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.