Hold onto the Joy

The past few days have been simply beautiful, the sky blue, the air warm and the sounds delightful.  This time of year brings me huge amounts of joy.

It is chilly in the house, so in the moments of down time and I can't stand the cold another minute I have been going outside to read, to warm up. Yesterday I was struck by the sounds of traffic, lawn equipment throughout the neighborhood, birds chirping, dogs barking and the voices of people I can't see from here. I felt JOY, plain and simple. Outside is where I am at my best, soaking in the heat of the sun and the sounds of life.  It was good.

I sat thinking of our many conversations of getting the kids graduated so we could finally move to an ocean paradise and live the rest of our days. The little beach side B & B we wanted to run with a tiki bar right on the sand. The excitement that would build the longer we talked, the plans and ideas that poured out. Yeah...the excitement, we were so ready for this next chapter, we had a ways to go, but we could see the light...

Sitting in the sun, soaking in the warmth, I look around and you are not here. I am alone in my memories and the joy trembles, it becomes blurry. I shake my head to dislodge from the past because I am not ready to visit there for long. It hurts too much. It just hurts too damn bad. I enter alone and I leave alone. Some day I will be able to go all the way in, but today isn't some day.

I once again hear the birds chirping and the dog barking and I reach back for that joy and hold on with all my might. I need this joy dammit!

I miss you my love, I miss you in a way that feels like every bone in my body is breaking from the power of it. 

Oh well, time for me to go back inside to the cold empty home we once shared.

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!

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.  

No Christmas Here

It is just four days away from Christmas, I don't know what I am doing, where I am going or if I will even get out of bed.  Oh, I know I will, I always do...if my eyes are open then I am up.  

It is not Christmas in this house.

We have no tree.

We have no lights.

There is no garland.

Nor holiday cards placed around.  

There are no gifts wrapped and prettily displayed.  

No Christmas songs being sung.

No Christmas cheer at all.

There is no joy here.

I know the life you see here is not what you would want, and I'm sorry, but I can't give you what you want right now.  I can't be happy for you, I can't live the life you would want me to right now. I'm in a hole and I can't get out.  I'm scared to death David, I'm scared because I don't want to live anymore.  I don't want to live without you.  I've done that, I did that...I lived 27 years without you and I did it well.  I was happy and strong and full of life.  I overcame hardships and became better for it.  Life was good...life was great.  Then came you.

You showed me all I had been missing.  You loved me more deeply than I ever thought was possible.  You made me happier than I have ever been in all my life.  You made me want for more and crave it all.  We were so excited about our future and the plans we were making. The moments of our life together were filled with love and lessons and new traditions.  This was it, this was our bliss...what we had longed for our whole lives and never found.   But then we did, in each other and it was so great...lumps and bumps and all.  It was ours and I loved it...I loved you.

So you see, I don't want to do this without you.  I don't want to live a new life, make new memories...nothing.  I want to be with you.  I just want to be with you David.

I don't want to do this anymore.