Kissed by love

For Christmas Mom and Dad gave me a small pewter wind chime to hang in a window come spring so I can hear you talk to me.  As it is winter I have it hanging on a nail in the door to the living room so I have yet to hear it ring on it's own.

It is of an Angel inside a heart suspended from a flowing ribbon, it is all in pewter and it is engraved.  It says

A GIFT FROM HEAVEN

I am more than a memory

you will feel our love grow

I am forever your angel

Some things you just know.

For today I can share

that in heaven above

God's taken my hand,

I am complete,

I am love.

DAVID

1964-2013

Yesterday I walked by it and said out loud "pretty soon I will move you to a window where you belong, then I will hear you sing."    Yes, I know, it is weird that I talk to inanimate objects...but if I didn't I would have no reason to use my voice most days, and yes, I am that much alone here.

Just now, after vacuuming, I came in here to move the coffee table back where it belongs and as I sat down the wind chime chimed!  I turned to look at it and the little chimes were swaying and singing.  What?!?  I walk past it 50 times a day and never once, in the month it has been hanging there, has it chimed.  NOT ONCE!

Some things you just know...and I know that you just kissed me with love.

I miss you so big baby.  

Thank you

The switch

I have walked this road for more than a year and a half, with it's many twists and turns, bumps and crevices, I have trudged on.  

One thing I have come to know is there are very few straight parts.  That is, most of the trip has been like walking in circles, though not just a solitary circle, more like circles that connect for forward progression.  Does that even make ANY sense?  It does to me, I get it, I can see it plain as day.  I see it like seeing an aerial view of on/off ramps on a map.  Do you see it?  Do you have the picture?  Now put millions of them together...THAT is the road I am on.

I know there are many many other nameless, faceless souls on my path, it cannot be only me. I've not met them face to face, we have not spoken, but I know they must be there invisible to the naked eye.  We all have our own walk to walk I suppose.  

There have been periods of time on this journey when the video in my head has been running in slooow motion, it has never stopped but it has slowed down from time to time.  It is in this motion, slow, that I am better able to cope with it, because it moves so slow I see it coming and can redirect my eyes somewhere else, but now, since the calendar started reading 2015 it is like someone has flipped a switch.  Once again the past plays out fast and furious and before I can see it coming I am doubled over with my hands covering my eyes.  I struggle for air and try to get my balance.  It is the craziest thing.  You don't get used to it. It is grief to the millionth power, and it is way bigger than me.

It is pain.  It has knocked me down and I must climb up out of it again.

Will it ever end?

Feeling Crazy

There are so many poems and inspirational sayings on the Internet and so many of those get posted on Facebook.  While I understand they can have meaning for lots of people I tend to stay clear of the majority of them because they seem too rhyme-ey, and trite.  What I feel over the death of my husband and Evelyn is so much deeper and more intense than a cute-sie rhyme.  That being said, I will come across one from time to time that strikes a chord, like this one...

I was supposed to spend the rest 

of my life with you.

And then I realized...you spent the 

rest of your life with me.

I smile because I know that you loved me

till the day you went away.

And will keep loving me...

till the day we're together again.

I never pay attention to who writes them or what website they are from, I just read them and move on.  This one I liked though because we used to say it to each other all the time "I will love you for the rest of your forever".  So, this one I did see who wrote it, and the site it came from...It's from Wake Me Up! Love and The Afterlife...A true story by Lyn Ragan.  I have other books about Love After Loss, I haven't read them yet though...I am so not at that point, but something strong made me go to that website and buy the book.  What? Wait, I am NEVER that impulsive, if I was I would have rooms full of odd crap I saw and had to have.  It is just not like me to do something like that, it is David though, so I did, I bought it on January 5th.  Now that I have the book I surely won't read it. Especially since reading through the website and seeing it is not about love after loss...it is about THE Afterlife, as in spirit world stuff.  It sat in my Kindle for two weeks while I read another book, still confused about the draw to buy it in the first place. 

A few days ago I started the book...It was slow going and I was thinking of quitting it as the first few chapters were pretty amateurish and didn't capture my interest.  It's not until Lyn starts writing of her dreams that I decide to stick with it, I mean, how bad can it be, right?!  It's actually getting interesting. So I'm reading, and I'm reading, and I'm reading and then last night I sit bolt upright in bed.  I felt as though I was hit square in the back of the head and I couldn't catch my breath. The dream sequence I just read about knocked me on my ass.  Did I have the same dream? Not exactly. So why was I so taken by it then, what made me KNOW I was meant to see this, what made me know this is why I was drawn to buy this book...of all books out there. The answer was clear as glass...it is like explanation to the dream that didn't feel like a dream. The one I had four days after I bought the book. Clearly I have lost my freaking mind.  I laid back down and just stared at the ceiling, unable to read further.  My thoughts were rocketing around like a pinball inside of my head and I couldn't keep up.  When I read the words I instinctively knew the meaning behind my dream and it shook me to my core.  I am totally and completely nuts, right? 

All of this new year I have been in a deep state of sorrow.  The knowledge that you will never come back in the physical is trying to break through my carefully built wall of defense.  My sadness that the once so often signs are now few and far between is leaving me lonelier than normal.  Of course I haven't asked for any, and when I do you come, but why haven't you felt to just do them on your own?  Why do I have to be alone until I call you?  I know...'shut up Kristen.' I'm sorry love, sometimes I'm needy I guess.  I just miss you so desperately and need to feel you with me always, it's all I have left.

Anyways what I just read, on page 115 of this book goes like this

 "why are all these people here?"  

 "These are souls waiting to pass over." the voice said

 "...my attention was redirected...to observe my surroundings. There were no walls and I wasn't in a room of sorts.  There wasn't a floor.  There wasn't a ceiling." 

 "There were so many people in line,waiting their turn.  They each had an unusual look about them--a blank stare."

Do you see?  Do you see why I'm freaked out?  Her dream was just like my dream only decorated a little differently...the people in my dream were on a bus as well as the ceiling-less room of sorts, that was also outside because you drove a car in it.  Holy shit, as my thoughts are flowing right now I'm even more freaked and can't even say inside my head what I know to be the meaning.  I have obviously fallen off the deep end.  Crap!

My new found interpretation of my dream from the 9th...

I cry long and deep and hard, still.  I scream, inside my head, that I just want to be with you, I don't want to be here living (barely) this life without you...We had so many plans...You never give me signs anymore and Mr. C being the brightest one is never here anymore.  I sob over a missing bird all the time.  I am a mess.  

So I dream that dream and I don't get it AT ALL.  I read that part of that book and it leads me to believe that you were telling me the only way you know how, that I am where I am supposed to be, it is not my time to be with you in the life you now have.  You live in a world where there are many many souls waiting to be delivered to the other side and you help do that.  I am not meant to be there now, I have family that needs me here, like my aging parents. They will need me more than we needing to be together.  I felt no emotion from you because you can't get through to me because my grief is too big and only when my mind and my heart are calm (when I sleep) can you come through.  That was the part where you didn't seem happy to see me, it's not that you weren't, you just couldn't project through my pain and sorrow.  And the part I didn't write about in my dream post is that when I came out of my room that morning after the dream,  and turned my head to the right I saw through the window Mr. C sitting there eating the seed I had put out the day before, like always.  I am lead to believe that was you verifying that dream was indeed a message from you...I just didn't get it, until now.

That dream and finding the book, as obscure as it is, has put a lot of meaning behind SO many things that have happened to me since you left.  SO many things I have never even told anyone about.  It's incredible really. All the signs of the first several months, the few dreams I have had, the waking hearing lyrics of a song in my head (not just me humming a tune, really hearing as though a radio is on) and so much more.  I tell ya babe, you start to go a little mad with it all.  I am in such a state as never before and all the words in the world can never truly explain what it is like...it's just, it's just unimaginable and unexplainable that's all.  As removed from life and reality as I have felt, everything that has happened only works to push me further away.  It's a lonely lonely world I live in.

Anyways, so am I right?  Or am I nuts?  God I think I'm nuts. It's all so nuts.

Oh well...live another day!

The Dream - Jan 9th

I don't dream of you...everyone who knows me, knows that...you knew that.  I never was one to dream of my loves unless they were in the doghouse so to say.  I NEVER dream of you. The few times I have since you left you have come through as loving and supporting and helpful. You came through because I needed to see you.

I got up with the alarm to get GiGi off to school and I found her in a puddle of tears.  Apparently after I went to bed she bleached all the color out of her hair because now she wanted dark green...well, you can imagine how it turned out.  I called the school and said she wouldn't be in today as she was sick.  Not really a lie, she is sick over how badly things went.  LOL  Anyway, I went back to my room and jumped under the covers because it was freezing in here and well, I guess I fell asleep, because I dreamt of you.  

I don't know where I was, I didn't recognize my surroundings.  But I came into a room, well it had a floor and walls but there was no ceiling, anyway, you appeared to be going through a dresser or desk, looking for something.  I just stared at your back noticing that you were wearing the shorts and t-shirt you died in, you didn't know I was there until I whispered your name (in shock) and then you turned around.  You didn't smile, your demeanor was off, you didn't mad, just sort of robotic.  I ran, crying, into your arms and held you in utter desperation, but you held be me as though we had never met, as though it was very uncomfortable for you to have this woman running her hands all over your arms and back and head...hanging on to you for dear life.  I saw that you had no shoes on and I said "I need to see your feet, I miss your feet."   I got a brief glimpse before you pulled me back into a hug...but still no 'life' in you.

I was so confused.  Why are you here? What are you looking for? Why are you not happy to see me? You didn't seem to be speaking to me in words, it was more just a feeling that you were communicating with me, but I still don't know what was going on.  I remember turning my head to the left and seeing through the window a bus full of people.  It was an old hippie bus full of people and you said, without moving your lips, they were all like you and that you had to get back to the bus, you just needed something first.  I don't know if you found what you needed but you headed back to the bus saying you would see me soon.  I don't know how you got back to the bus, I didn't see a door or even you moving, I just sensed you went back to the bus.  I waved at one woman who was looking directly at me but she didn't smile or wave back.  Everyone, including you seemed pleasant but not happy.  No enthusiasm, no emotion, it was as though you all had been ordered to be reserved. 

Then the phone woke me up.

Startled awake, I laid there not answering the phone, I was too stunned by how very very real the dream was.  I had never had a dream like that before in my life and I was freaked out.  I must have dozed off again because I found myself back in the dream only this time the scene was different.  Again there were walls but no roof and everything was a kind of off white beige color just like earlier.  I felt that I was now outside but know that I saw a free standing door a little behind me on my right.  I didn't see anyone at first, but I sensed you were there along with everyone I saw on the bus.  I remember feeling that I just wanted to see you, be with you but I wasn't allowed to.  I sensed that I was only allowed to do or see whatever the little slip of folded paper I was holding said I could do. I had the overall feeling that my strong strong emotions and grief were not welcome here... had to behave in a certain manner.  I remember standing thinking that I didn't understand what was going on at all and how lonely I was for you when suddenly you pulled up in a really nice black Mustang car, a girl walked out of the door to my right saying (without speaking) that she was bored and didn't have anything to do so you said, or didn't, "you can come with me" and she got in the car and you drove off.  My loneliness and longing for you was so intense but I wasn't allowed to be with you.  I was so very confused.

And then the scene changed, suddenly I was seeing the outside of a house, a rustic but modern log style home with a beautiful full length front porch.  I sensed that it was my new house and I was moving in with my parents.  Now I'm inside the house leaning against a counter of this very open concept home talking with my Mom and Dad saying 'well, this is it, our new home...isn't it beautiful?"

Then the phone rang again.

I have no idea what the hell that dream was all about.  It didn't feel like a dream, it felt very real.  I feel I was supposed to learn something from it but I have no idea what, I am as confused as ever.   It was definitely not the warm and fuzzy kind of dream I would hope to have. I've been so weirded out by it I haven't even posted this, it's been sitting in drafts waiting to see if there was anything else I could remember.  Other than I DIDN'T LIKE IT, there's nothing though.

Hmmm...WHAT THE HELL?

Then there was you

I'm in another low.  Ever since the new calendar was hung on it's nail I seem to have crashed. Will I ever get used to this ride?  I should be used to it after a year and a half, but I'm really not. 

I was driving home from the grocery store on the 1st and suddenly started crying.  I feel so removed from you and the reality of it all slammed into my head, as it does from time to time.  I cried that I haven't had a sign from you in so long and I kept saying 'I need to see you, I need to see you, I just need to see you'.  It's been four or five months since anything really struck me as a message from you.

I pulled into the yard and parked, sat for a minute gathering the strength to carry my purchases up the long flight of stairs, then got out of the car.  The very first thing I noticed was the very distinct call of Mr. C, your bird.  The bird that for me represents a visit from you.  I frantically looked around until I spotted him and I smiled and laughed through my tears.  You came.  You finally came to see me and just mere minutes after I was begging to see you.  

You have no idea how dumbstruck I was.  How do you do that?  I look out the window almost every day looking for Mr. C but he's never here anymore.  He's always been here and suddenly he was just gone.  

And then you came.  Thank you babe, I am so very blessed to have you.