embroidery / Memory Quilts

Bunny has been so low, oh, so very low of late. worries. stress. pain. but still she lingers in this life. there is still stuff for her to do.

wisdom to impart? oh, pul-eeze. no wisdom from Bunny. Bunny just does what Bunny can. she works to live and yes, lives to work. it is all she has.

look at that soft, wistful little face? she has off today. it is good because she rests her foot up high on a Cushiony Soft Cushion of Restful Bliss. she has lingered in her 'jammies and is being, oh, so creative.

glimpses of the Memory Quilt she has been working on.
Eiffel Tower and Matterhorn and a snowboard embroidered on the quilt. lots and lots of colors and stitches.

this is the snow board Bunny embroidered that exactly matches the photograph sent to her to match. she worked so hard on this.

she also created a little ocean/island scene that she is very proud of. tons of floss. thousands of stitches. tricky fabric.

today she is working on the Porsche emblem. there is going to be the little Porsche horse in the center. Bunny is all propped up working; just working away.

she miss him, you know. she pines for her Dragon. nights are still so very hard. days at the store take her mind from her grief, but sitting there sewing, Bunny's fuzzy little mind has time to miss him. her foot aches with this sudden cold snap. owie ouch ouch. if Dragon were here, he'd tenderly rub her foot. he would stroke her soft fuzzy fur and take her into his arms and tell her this: "we'll get it fixed. i love you. you're brave, so brave. i'll find the money. we'll work it out."

so Bunny tells herself this: "he loves you still. you'll be getting, oh, so many hours as the holidays approach. you'll get on the insurance in 6 more months. just 6 more months and then you can get it fixed. he is so proud of you. he thinks you are oh, so brave. keep going. keep working. cry if you must. be patient with yourself......

because......

he loves you still."

*waves at the world* "i am still here...."

i'm still here.

i ordered the book recommended to me: Diary: Divine Mercy in My Soul by Saint Faustina. i look so very forward to spending time with that book. i need someone to speak to me while i am hurting here so much. i need some new words to hold onto. it has been a while since something touched my soul.

i am on the last embroidery work for this quilt. i will be putting the back together, then putting the quilt together in the frame to quilt it. i am feeling a little lighter about this work. it has been long and arduous, but i am proud of each stitch. hundreds of thousands of stitches of embroidery in this quilt. i will post photos of the work at some other point in time.

the holidays are coming. it means more hours at work. i am guaranteed 39 each week. i need the money. i am not going anywhere nor is anyone coming over. just work and work and cuddle with my dogs and try to find rest in sleep.

i cracked the bone in my right heel. it just split right up the inside of my heel. there is a big bulge there now. maybe in April 2012 after i get on health insurance at work i can have it "repaired." i have no idea what that will entail but it cannot entail me having any time off work or i cannot have that done. i am in a great deal of physical pain. it burns and throbs with every step i take, and when i am sitting down, too. standing at the register is a nightmare. i became nauseous today with the pain, and i was so proud of myself. no one knew.

i am still here. i have not quit. i am just treading water; no longer swimming at this time. maybe after the holidays. maybe after i get my foot fixed. maybe, maybe, maybe........

"But there is suffering in life,

and there are defeats.

No one can avoid them.

But it's better to lose some of the battles

in the struggles for your dreams

than to be defeated without ever knowing

what you're fighting for." ~ Paulo Coelho

i am fighting to survive.

i no longer think about having a "life." i no longer dream. i just want to survive until my continued existence is no longer required. all i want is to eventually come across a period of time in my life when nothing goes wrong and i feel more or less okay. that is what i am fighting for these days.

maybe my outlook will improve once i get a handle on coping with the pain of my cracked foot. it really is a bitch.

anyway, i am still out here writing to whomever is reading/listening. i am still here and i am not giving up.

what's the point

what is the point of this life? really, what is the point? what am i supposed to be doing here still?

my children are grown. they still want me here but they don't need me.

and he is gone. he left me alone here to face a life that has never been easy. never.

i woke up sobbing this morning. my own sobbing is what woke me up. i could not, did not want to face the day, people, work, life. i am so tired of living. not suicidal, just tired of living. i need rest. a break. no one seems to see past my facade of coping. i am desperately trying to save myself, but sometimes one person cannot throw themselves a rope, and i feel, today anyway, like i am at the end of the only rope i have.

i opened my eyes and i saw this face.

so i got up and walked them both in the coolish morning air.

if i did not have them..........

my heart is broken, i believe, beyond repair.

to be sick, to be diagnosed with the things i now face, to only have my daughter to tell a few things to.

i am tired.

here is my soul laid bare. at exactly 2 years and 8 months, on the nose, today, i woke up sobbing because i desperately miss him.

i have my two grown children and i have my dogs. and i have the majority of my stuff back, so i get up and continue. the book of my life will end somehow, someday. i don't want it to be read as: "she gave up."

trying to be what she's not.

Bunny has been down, again, still, whatever. it is the same tune, different day.

so whatever. she is sad and is not getting really any better. she has hit a plateau in her grief. is there another place she should be at, or on? she cannot see it from where she is. just one day after another. that's all she does. she has no real future.

shit. bad vibes again. stop it, Bunny. keep those negative thoughts for your personal journal.

brighter posts. faux good times.

they let us wear Halloween costumes at work for that weekend. Bunny has been working on hers. she wants to be a forest fairy. here are the wings she made. she has been working on them off and on since July.

so here she is.
and the back.
Bunny loves her wings.

she wishes she could "fly me away with you, my love."

Bunny smiles to herself when she thinks about what Dragon would say about her silly, glittery forest fairy wings.

*sigh*

material things & esoteric dreams

i am still out here, still working on my place, ahem, my home. i am gradually going through everything and bringing some things back with me from my daughter's garage.

all this stuff, these material things that were mine, are mine, are now being sorted through as if i died, or am dying.

"don't need that anymore." "do you want this? no? then toss it." "put this in the box to donate."

holding something close, studying it; something that used to bring me such joy and fill my previous home with the common clutter that we fill our lives with, weighing it's importance now that i no longer have the space. it is a difficult thing to do. sorting through the debris of my life and seeing it from this side of my husband's death. i feel as if we are getting things settled before i die, doing this sorting of who gets what so that it won't be hard when i am gone.

my daughter is taking a lot. we are setting off in a corner all the things we know my son {her brother} will want. and i am filling my little car, Midnight, each trip with things to bring back here ~ back home......

like my piano shawl. have i ever mentioned that i used to play piano? i started lessons when i was 4. by the time i was 6 i was pretty good. by the time i was 8 i was competing. at 11 i was entered in the Van Cliburn Competition. that was a long time ago, a lifetime. my teacher gave me the shawl then. it was an antique back then. it is more so now. very old. beautiful.

i sat in my old chair and held it around me tonight while i listened to Beethoven's 7th, the 2nd movement. a beautiful piece i learned to play when my hands could barely make the octave spread. i was never without a piano until the divorce. i sold it to pay for things my children needed. it was an old studio piano of blond maple. my mother bought it second hand in 1961 when i first started playing. i sold it in 2002 for $100 that i desperately needed to keep the phone on after V. refused child support for a while. it killed me then. it is a hauntingly ugly scar now. i miss my piano.

i miss my Dragon. i remember him going to the church in Rockport to talk to the priest to see if i could be allowed a couple of days during the week to stay after morning Mass and Rosary to play the piano there. he was so happy to have gotten the okay. he and i would walk to church for Mass, and then we'd stay and i would get to re-visit a past that had once been my own. i got to close my eyes and play for my own soul the music that has always haunted me. classical. mostly Beethoven, JS Bach, GF Handel, and other more deeply spiritual composers. music moves me. i played the scores that seemed to reach for something no one could ever have imagined without that music to take them there.

looking at all my material things that i am going through, getting back, i find myself more somber. i am so relieved, humbly so, but i am also wistful and melancholy over all the dreams that no one but my children and my Dragon shared with me. there is no one in my life anymore, besides my daughter and son, who knows me. there is more to me than my sewing, my writing, the work i do for others, and my grief. i am a woman of depth that no one really takes the time to get to know.

i do have my Marlene Dietrich friend, and she is lovely to know, but she does not live close so we have never met.

i have a widow who lives fairly close, and we have lunched, but my work schedule, and tight budget for things like that, keep me a little on the humble side. i do not talk as much about myself as i probably could, or should try to. i am so afraid they will abandon me as others have if i talk too much, say what's on my mind.

i am a wuss.

no one ever knew me but my children and him. oh, God, i miss him so much tonight.

would that i could play for you. i guess my writing is a form of music. silent lyrics to feed my own needs, to echo through time to announce that i was once here. i am leaving a legacy of lyrics behind that can never be put to music.

some dreams do not come true. some were never meant to. the difficult journey in accepting that carves away at me,

but,

i am so very blessed that once upon a time,

i did dream.

Bunny's Newsy News! w/ pictures!

this is Bunny's news. it is happy. it is also melancholy. in a nutshell, without fanfare.............

Bunny got her stuff back.

when Bunny's first husband evicted her and her son from their home, she had to put all her things in storage. when her lovely, wonderful Dragon died, she could not bring it with her. and being down here in this "other land," she could not drive by her storage unit and touch the doors. she could not put her little forehead against the metal door and remember all her things that were inside.

but her daughter and her son-in-law surprised her two weeks ago by getting on a plane, flying up to New England, and putting it all in a truck and driving in back to their house and unloading it in their garage.

*sniff sniff*

when they opened the garage doors for Bunny to gaze at her stuff for the first time in years and years, Bunny, well, she crumpled to her knees. it was one of the most emotional things Bunny has had to go through. happy, wistful, melancholy, so hard, and yet, so very good.

all of Bunny's things.

almost.

some things were lost. rugs were ruined. beautiful Yankee braided rugs were ruined. Bunny's lovely little sofa was ruined, too. there was a wonderful flat file that she had had for decades was not allowed to come {denied by Voldemort who said it was simply too heavy ~ and it is; a very heavy piece of furniture.}

the other heartbreak was her Dragon's chair. Bunny has written in the past about wanting her Dragon's chair. it was not there. simply NOT THERE.

so Bunny cried bitterly over that loss last week. her daughter held her as they sat on the driveway looking at all their things. Bunny still gets teary about it if she thinks about it too long. she needs to let it go, as she has so many things and people.

she has spent all day today with her things. 1/2 the day in her daughter's garage. 1/2 the day setting things up in her little place. it will be a work in progress for quite a while.

so here are the promised photos.

see Bunny sitting on a box of books? so much stuff shoved into a two car garage. a lifetime of stuff.

Bunny with things put in her car, as much as she could carry up her stairs.

Bunny got her Hello Kitty phone all hooked up. when someone calls her, Kitty's wings and little heart wand light up.

the start of Bunny trying to make a home out of this place where she lives. she wants to feel at home here. it is where life has put her. she needs to find a way to feel at home. and yes, the goose on the table to the far right lights up!!

it will be a slow process of dividing furniture up, giving up things that won't fit in her little place, but those things will go to her children. they will stay within the family and kept with all the memories they hold. Bunny's place is starting to look familiar now. and she knows her things are safe until she can get through it all. it is all within her reach. all she needs is time to go through everything.

tonight, Bunny is going to sit on her sofa and watch some television. she is not going to sew. she is going to relax. she works a 10 hour shift tomorrow, and can hardly wait to come home, open the door, and finally,

finally,

feel like she has come home.

the Bun poking her head out.....

.......checking to see if it's safe to emerge from where she goes to hide when people and life get too rough for her. she's got some news. she won't say it now because she wants pictures of her news. what's news without photos? "a picture is worth a thousand words." Bun believes it. some people don't read anymore. they scan.

"did you read the book?"

"don't have to. i saw the movie."

*Bunny shakes her head* anyway, she is taking her photos tomorrow, on her day off. then she will come roaring back with a post to let her few readers know how she's doing and what she's doing.

pssssst. it's good news, melancholy news, but good; heart-rending in a way, but very good news. check out the labels. <~~ Bunny's attempt at a cliff-hanger. Dan knows what she's talking about.