Another number away

Another calendar to take down, one in which you did not live.  Another number away from the one you left from.

I spent 2014 trying to make the world stop spinning but it never did.  I trudged my way through the fog of what was left of 2013 like a slug moving through molasses, only to fall into 2014 feeling like I had the worst bed spins known to man.  I tried putting one foot on the floor to make it stop, but it just never did.  The fog had lifted giving me a clear view of what was ahead and it was then the pain I thought I had known tripled in size.  This clarity was like being struck by lightning all those months before but not feeling, really feeling, the pain until now.

I don't know how I got here, the beginning of 2015, I think I am missing great bunches of time. It is the strangest thing to me that a year full of days have ended yet I feel as though I am tied to the beginning.  I have never known the passing of time to be this way, or maybe that isn't it. Maybe it is just me, obviously. Something is very very wrong with me.  I mean, here I am saying how fast time has moved forward, at the same time I'm saying I have not.  See, I can't even get that right.  Just wow.

I hear so often, "Life is what you make it".  I've always been a happy positive person, a glass half full kind of girl.  And I'm trying still to be that, I am.  I sing and I dance, I laugh and I smile.  I say hello to everyone and do random acts of kindness.  I gather with friends and feel moments of joy.  I collect all those moments as fast and as often as I can but they won't stick.  I don't seem to connect emotionally to any of my joy.  I feel it then it's gone, lickity split.  My heart has been ripped and torn apart, now nothing will stay inside.  So tell me, what life do I make with that? How do I make that glass half full when there is no bottom to the glass?   Hmm?

So this is how it is, jumping into a new calendar, the fog is gone, the world still spins most days and the searing pain follows me everywhere.  I don't know what this year will bring exactly, but I know some big things are ahead.  GiGi will graduate in June and, God willing, start college in September.  For me, well, I'll still be here searching.  Searching for answers, searching for joy, searching for you.  Searching for peace within my soul.

I love you David.  I will always love you.  I hope that you are well, and that you have found the peace in your soul that you could not find here.  Be near me baby...I need you to be near me.

Welcome to 2015!

Merry Christmas

And in the end I couldn't go. 

Instead I woke up early and gathered all the things I had bought to make at Thanksgiving but never did, and started to cook for GiGi and I.  The sun was shining and with no need to hurry and get ready to be somewhere it was relaxing and it was easy.  I cooked all day while GiGi rearranged her bedroom (what a nightmare).  Dust was flying, posters were ripped down and furniture was moved all around.  Now to put it back...ugh!  Swear words were flying, posters were ripped in half when tacks wouldn't stick in the walls and daggers were shot at me any time I asked if she wanted help.  I loved it!  It has been so long since she has been around, what with her 15 hour days.  She quit one job, did you know?  Do you see her?  Yeah, it was too much and she hit that proverbial wall hard.  It's good though, she needs a little down time and I need her home more.  Yeah...it's good.

When we finally sat to eat we both just looked at each other, exhausted,  and said 'this just all feels so wrong, so weird.' And it's true, while I am thankful for so many things, life for me, for us, right now is just 'flavorless'.  We ate in silence, lost in our own heads.  We have not come to terms with our new world.  Time has moved forward far faster than we have.  All we can do is hold on and try our best to keep up.  We think of how we left our family behind to become a new family here, and now that family is gone too.  We are sad and lonely for our loved ones and on a day when families everywhere are huddled close, making memories and breaking bread together it hits us hard just how deeply we feel our losses.  Just how deeply we miss you my love.  We never even finished our plates.

We miss you David, we struggle with life without you in it, but we want you to know that we had a very good day.  We are thankful for our memories and all that we have.  We love you dearly and you will always be with us.  We are so thankful that you were in our lives and that you loved us in such a big way.  

Merry Christmas my love, I hope your day was a great one.

Isn't it ironic

I was thinking about you today, about both of you. 

I was thinking about how when I was 15 you were both a part of my life at the exact same time, and the everlasting effect each of you made.  Of course you didn't know each other...but I knew both of you, and the outcome of both of those relationships, however big or small, made a lasting mark on my psyche.

I was thinking that my connection to each of you came to an end at the exact same time. Graduating high school ended one and timing ended the other.  I never forgot about either of you though and from time to time your faces would come to my mind.

I was thinking that, fast forward 27 years, once again you both came into my life at the exact same time.  Only this time you would meet and you would form an instant bond...both silly and full of life.  This time the connection would be for life...full of love and laughter and tears.  The friendship we three had was fun and special and priceless made even more so by the reminiscing of long ago shared memories.  How awesome is that.

I was thinking that only 3 short years later our connection would, once again, be broken never ever to happen again...at the exact same time.

How ironic.

50 (or not)

She knew he was awake, the soft sound of his breathing told her so.  She opened her eyes and watched him.  Arms bent with his hands behind his head on the pillow, staring at the ceiling...thinking.  Always thinking, sometimes a good thing, other times not.  Today though she saw peace on his face, today she was looking at the young boy she fell in love with 33 years ago.  Not the 50 year old man he was today...

We made it she thought, we are here...really here.  All the hard work and saving has finally paid off. The foregone honeymoon, extravagant gifts, vacations...everything. We wanted to escape to a tropical paradise, just the two of us, and we set the goal as his 50th birthday.  A number he had started dreading way back when.  "Let's turn that milestone into the best experience you've ever had, let's create a memory that is just for us in a place neither of us has ever been."  "Let's take the honeymoon we never had and then you will always have that as your 50th birthday present."  And so the plan was set...

I opened my eyes and reality hit, yet again.  The sight before me was an empty bed and empty pillows.  And cold.  Cold all around me, no tropical paradise for this gal.  Another milestone faced without you David.  "Happy Birthday my lover" I said to no one as a tear rolled down my cheek.  "Happy freaking birthday"!

I so had wanted this day to be one of the best of your life, a day for you to carry with you forever. There was so much I always wanted for you, so much I wanted to give you.  I'm sorry I will never get that chance and can only hope that while you were here with me I gave you everything you needed.  I hope that you knew, really knew just how much I adored you.  God how I still do.

Happy would be 50th my love.  I hope you are free and happy and spending time with Evelyn, she will have you doing tequila shots and whooping it up.  Hug her for me and when you feel her arms around you...know that they are mine.

I love you my husband, my David.

A letter to heaven

Dear David, 

I haven't talked to you in so long I figured I would write.  In fact the last words I said to you were
"I love you", not sure if you heard me...but I screamed it loud.

Things sure have changed for us wouldn't you say?  A year and a half has passed since we laid eyes on each other, held hands...kissed.  So much time apart.  And we thought we had fixed that...being away from each other, out of each others lives.  Oh how we were wrong!  

I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm not really me anymore.  I tried, but she's gone, I think you took her with you.  Who I am now has yet to be determined.  I don't look the same, I don't talk the same, I don't think the same and I don't do the same.  I'm stuck in a black place between the light and the dark, a place between living and not.  I carry on, don't get me wrong.  Our house is clean, our bills are paid,  and our kids are well.  Occasions are observed, functions are attended and our families are appeased.  I've kept up with it all, I've done it all...but not really. My heart isn't in it, as there isn't one to give, I gave it to you a long time ago.  I function now like a robot, I work off of memory.  I don't know for how much longer I can do it though, what little life I have in me is waning.  My will to survive is about spent.

I need you David.  I need you to talk to me and help me fight.  We always talked, remember? We would face whatever there was head on and figure a way through it, together.  I'm alone now, but I still need you.  You calmed me and helped me to 'let go' a little, you were the soft to my hard, the laugh to my smile, the joy to my sorrow.  You were my everything love, and I don't know how to live without you, I don't even want to.

I wonder often where you are and what you are doing. I wonder what you think and what you feel. Are you sad? Happy? Do you feel like me? I hope with all the hope I have that you are well. That you are content and that when you look back on our time together you feel good. I know you wish me the same, and I do, look back and feel good. The rest though I haven't quite mastered, the living is where I have trouble.  I'm in dire straits.

I wanted to tell you though, I love you, and thank you.  Thank you for the life we had. Thank you for loving me the way you did and making me feel like I was the most perfect human being on the planet...for you.  Thank you for bringing me back to me, for showing me I was so much more than a Mom.  Thank you for your laughter and your silly antics and your goofy side.  Thank you for loving my children with your whole heart and for being the Daddy Gillian never had.  She loves you fiercely and hurts for you hard.  Thank you for sharing your boys with me, I love them like my own, I love them enough to let them go and be.  And mostly David...thank you for our story.  It is a treasure among treasures and I will never forget one single moment of it.  Not the part that began when we were children and not when we picked back up as adults.  It is one for the ages I believe and it means the world to me.  You enriched my life in more ways than I could ever express and you taught me about myself.  I have never had anyone love me the way you did, nor will I probably ever again.  I am blessed to have known that if only for a little while.

Wherever you are and whatever you are doing I hope that you will always find me, smile, and remember when...

I love you David John Machado, I love you big.  Please help me to be well again.

78 weeks

I feel like when you died I died too.  The slate of who I was wiped clean.

You didn't come back, either of you

I did.

I'm brand new. Bare naked and alone. An infant new to this world.

An infant without the luxury of having every little need cared for.

An infant without the luxury of gradually growing and adapting to this place I am in.

I am an infant thrown to the wolves...helpless and wailing with the need for protection and care. But none comes.

I have not been given the opportunity to ease into this life.  

I was born here, to this new life, with the weight of the world...with the weight of a parent...with the responsibilities of an adult.

How can an infant be expected to act and function like an adult.  It is impossible to think...

Yet here I am.

A year and a half later and I have grown no further.

How Long?

I threw away your underwear today.  

Your socks too.  

And then I threw up.

I am no better.  All these damn months later, I am no better at all.

In fact, I think I feel worse.  It is a stuck, lost, empty, lonely, broken feeling that has become lodged in the center of my chest.  It allows very little air to pass and I still find myself gasping from time to time.  I'll be watching television or reading and suddenly realize that I can't breathe. It's too much.

You are the first thing I think of when I open my eyes, the last again before they close for the night...and all the minutes in between.  

This pain is consuming me.

It is eating me alive and I don't know how to make it go away.  I laugh, I joke, I do.  I do everything I'm supposed to do but it isn't helping at all. 

How long can I go on like this.  How long can one person live with pain like this.

I threw away your socks and underwear and it damn near killed me.  What the fuck David!  

I found dust all over your bed pillows and I burst out crying and couldn't wipe it off fast enough. Fuck  Fuck Fuck!  

I don't want to do this anymore,  I just don't want to live this way any longer.  It hurts so so bad.  I just want to see you and feel you and smell your skin.  I love you so much David.  How fucked up is that...I'm hopelessly in love with a dead man.  God I need help.  I just need it to all go away.

I don't want to live this life anymore.

The Wild and the Weak...

I have had a very difficult week babe...HA!  Sounds a little foolish coming off the year I have had but still...it's been rough.

The pain and sorrow I have been battling seem to have crept back to the forefront like an army of enemy soldiers.   After waging a year long war, I had managed to push the enemy back behind a line that let me breathe.  I have needed to catch my breath.  But alas, when I wasn't looking the enemy came screaming back in to the front and brought me down to my knees.  I have been left a screaming crying pile of rubble, I have been brought back to start.

Is this my new life?  Will I forever struggle with all that is left in me just to breathe and get up and do?  I'm not sure I will make it then, if this is it.  I'm so tired.  I'm just so tired.  Playing the role of normal takes away everything that was left inside me when I didn't see you come back to the surface,  when I never saw her signal she made it to safety.  In those moments everything I was left me.  I died too.

I have an old friend from high school.  We were best friends for a time.  Over the years, many years, we lost touch.  She thinks of me though, and the sorrow I live, and from time to time she sends me a token of hope and joy.  She extends a gesture of 'life' that has the power to carry me through a few more moments.  That is huge.  When darkness is all around me and there's nowhere left to turn it is these gestures from long ago friends that bring me to light.  It is huge...it is life.  It is an energizing breath.

Today I received this...

Allow

By Danna Faulds

There is no controlling life.

Try corralling a lightning bolt,

containing a tornado.  Dam a

stream and it will create a new

channel.  Resist, and the tide

will sweep you off your feet.

Allow, and grace will carry

you to higher ground.  The only

safety lies in letting it all in –

the wild and the weak; fear,

fantasies, failures and success.

When loss rips off the doors of

the heart, or sadness veils your

vision with despair, practice

becomes simply bearing the truth.

In the choice to let go of your

known way of being, the whole

world is revealed to your new eyes.

It's in the words, but more importantly it's in the gesture that I find strength.  Some amazing people touch my life.  I am blessed.

I love you David and I miss you in a very big way.

I love you Kathy and your kind heart.  Thank you for the strength of today.

Who is this me?

We are now in the midst of the second summer without you.  Life is so not the same anymore.

In the quiet moments, which they almost all are, I find myself realizing that I feel I no longer belong anywhere.  

For ten and a half years I belonged in AR raising two small children, teaching them how to read and write and do puzzles.  Teaching them about the earth and nature and that life does not exist inside a television set or hidden in electronics...it is outside in the world.  It is in the moments with family and friends.  And so that is where my children and I could be found every single day, rain or shine, snow or sun...outside and with family and with friends.  

Our summers were spent on the river.  I would crawl out of bed at the ass crack of dawn and do all the things that needed doing before packing a giant beach bag full of granola, fruit, drinks, yogurt and sometimes lunch meat, towels, books, water toys and water and dog food. Then, time to wake the kids and start our day.  

Then came you.

You picked me up and carried me twenty seven hundred miles away.  You taught me I was so much more than only a mother, to you I was everything.  I was your girlfriend, your love, your wife.  Our life together was just beginning, it was so brand new.  Now I belonged here. 

I worked so hard learning to balance a new life here while trying to continue to nurture a little life left there.  You worked so hard to let me...to make it possible for me to try.  You worked so hard at learning to share me and be without me.  We worked so hard.  

I never told you, never once, just how difficult all of it was for me.  Leaving my son behind, leaving you behind, it was tearing me apart but I held on as best I could.  Each time I left you was so very painful, but I was learning to live with the feeling of being pulled in two directions.  I was the chew toy in the middle of two dogs wanting dominance.  But still I belonged somewhere.

Now, I don't belong there and I don't belong here, yet here I am.  I don't know who I am anymore. I've no idea what I want or where I want to be.  Recently someone asked me "what do you want?"  and I honestly couldn't answer...what I want I can't have, where I want to be I can not go.

I don't belong anywhere, my path has dead ended, my dreams have died, my love is lost and I am left all alone.  I do not recognize myself at all.

I am so lost.

Graduation Day...June 14, 2014

Oh how I wish you were here, it is such a huge day down here and you should have been here to reap the rewards.

Today your first born graduated High School.  He did it, God bless him, he really did it.

Did you see him babe?  Were you there?  Did you watch as his name was called and he walked so proud across the stage to receive that diploma?  I hope you did, I hope you saw it all and that you reveled in the joy of it.  

Ouch

I am so totally and completely heartbroken.

Summer is here, right?!?

Well, I believe after Memorial Day we are officially into the start of summer.  The days are holding at mid sixties to mid seventies and the nights have gone down to mid forties but other than that it's just a feeling you get.  The subtle change that comes over the land.  You watch each day as colors get brighter, birds speak louder, even traffic steps it up a notch.  Slowly doors open and heads peek out looking to see if it's safe to come out, safe to leave the comfort and warmth of the place they hid in after such a LONG and WHITE winter.

I've taken to sitting on our porch again, only it just isn't the same alone.  I think I'm so tough and brave for doing it though so there is that.  LOL

I've been sort of but kind of not planning our return trip to Arkansas.  I mean, I know it is coming, I know we will be leaving here for there, but at the same time I'm dreading it.  Stepping out of the drama I've grown accustomed to and into the drama I've become unaccustomed to.  But go we must and go we will.

I haven't seen my family in a year.  It was only two months in that I was with them last, I was in shock and numb then.  They do not know me now.  They do not know how I am.  It will be a 'high alert' three weeks for me.  I do not want to frighten them with the sudden and without warning 'falls' that I have.  They will be expecting to see the me they have always known, they are oblivious to the fact that she no longer exists.  This should be a lot of fun.  HeHe...Ugh.

For the only reason that is important I will do this...my precious boy.  The child that did not ask for any of this.  He is so good and so brave and so loving that I feel my heart crack just thinking of him.  I will do whatever it takes for him and I will be happy for it.  

So I will gather my thoughts, and gather my belongings and head to the Ozark Mountains, to a place that you loved so much, a place you dreamed of living one day.  Not sure if you noticed, but I did every little thing in as subtle a way as possible to deter you from that dream LOL, I lived there already, once, and wasn't really wanting to do it again any time soon.  

You will be with me, with us, as you should be.  Have no fear.

Yes, summer is here again, summer number 2 without you...What a looong strange trip it's been.  Can you hear them singing?  

The ambush

AAARGH when will it change...

The ambush out of nowhere.  It's as though some other force sees that I have had a few peaceful moments, some calm hours, and says 'NOPE, can't allow it...BAM, take that bitch!'

I'm tired.

One of these days I will be strong enough to beat this other force down, one of these days clearly isn't now though.  Now it beats me.

A Year That Was Only Yesterday

I'm standing at the edge of time, looking out over the endless sight of water.  

All around me is water and the wind.  I see blue and I see white and that is all.  

It is what I hear that is the thing...I do not see it but I hear it and with the wind I am wrapped in it...the screams.  I am fighting an invisible demon...the screams.  I feel them crawling all over my skin, through my hair and in my head but I do not see them.  Everywhere I only see the sea, I cannot move in any direction for it.   The wind holds me in place as the screams invade my body, invade my soul.  I look everywhere for the two of you but you are gone. 

 And then I wake up...

My eyes open and I can feel my heart beating fast and it is then that I see I am at home in our bed. There is no wind, no sea and no scream.  It was just a dream.  I never dream, I briefly wonder why I just did.  I climb out of bed but reach back to hold on to the edge as my feet hit the floor and reality slams into me like it has every morning for 365 days. It wasn't a dream, it is a reality, it is a memory that no other person on this earth has...only me.  I shake my head as a tear slips down my cheek, I take a deep breath and straighten my spine.  I open the bedroom door and look out, I am in the home that we created together and it is time to face another day.

I move about the house taking care of what needs taking care of.  Our birds, they are sitting on their perches waiting for momma to fill their tub with warm water so they can do their splash down...so cute, and for the next ten minutes the sound of very happy birds playing in the 'hot tub', wet wings flapping fills the house.  On to the coffee.  Empty the filter cup, select flavor, fill filter cup, push brew.  While I wait I clean up any mess left behind by GiGi in her haste to get herself off to school.  Coffee in hand I head into the living room and am greeted by two very cute little critters bouncing around waiting to be let out to play for a few minutes.  I'll sit here and drink my cup of coffee and read for a half an hour, that is as long as I will allow myself to sit idle. Critters away, coffee cup rinsed out I head into the bedroom to make the bed and it hits me. The scent in our room is a trigger, the candles, my perfumes, your colognes all form into a fist that hits me square in the gut and instantly I am bent at the waist from the enormity of it all, crying.  In a minute I will be okay, I wipe the tears and make the bed.  I remember when I got home from my last trip to AR, you surprised me with a bedroom makeover of sorts and you were so proud of your idea to get the wrinkles out of the blankets with the back scratcher...God how I miss your silliness.  Only for you it isn't silly...it's just you.

All these days have been spent in a state of the edge of panic.  That is, I'm in constant awareness that I walk through my days on the edge of a melt down but not quite.  My breathing is very deliberate, I'm always aware of the subtle changes in the slow draw in and the slow push out.  There are moments when it becomes more frenetic and when I notice that,  I shake my head and send the demons that haunt me scattering because at any given moment I can become unhinged.  I am learning to live like this. I am learning to live with the constant presence of the video playing in my head.  I liken it to when I was a kid doing homework with the stereo on, my focus was on the school work but my ear and brain could hear the music and sometimes a song would come that would draw me all the way in and away from the work. Now, I am focused on the day but sometimes the video draws me all the way in and all I can do is ride it out.  I do all this with a mask of 'normal' on my face.  If you were to ask anyone, I think they would say 'she looks great, I think she is doing okay'.  I'm not sure they would be totally wrong, from what I have heard and read, I think I am 'holding up' rather well.  I really am finding joy in the small things, the sun, flowers pushing their way to the surface again, time spent with friends and our children.   It's only on the inside that the sorrow and the broken lives.

Bed made, tears dried, it is now time for me to work out.  For the months of November, December and January I was rendered paralyzed.  I couldn't manage to do anything but the absolute necessities.  The adrenalin of fear and the anesthetization of shock wore off and six months into this dreadful journey I was stopped on a dime.  Unfortunately my poor body took the brunt of this inactivity.  Daily work outs are now a MUST again.  ( lol )  That done I juice, shower, and then sweep, vacuum and mop the floors.  Believe it or not you two are NEVER out of my mind, thoughts of you circle my brain like the ticker tape on the bottom of the t.v. screen, and it was only a matter of time before I would cry again.  Mopping the foyer floor my breathing took off and when I wasn't paying attention the video hit me hard, hanging on to the sideboard I cried in anguish for the third time today.  Hopefully this will be it for today, it is completely and utterly exhausting trying to navigate grief and keep the pain at bay.

Wiping the tears away I make my way upstairs again.  I need to empty the dishwasher and clean the glasses from the sink.  I use your bar glasses pretty regularly, you spent so much time collecting them and you loved them so much.  In the days since you two left I have learned that time is not a healer, some wounds can never be healed in the true sense of the word...it is nothing more than a string of seconds and minutes and hours where you learn to perfect your response time, to perfect your reactions, to perfect the mask that you wear.  It is a period of moments where I am learning how to live with a new self in a new world beginning all the way back from start.  I might be still crying every day but not as often or as long.   Time has not healed me it has only allowed me the opportunity to learn how to live with all that is trapped inside.  I think I am getting better at it.

When you have spent as many hours together as we have, EVERYTHING is a memory.  A sight, a sound, a scent, a word, a look, a room, a friend, a driving route, a food etc.  I mean everything triggers memories.  I remember the very first time I laid eyes on Evelyn since high school, it was at Laurel's house and she had just come from work.  She was wearing a white sleeveless shirt with a big flowery skirt and sandals that were one step above flip flops.  And David at the airport on October 8, 2009.  That memory I cannot visit right now, I am not strong enough for that.  For a year after that day I would bawl every time I remembered my first sight of you...I was so overwhelmed with love and emotion, remember babe?   Now I hear so often "He, they, will always live in your memories, which is true, but true too is, memories only stay alive in the reliving together, in the retelling of that shared experience.  "Hey, remember that time...". Without that the memory only fades away and soon too will die.  I am truly all alone with my memories of you, no one else can share in these with me and that is a hurt all of it's own.  I lost you, I don't want to lose our memories too.  

Ah, what more can I say?  I am learning to live again a stranger in an unfamiliar world.  I wonder Babe, do you still recognize me, for I am clearly not who you left.  Anyway...I put one foot in front of the other even if only going in a circle at this point.  A time will come when I have created a new me and the circle will open and I will step out into a newly created life.  Hopefully I will have all my old memories still intact but too I need to create new ones.  I need to be able to say remember when and hear back 'yeah I do...'.  I am working hard, trying to find the Joy (as Kristen always says) in each new experience and clinging tightly to the family we chose.  We together as a group have shared memories which we talk of often.  And each and every one of them has struggled to come to terms with all of this in their own way.  I think we as a whole have kept each other upright.  They have seen me in my darkest hours,  they have nudged me gently to keep on keeping on.  I love them in a way they couldn't know.

I still feel I will wake up one day and this would all have been a bad bad dream.  I mean how could it not be, we were so damn happy and having such an incredible day...how in all that is real could you and Evelyn have just vanished without warning?  You two, so very much the same person, so young and vibrant and full of life.  Ugh..I know I will never fully recover from this, I will never forget what I saw, I will never stop missing you two and I will love you both desperately until I am in your arms again. 

I pray you two are safe, and happy and at peace.  I hope I have made you proud.  I hope and I hope and I hope that you can feel me and my love for you always.  Please stay together, take care of each other and think of us down here from time to time.  We love you so, I love you so...and I can not wait to see you again.  I wonder if it will be like that magical night in the airport...remember David?

Now I must go do laundry.  Cheers!

The Death Train

I recently read about the Death Train, you know, the one where the grief stricken stand on the platform waiting and listening to the roar and clanging of the train that will no doubt run them over on the death date anniversary of the one they have loved and lost.  

For me it is a series of hours and days and weeks where you feel a clenched fist gripping the throat of your soul.  My eyes are closed because to see what is coming is just too much, to know that it will come for me is just too much...there is no more room within these eyes for even one more image of doom.  I do not want to stand and wait for this train, I do not want to get on it and ride around year after year after year recalling the worst day of my life.

Instead I want to stretch my head up high, eyes wide shut, and spend every day, painful as it is remembering the love of my life.  

I want to honor every day we ever had together.

I want only images of the boy I loved as a child and the man I married when I was all grown up.

I want to always see my David walking down the hall towards me at KP High to pick me up from school, in his skin tight wranglers, his wife beater and his tan work boots unlaced and that look of pure love on his face.

I want the picture of seventeen year old David teaching fifteen year old me to body surf up at Hampton Beach and how horribly I failed but how huge he laughed.

I want all the images from our youth, our childhood memories to step forward.  I want EVERYTHING from our life together as grown ups to stand front and center.  

I want to NEVER forget the moment we met again after 27 years in a tiny airport in Little Rock. Or when I opened my eyes the next day and saw him laying there looking at me.  If love had a look it was what I saw in those eyes in that moment.  

It is these things that I need to stand and wait for, to carry me forward year after year after year after year.  It is this boat I need to ride on for the rest of my days.  I do not want to be on that platform waiting to be run over by a train of death that will bring me nothing but devastation for the rest of my life.  I do not want to be one of those people who wait for the anniversary of death. It is not my friend, it is not kind, it is not my David, nor is it my friend Evelyn.  They are not on that train, only pain is.  They are somewhere out there watching over all of us and they need to be remembered and celebrated for who they were every day to all of us...not for how they left us on that one horrible day.  

I know, because it is easy to know this, what I want will not be easy.  The pain I hold is very real and very raw.  The wound is deep.  I will need strength that I do not feel to bring me past this, to make me look the other way.  I will need sunshine and wine and the love of my friends.  I will need only to close my eyes and see the face of my love, and the face of our girl to bring me back  from the brink.

I will do this.  I will overcome the death date.  I will overcome the bad.  I will not allow one bully to wipe away all that was good.  I will do this...but not this time.  This time I will stand where I stood on that day and I will see what I will see.  Head stretched high and eyes wide shut.

Kate

A year ago all of us were off doing our own thing for Cinco De Mayo. 

Kristen was at some function where she had turned her phone off.  Laurel was doing I don't know what.  Kirk was at work.  And you...You were home with the boys and your mother in law making food and preparing to cook on the grill...you had just finished your first Margarita. 

I of course was sitting in a police station soaked with sea water, freezing and in severe shock.  I was waiting...waiting for the word, and when it finally came it was the worst it could be.

"Do you have anyone you can call, any family?" the officer sitting with me asked.

I couldn't think, I didn't know what to do, what to say, and I was shivering so ferociously, I couldn't work my phone.  The officer sitting with me took it from my hands and I said "call Kristen".  

No answer.

I said "call Kate", and he handed me the phone while it was ringing.  Poor Kate, you answered the phone.  Poor Kate.  I don't remember anything said...not one single word.  I think I gave the phone to the officer and he talked to you.  All I know is you answered and you came.  You came for me.

The phone call that would change your world forever.  That drive...two plus hours...how surreal that must have been.  How excruciating.  Poor Kate.

What happened after you finally made it, the walk we walked, what we saw.  Oh my poor Kate. You came for me.  I don't really remember seeing you, seeing your face but I know you were beside me the whole time.  You gave me your chapstick.  Cherry Chapstick.

That day we both saw so much, lost so much...and we broke into a million little pieces. Together.

There are no words for what that day was, no word means enough.  But what I do know is from it a friendship that means everything to me grew big and strong.  I know you were in shock and great pain yourself yet you hid it so you could do for me.  We have a bond born from that shared experience in the hospital for which I am so thankful.

I remember you sitting on my couch some weeks later and you said "well, one good thing has come out of this experience", and when I asked what you answered "us".  I knew you were right but I couldn't fully appreciate it at that point, I was too consumed.  Now though, I couldn't agree more.

You came running when I needed someone most, you kept your composure and your pain to yourself in order to take care of me.  You picked me up and carried me through the toughest of times and I love you so much for it.  I am grateful for you and I appreciate what you did for me.  I know that David is so very thankful that you stepped into a role no one would want, and I know that Evelyn is smiling down at you saying "that's our Kate".  

One year is just days away.  It has been such a hard year for me, for you, for all of us but one good thing came out of this experience...I got you!

I love you my Kateness.

Tree of Life

Picture your life...your home, your work,  your things, your friends, your family, your marriage, your children, etc.  

Now picture your life as a tree.  Each branch representing that whole life...each leaf representing all the shared moments with all those people, all those things.  Each leaf being the connections you have that tie your whole world together, they tell the story of your existence, of your hopes and of your dreams.  Of your past, your present and your future.  They speak of the secrets you have shared with no one other than your One.  They are the meaning of your life.

Now picture this tree being put through a chipper while you watch all the little tiny pieces fly all around, landing with no rhyme or reason.  No special care for this as your life, your loves, your whole world. And when the dust settles you are numb, out of body, bereft...and now you are told you must gather all those little teeny tiny pieces and you must put them all back together as they were, you will do this without direction, and alone,  because the one who was your glue turned to dust.  You must do this now, you must start immediately, you must toil through your pain and tears and screams, you must do this for everyone's sake because they are watching and waiting.

...this is the story of my life, this is the story of my tree.  It is the story of my days, my nights, and my every minute.  It is painstaking work performed by hands that are all thumbs and just when I feel I have gathered some pieces and can begin to put them together the wind will blow and scatter everything putting me back to the beginning.  I trip and I fall and I wail from the sheer exhaustion of the task ahead of me.  But I get up and I try again.  How I put this tree back together will be my legacy.  It is so very important that I get this right.  It is daunting to say the least but I know that all who matter most are watching and waiting.  This I must not fail to do.

It's The Dark Side for Me

Yesterday I awoke on the side of darkness, a place so void of light and hope and peace.  I lived alone in that space for all the hours of one day.  I fought and I clawed to try and get out but never seemed to manage it.  Defeated I could do nothing but ride out the wave and go wherever it would take me.  It was excruciating, it was intense and it was exhausting.  

Every day I see and hear my husband drowning.  Every day I see my friend floating out to sea.  I duck and bob and weave my way in and around these images day in and day out.  This day though I could not avoid...it was as though I was being held in place and forced to watch and watch and watch.  It brought me to my knees and the darkness swallowed me alive.

All the months that have passed and I still don't believe this is real, I still don't know how to process what has happened.  It was too fast, there was no warning and the white took you both. The love of my life and a dear sweet friend.  How could that be?  

I see it every day, how can I get well with the horror chasing me?  My only escape is sleep, when I sleep I am free.  I see no horror, I hear no screams, I dream no dreams.  I am able to go unconscious, find peace and gain strength to do it all again tomorrow.

Tomorrow I shall hope that the sun will shine for me.

Mr. C

The alarm went off at 6:30 and when I opened my eyes I was humming the song 'Just When I Needed You Most'.  I have no idea where that came from, don't think I have heard it in 30 years. I know it was from my dream which left me the minute my eyes opened but I was still singing it.

I climbed out of bed and for some reason pulled back the curtains and opened the blinds in our bedroom...something I have not really done since you left.  And there looking directly into the window at me was one lone beautiful bright red Cardinal, your bird, you called him Mr. C.  

Hi Baby.

Splendor in the Grass

"Though nothing can bring back 

the hour of splendor in the

grass, glory in the flower, we

will grieve not; rather find

strength in what remains

behind."

Rumi

To live without you is to be

robbed of love and what is life

without it?  To live without you

is death to me my love, but

some call it life.

Never Forget

The grief swirls inside like a tornado, pushing, pressing, wanting to get out.  It's been bottled up for so many months because I've refused to let it out.  I've refused to really cry or scream or even utter the words that life is unfair, because I was the one who lived.  I'm the one still breathing, moving, and living life.  I still have my future ahead of me.  If I want it.  But I'm not sure I do...

Because life isn't fair.  I should have died that night.  I might as well have because my life ended even though my heart still beats in my chest, even though every second of every day of every month I breathe air in and I breathe it out.  I move through life, an impostor, someone who shouldn't be here.

I can play normal.  I can laugh and joke and smile, but it's just a mask that I wear for special occasions.  Those moments pulse through my body.  It's not something I can define.  No one knows that that moment stays with me every second of every day.  It's always there, pulsing in the background, reminding me.  Taunting me.  I can never forget what happened...and I was left behind.

Lovely words

My cousin Jennifer sent this to me, it is so very fitting and lovely...

The thing Is 

to love life, to love it even 

when you have no stomach for it 

and everything you’ve held dear 

crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, 

your throat filled with the silt of it. 

When grief sits with you, its tropical heat 

thickening the air, heavy as water 

more fit for gills than lungs; 

when grief weights you like your own flesh 

only more of it, an obesity of grief, 

you think, How can a body withstand this? 

Then you hold life like a face 

between your palms, a plain face, 

no charming smile, no violet eyes, 

and you say, yes, I will take you 

I will love you, again.

-Ellen Bass

Still

It's snowing again.  It's cold again...still.  And I am here...still.

I go to bed, I wake up.  Everything in between is a blur.  

I do like I do, like I've always done.  I clean, I manage, I finance, I cook, I raise humans, I pet care, I stock shelves, I chauffeur, I assist, I do and I do and I do...and I do it again and again, day after day.  We all do, by no means do I think I am alone here, we all do what we do.  But are we all unconscious to the middle, to what happens between when we wake up and when we go back to sleep?  I don't know...but I am.  I am unconscious to all that falls in the middle.

I seem to be going nowhere, not forward, not back.  I am just still...still here, still there.  I have mistaken the passage of time and the doing for progress.  I have felt that I have come so far from that worst day, but really I have gone nowhere.  My day is full of doing and dodging, gasping and breathing, blinking and shaking my head.  I am in a battle to survive.  Living, surviving that worst day was not good enough.  There was no 'phew...I made it', brush myself off and move on.  It is a fight that I have to live through day in and day out.  I liken it to one of those race car video games, you know...where you sit in a fake car and grab hold of a steering wheel, only I am not stepping on the 'gas' pedal...life is.  I am being whisked through a course...smooth sailing for a moment, then suddenly an obstacle is in my path, I dodge this way and I dodge that way.  Sometimes they are few and far between, other times they seem to come all at once,  I dodge and I shake and I blink but still I crash.  I stand back up, tears flowing, heart breaking, short of breath and I go again.   Why won't it stop...what do I have to do to get it to stop.  The sights, the sounds, the play by play recap.  The last images of my David, of Evelyn are burned into my eyes and the final, end result blows me away still.  Still I do not believe, I do not understand. 

It has been 9 long and short months since a handful of minutes changed everything and I have learned that I suck at race car driving, the sun will come up even if I can't see it, friendship is EVERYTHING, raising a teenager sucks...doing it alone sucks HUUUUGE, I am still head over heels in love with my husband, I will still speak to you here, I will go to sleep and wake up every day to do what I do even through the fog...and just maybe it is too soon to expect anything else.

I think of you both every other minute of every single day.  I miss you in a way that takes my breath away and I can not wait to be with you again for that is where I wish to be...for now.  I pray that you are okay, I pray that you are with me, and I pray for all of us that are hurting without you.

Peace guys!

A Day Will Come...

I can't hear your voice any longer, I do in my head but no more in my ear.  

I will find reminders of your words from time to time, usually by accident.   Cleaning out a drawer or arranging files...it's always a jolt.  When I see your handwriting it is like a shock , it is a part of you sitting right there in a drawer and it tears me apart.  Your words were always so deep and from your heart.  You were a passionate man.

EVERY time I had to leave you, leave us, I would get a letter in the mail with a poem from you. Your way of letting me know what was in your heart.  I found it so sweet and endearing and yes, sometimes a little corny but I loved it because in each envelope you were handing me your heart so I would have it with me while I was away from you.  

Who knew that one day I would need those envelopes to carry with me for the rest of my life, who knew your words would become my treasure, who knew it would be you that would leave me, leave us...forever.  Who knew.

You are my heart David and I miss you desperately.

Together Apart

Apart again, awaiting your return, not being able to hold you, not being able to see you. Not hearing the tapping of your foot steps, which were so ever present, has been silenced by our distance. 

I quickly longed since your departure when you will be back in my arms, with your sweet breath upon my skin, warm, relaxing and with the comfort I have been accustom too. 

Your hand is not there for me to hold when I drive us together to any destination. Our fingers quietly caressing each others, naturally without thought. These are the most cherished moments of my life.

Your return to me will be the same as it always has been, with anticipation, a heart full of you and with lips moist and eager to touch yours. 

Today you will return to me, wiser, stronger and just as beautiful as the first day I saw you standing there in front of me as your radiated aura captivated my life. 

A day will come, we will be apart again and I will wait and wait as I always do. I have waited for us for days, months and even years. But my heart has always been there with you, deep down inside of you and there it will remain. So whether you are near or you are far from me, we will never be apart.


I love you my dearest Kristen.

Anywhere I would have followed you

Say something, I'm giving up on you. 

I'm sorry that I couldn't get to you. 

Anywhere I would have followed you. 

Say something, I'm giving up on you. 

A bluest sky

From where I sit on the couch, I've moved to your spot, a look to the left affords me a perfectly framed picture of the bluest sky.

A further look up and I see giant billowy white clouds in a hurry to get out of my view, where they are running to I do not know.

A slight look back down again and I am faced with a frame within a frame, it is called 'Friends' and staring back at me are the faces of my girls, my loves, my hearts...minus of course, one.

If I go lower than even that I see a green pine so tall,  but not to be outdone by a now leafless tree that stands four feet above the pine.  

Fifteen feet from the top of that tallest tree there is a giant red/brown ball of leaves that harbors a family of the busiest squirrels.  I believe there are four.

I know this so well because when I am stuck this is where I am and that is what I see.  Some days it's still, some days it moves.  Today it is moving, swiftly to the right.  The picture is always the same yet each day it is different each moment it changes.  

And while I am writing this a Blue Heron flew through,  right to left.

I bring my eyes back in and the room seems so dark, the house so quiet and empty and I remember again that I am alone so I quickly turn back to a bluest sky.

I miss you David, I miss you from way way deep down, my soul misses your soul in a big big way. I just wanted you to know what it is that I see.

XOXO

It is in the simple gestures that courage comes

One thing I have learned over the past many months is that emotions swing minute by minute...moment to moment.

A relatively normal day can change on a dime, without warning and so swiftly it makes your head spin.

A smell.

A sound.

A sight.

A memory.

A song.

A word or two.

And of course the dreaded visions, which comes with all of the things listed above.  The damn visions hit me fast and furious at any given moment throughout my day.  They make me feel like I am going crazy...ok fine, crazier than I already was.  hehe  And really any other thing can send me right into the open arms of a vision.  My constant reminder of the horror of those moments, of my helplessness, of how I failed, of my mortality, of all that is lost.  But too, of the power of love and faith.  That in the precise moment I would fall,  a power greater than everything could fill me with strength and allow me to hear your final thoughts on this earth.  That is something I pray I will never forget.   Never.

And so it is, on a day I struggle to be strong, to be positive and step forward one foot in front of the other, a simple gesture falls in my hands.  

The mailman brings me a gift from an old friend.  A few words of love and encouragement, of friendship and humanity.

And it is in the simple gestures that courage comes.

I am blessed 

You are made of the sea and the stars

Everyone who terrifies you is sixty-five percent water.

And everyone you love is made of stardust, and I know sometimes you cannot even breathe deeply, and the night sky is no home, 

and you have cried yourself to sleep enough times that you are down to your last two 

percent, but

nothing is infinite,

not even loss.

You are made of the sea and the stars, and one day

you are going to find yourself again.

- F. Butler 

A friend sent me this today...I find it haunting and beautiful all at once.  

I believe that there are times when you will read a verse or hear a song that touches on the precise feeling that you have and it is like the universe is saying to you '...I know.'  

I did not come across this quote on my own, a friend of the same name did and she thought of me.  I've been feeling, with my head so full and fast and furious that you cannot get through to me...but maybe, just maybe,  you found a way.

I choose to believe...in you.

Thinking, or not...

We are 15 days into the new year and 10 days into month 8.

I sit her shaking my head in order to scatter the visions forming...it happens so often still, it feels like second nature now.  The head shaking that is.

I've been trying to think of what I have learned from all this, but my mind is too noisy to think.  I am not in that place yet, that place of calm reflection, because I can't think of a thing.  I still play what if from time to time and I long for the day when I don't.

I still ask 'what happened?' pretty regularly.  As if actually seeing the moment you fell...the moment Evelyn hit her head would provide me with the peace I am craving.  I know, where my smart resides, that seeing those precise moments would not make a difference.  I would still be asking 'what happened'?  I want reasons, yet I know too that no reason could make up for the fact that you two are gone.  What does matter in my world is that you are gone from my every day.  It is an unbearable thought.  It tears at my soul over and over and over again.

I do know this...I am not me.  I have changed so drastically, I fear you can not recognize me...why you don't come to me with signs anymore.  Why Evelyn has never come to me.  You can not find me.

A lot of death has come to my life in eight short months David.  A lot of hurt lives inside me.

The death of you, the death of me, and the subsequent loss of our life together.  Our dreams, our future, our story that we were still writing.  The death of Evelyn, my dear sweet sister friend, and the friendship we had been building over the past three years.  My Jewels, the sweet little four legged friend who was by my side for twelve long years. There is not a memory in all that time that she is not a part of.  She was with me through all that came at me in those years, she was a good good dog.  Millie is gone too, 17 years of companionship, memories, hikes, rides, puppies...life.  She was a dear dear dog and her loss is hard for many.  And finally my little Fluffy.  HA...who would have thought I could love a rat!  I remember when we got her.  I drove home as if there were a tarantula loose in the car and when I pulled in the driveway you were washing your car...I jumped out and warned you to brace yourself.  But within the hour she had found a place in my heart. I know you thought I was a little loopy!  I know you did!  She would sit on the porch with us enjoying the spring sun and sips of wine.  And on the couch with us at night snuggling under the blanket when it was chilly...she was a dear sweet little critter and I miss her a ton.  Yes, a lot of death has come to my world.

There is still so much work to be done.