pieces was beyond her understanding. God probably heard, but He was busy with something else. maybe He was taking the Dragon to Heaven.

she watched these three people whose job it would be to tell her tragic news. they shouldn’t be coming towards her though, not like this, not with those looks on their faces. she and her Dragon loved each other and love conquers all. right? in their respective lives, they’d already been through so much. they were going to get a happily ever after, weren’t they? if you’ve done good things all your life some of that good is supposed to come back around. right? they had never asked for anything but each other. they had never expected anything grand. all they wanted was each other. to them, that was the grandest thing in the universe. surely God was going to at least let them be together. the nurses and that doctor weren’t there for her. but she knew there was no one else in the waiting room.

the nurses had her sit down so the doctor could tell her how hard he’d worked but that it had been a lost cause. her husband probably wasn’t his first lost cause that night because there was a kind of detached sadness in his eyes. the woman from the shadows must have looked pretty bad because the doctor suddenly frowned as he reached over and took her pulse. one of the nurses went and got her water while the other helped her on with her coat. it was then that the Dragon’s wife realized she was violently shivering.

the doctor asked her if she had any questions and she had only one.

“i failed to save him. you failed. we both failed him. what is it i’m supposed to ask?”

the color drained from the doctor’s face and the woman guessed no one had asked put it quite that way before. either way he said no more to her. he just squeezed her hand and bowed out to let the nurses take over. her heart was still screaming but neither nurse acknowledged it. they also didn’t seem to notice when it stopped screaming and start to splinter into a thousand pieces. the Dragon’s wife was helped up out of her chair at the same time that she felt all the pieces of her heart being swirled up by the wind from the Dragon’s wings as he flew away from her.

they lead her to a room where they had laid her Dragon out with a crisp white sheet tucked tight across his chest. this was the second to last time she saw her Dragon. his large shoulders spread across the small gurney. his white and silver hair glinted under the lights in the silent room. he looked so handsome, as if he was only sleeping, but his chest was not moving. it did not rise and fall with his great, deep breath like it had each night under the protection of her single hand. she stroked his beautiful soft beard and sighed his name on a shudder of sobs. his body was present but the Dragon was gone. something had made him do what he’d promised her he’d never do. he’d left her.

the Dragon had gone ahead.

someone once said, “light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. no matter how fast light travels, if finds the darkness has gotten there first, and is waiting for it.” woman in shadows had lived in darkness for the whole of her life and had only just found the light. it had come from her Dragon. it had been in his eyes as he looked at her and in his heart, as he loved her. now that light was extinguished and she was thrust back into the dark, but it was unlike the one from before. this dark was going to be from a forever night where she had known the love of her Dragon, and had watched him be taken from her.

the last time she saw her Dragon, he was lying in state, as it were, in the funeral home awaiting her formal identification. her daughter and son were with her, but her son was having a hard time keeping his tears under control. he did not want to see a lifeless Dragon so it was her daughter that went with her down the stairs following the funeral home director to see him. woman in shadows was carefully watched as she made her way one step at a time. when he came into view she broke. there's no other word to explain what happened inside her. it wasn’t a nightmare. it was reality. her Dragon was gone. she kneeled on the floor beside him and sobbed into her hands. the overwhelming loss settled on her shoulders and prevented her from speaking for hours after that visit. her daughter cried. she talked to the Dragon, stroked his hand, and softly said goodbye. the funeral director quietly excused herself to give these two women their time alone. she had seen a lot of grief, all kinds, founded in all the variables of human emotion. this was genuine grief founded in a true and deep love that now must be transcended in the minds of the survivors. she could not help with that.

it has now been a year and in these intervening 365 days, the woman from the shadows has become odd. she was eccentric before but now, she has been called odd by a couple of people and she has acknowledged that it fits. she’s become a cloister. she has learned why some religious choose solitude for their life of prayers. she’s faithful in her daily devotions to God and in her talks to her Dragon. she’s learned that neither answer in a way she can understand. she’s also aware that her life has heartbreakingly played out exactly like it was predicted to her. “you’re worthless. you’ll end up as nothing. you’ll end up alone.”

mothers have a way of being irritatingly right sometimes.

all the woman from the shadows can do is accept. there is no negotiating a return from something like death. all she can do is close her eyes to the pain when it rises in intensity. all she can do is live the rest of her life and wait her turn. she sews all day every day except on the nights of the full moon. on those nights she is distracted. she knows what time moonrise is. she gets anxious until that shining orb touches her particular horizon, and then she sighs. sweet relief. he’s back, the Man in the Moon, her Dragon. she photographs him. she stares at him. she talks to him. he, too, doesn’t answer her.

her collection of full moon photographs is damning evidence of the time she’s spent pining for someone who is lost to her for the rest of her life. she looks at her photographs of her moon; she feels possessive of it, and feels like the night version of the water nymph, Clytie, who followed the sun across the sky and became the sunflower. the one photograph she stares at most is the one she calls “Dragon’s Moon.” it’s the moon of 8 February 2009.

she pines for him. she wishes she could hear his deep, rumbly voice again. she wishes that when she reaches out her arms to the darkness that his hands would grasp hers and he would pull her into his strong, warm embrace. she faces each day and tries to be “stronger.” she does exactly what she’s supposed to do. she’s very correct in all her ways. but remember, the woman from the shadows has become odd since the death of her Dragon. she’s very much alone and has gotten used to it. she’s been hurt along the way this year in part for not being good enough, for not “measuring up,” and for having become so odd.

days are hard for her as they are for most who grieve but it is also for one reason that others may not understand. the woman from the shadows, the Dragon’s wife, misses the darkness that reveals the Heavens to her. she misses the moon whatever it’s phase. see, the Dragon’s wife is in love with the night.

“When he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars and he will make the face of Heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun.”

it hasn’t been 365 days. it’s been 365 nights.

"wild heart"

i found a letter he wrote once while he was gone on one of his missions. it was in an envelope addressed to me, just in case it needed to be mailed by someone else. just in case. but he came home and we sat together and he got to read it to me. i changed it enough to fit the present.

She’s buried herself in her sewing today. She won’t write anything again until Monday, the start of the end of me. I thought I’d tell you something you didn’t know about her and probably never would. You’d never know it by looking at her, or even by being her casual friend, but my wife has a wild heart. I am the only one who knows this. It didn’t take me long to figure it out but I was looking at her pretty hard. It’s just under the surface but you have to know where to look. She keeps it hidden in the shadows.

She’s shy and takes reticence to a whole other level. It’s because she has been taught not to believe in herself. I remember our first date. I was fascinated from the start. I kept telling myself not to screw this up. When we parted I couldn’t tell if she liked me or not and I didn’t know what to do so I shook her hand and leaned in for a kiss both at the same time. I was so scared she wouldn’t want to see me again. And then I talked her into being my wife. She always thought she was the lucky one.

I wanted to set her spirit free, but I died and she’s alone again. I know she’s going to San Diego in August so I wanted someone to know this about her. I want someone else in the world to know that my wife has this wild heart that is filled with longing for me and for the life we had, and for the life I promised her. She’s lost right now missing me and wanting me back. And I would like it if someone knew to watch her watch the ocean while she’s there, because she’ll go out there and look at it if it’s close. She’ll smile and laugh inside with you, but she’s shy and I know she won’t let people see her. Not really. Not in so short a time. you'll turn around and she'll be gone. She'll have gone outside.

I watch her and know her thoughts. I can feel her going back into the shadows a little bit, except in her writing, in her sewing, her drawings, and her photographs. Her art is the only way anyone will get to know her. She’s got a vivid imagination and deep inside her that wild heart beats. But no one knows it's there.

She’s unobtrusive in public, and accommodating. I’ve been places with her and seen a whole room of people not realize she’s there, or if they did, never pay attention to her. She’s quiet. She studies people. But once she steps outdoors you can see the wildness in her.

I would lead her in hikes and turn around to find her far behind me. She’d stopped to watch something or look at something almost unnoticeable. She’d find fungus growing inside a hollowed out tree and show me all its colors. She’d watch bugs and birds and snakes. She didn’t like frogs though. She didn’t want one to jump on her. She was funny and different, and she looked at me like I was this big hero, and I loved it.

She was fearless and I always had to really watch her. She’d focus on something and drift off into a world of her own and get into trouble. But her world was a place I wanted to be in with her. She’d show me what she saw, tell me what she thought and it was always something I never saw before or thought before.

She drove me crazy. Once she realized it was okay to be herself she was like this wild horse freed from a pen. She wanted to walk everywhere, climb places she didn’t have the training for, and be out in weather she wasn’t able to deal with. She get out on the rocks and the tides would cut her off or she’d turn around realizing how high up she was or how far out, and she’d be unable to get back. And if she got too cold she wouldn’t be able to recover without help, my help. I had to watch her like a hawk.

She’d have me hike in with her to a place called Dogtown. It’s an abandoned settlement inland in the center of Cape Ann. There are no houses there anymore, only the dugout basements. It’s a dangerous place to go if you don’t know where to look and it’s reputed to be haunted and she was fearless. She’d climb down into the basements and I’d try to hold her hand, watch where she stepped, gauge the sunlight, the temperature, all the sh*t that could go wrong exploring abandoned places like that. Then I’d help her climb out. We’d be filthy and she’d smile and say, “Wasn’t that fun?” And it was. Then I’d see her pictures later on the computer, and see it as she did, and I’d want to go back.

She wants to go back home. I’d take her, but I died and now she’s alone and scared. She misses me more than she’s scared. She thinks she can’t do it. I see her looking at her pictures of our island and her eyes fill with unshed tears. She’s got a set of pictures that breaks my heart with their beauty. She wanted to live out there so badly. She wanted to be alone with me out there. She understood the wildness in me and is my soulmate. She called us kindred spirits, and we were, we are. She wanted to be alone out there away from everyone who didn’t understand the wildness and beauty of the wind, the waves, and nature. I wish I could have made it happen so I do all that I have left to me. I go get and take her to our island.

I wait until it’s very late and she’s finally out for the night. I go into her heart and her dreams and I take her to our island. For a while, a very short while, we are together again. We have a wonderful life out there under the heavens, day and night, summer and winter, clear or stormy. I’m with her and she is free to be herself. She can explore the island and take her pictures and be safe. No one can hurt her. She has all she wants. She has her island, her sky, her rocks, shells, the crashing waves, and she has me. Beach Bunny and her Dragon can be together forever on our island, even if, for now, it's only in her dreams.

Just do me one favor, will you? Keep reminding her, when she's down and feeling lost, remind her that I'm waiting for her. I'll take back over then and I'll never let her be alone again.

home is where the heart it

my mind is somewhere else these days.

it's not here with me anymore.

it's back by the ocean i left behind,

and my heart is so very sore.

i want to go home to the cove now.

i want this bad dream to end.

just sit by his side looking out on forever

so my broken heart can mend.

it's almost midnight for me and my back aches. my hands hurt. my heart is wobbly.

i'll be direct. i want him. i want to go home. i want to sit in the den and look out at the ocean in the sunlight. i want to see the lighthouse flash all night. i want to hear the waves on the rocks below. the gulls cried and the wind rushed by and together forever seemed easy to hold in the palms of our hands.

how wrong we were.

the long week starts

i've been working all day. the long week alone is in full swing. no visitors unless i send up an SOS to my daughter. the last widow who kept up with me in any way has finally fallen by the wayside. no more contact from her. no responses to my phone calls or emails. it is my fault. i did not nurture her or take care of her as she wished. she wanted me to call her everyday to check on her and i did not. i admit that my nerves were frayed from her criticism of my life. i had an opportunity at a friend, but i let it slip through my fingers. to be honest, i didn't want to try. she wanted me to weave a net under her to keep her emotions safe and i don't know if i have enough to weave my own. *sigh* mea culpa.

i find, though, that i don't feel bad about it and i wonder what that says about me. i'm tired and i'm sad and it's been almost a year without my Dragon. my only contact with the outside world is through my daughter and through here. most of the time i'm fine with that. every once in a while it makes me melancholy.

i sit out on my balcony and stare at ....... other apartments. cars. the sky.

there is no ocean here. no salt in the air. it's kinda sad, every time we go to Wal-Mart i see the seagulls that scavenge through the garbage. they're scavengers by nature but somehow being this far inland, at a Wal-Mart, it's depressing. i like going out to get food, but i am relieved to get back. in my apartment there are shells, and driftwood, and rocks. it's a faux beach.

but the week alone is in full swing. i won't see anyone, anyone being my daughter, until next Monday. and that Monday will be the 8th. the start.

i'm sewing, beading, embroidering, creating. it's my legacy, i guess. that and my children. and my love for my Dragon.

oh, God, i miss him so much. it's coming and the pain is rising inside me. he's gone and he's not coming back. i'm a widow. i don't want to be a widow. i want to be his wife. i want to be with him. i want to be standing on the beach in the cold New England air with him adjusting my hat and my scarf. i want to hear his voice ask me, "are you getting cold? do you want to go on or go in?" i want to look up into his face and see his eyes crinkle in a smile. i want to see that piercing look as he makes his own judgement call because he knows i'll want to keep walking and taking photos. and whatever he decided was what i'd do because i love him. i'd follow him anywhere.
i'd follow him forever. even to the moon.

i've put up a link on the right to one of my favorite songs. it's under my Dragon's Moon. i hope you like it.

Adventure Days

i call them Adventure Days. they are my daughter's one day off a week and we have adventures. Michael's for floss. maybe Target to just walk around. Wal-Mart, of course, for the food. but there's the talking, the talking, the laughing, the talking, and of course the talking.i'm up on those days in anticipation of being out. as in away from the apartment. i check the weather for what shirt to wear. i have 6 long sleeve shirts, all his. i have 9 t-shirts, mixed his and mine. i wear the same pair of jeans always. my others have gotten to large, or i've lost weight. i'm not sure. but it's always exciting to know that my daughter is coming to get me.

i'm a cartoon. there was the single panel cartoon that appeared in the "New Yorker" years ago, really, seriously, years ago. i don't know why i remember it but it impacted me a lot way, way back then. an elderly woman was drawn standing up from her chair. doillies rested on the arms of the chair. it looked quite comfy. the woman's knitting was beside it, needles resting for the night. with one hand she was clutching her shawl around her, chilled a bit with the movement of her getting up and walking about the little room. her other hand was patting her television. she had a soft, lonely expression in her ink drawn eyes and underneath the cartoon it was written that she was saying, "Night,night. See you tomorrow."

i feel like that sometimes. i sew until very late. i'm in and out the sliders to my balcony taking photos of the moon. and then i walk the dogs one last time. i come in and take off their leashes. i pull my Dragon's bag of climbing ropes in front of the door as a B&E deterrant. and then i turn off the television. i don't yet say, "night, night," to it. but i think i'm close.

i've become a cartoon.

oh, well. here are more moon photos. i'm that pathetic, and devoted. one negative thing. one positive thing. so they cancel each other out and i'm okay.
the setting moon yesterday morning.
the rising moon last night.
the moon at apex for me. the earth turned and he moved and it looks different. he'll be back tonight.

i'm thinking i'm going to end up taking his photo each night until after Valentine's Day. to assist me with a goal to focus on until Valentine's Day/my Dragon's funeral anniversary is past.

and now, it's Adventure Day. i'm going to go brush my teeth. psssst. we may get hamburgers.