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!

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!

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.