A Good Heart

So I was thinking...

I had a conversation with my son Eric the other day.  He was telling me that he had driven by Grammy & Grampa's mailbox and noticed that Grammy had repainted it and it looked really beautiful.  He had wanted to stop in and tell her but he was in the middle of a 4-wheeler ride with a large group of people from church, so he couldn't, but he would for sure call her and tell her later.  Sweet kid.

After hanging up the phone I thought to myself what a beautiful heart this child has.  I mean really, how many 14 year old boys do you know would pay attention to a design on a mailbox?  Unless of course it was painted like an X-Box controller or something.  HA!  He paid enough attention to be able to bring it up hours later in a conversation.  I can't really even recall what the mailbox looked like before it's new paint job and I was just out there for 2 months. Really sweet kid.

A few nights later we talked again.  He told me all about how school was going and life in general.  His best friend, his dog Sammy, got sprayed by a skunk.  Oh No!!!  Eeeeew.  He said he had opened the front door and Sam just casually walked out and over to inspect this dark spot in the yard and that's when it happened...Blam...lethal doses of yuck filled the air and wrapped itself around poor curious Sam.  UGH  And then the chore to un-stink the stink began.  So so glad I was not there for this part of his life's adventure. 

As conversation was winding down I asked him, as I always do, "Is there anything else you want to talk about, anything else going on?"

Not really he says, then quickly adds, "well there is one kind of bad thing." My gut immediately twists...

"okay, lay it on me" I say.  

He says, "remember when I went on that 4-wheeler ride and I saw Grammy painted her mailbox?"  Yes.  "Well, I forgot to call her and tell her I like it.  I really wanted to tell her because how would she ever know someone liked it, who else will even see it, and who would call and say it's pretty to her?  I feel bad I forgot to call her.  I wanted to make her happy."

I don't say anything.  I can't. My heart has swelled so huge that it cuts off my airway and my words can't make their way out.  Who is this child of mine, this love of my life.  God he is such a good good boy.

Get a grip Kristen, say something.  "Oh honey, that's okay.  Only you know you didn't call, she won't be hurt because she didn't know.  And anyways, after 4 hours riding 4-wheelers in the blistering heat and dust, it's no wonder you didn't remember.  Don't give it another thought.  You are so kind to think of it though."

"Yeah", he says.  Dad's driving me over as soon as we hang up here.  I cut her a big bunch of our Sunflower's and I'm gonna run in real quick and give them to her and tell her the mailbox is beautiful."

"You are?  Right now?" 

"Yup, we're headed into town but I wanted to do this first before I forget again."

I'm stunned.  All I can say is "I love you so very much Eric, you have a really good heart. You are such a nice boy, you are thoughtful and kind and caring of others.  I'm so lucky God gave you to me.  You are about to make Grammy very happy today. Please tell them I say hello and hug them for me, okay?"

"I will mumma, well I need to go so we can get over there and into town before it gets too late."  "Okay handsome, love you and I'll call in a few days.  Be safe! Bye babe." "By mumma."  I hear kissing sounds and then a dial tone.  He always kisses me through the phone. I am so in love with this boy!

I sit thinking about his heart, the one that is planted inside the vehicle that is his body. I know, strange, but since I lost my husband I tend to think things on a much deeper level. I am always saying/thinking my son has a really good heart. But...isn't a heart just an organ?  It pumps blood, and that is all?

It can't be a heart that is good. Right?  Oh, I know, it is good, in the sense of the job it has of keeping the vehicle alive.  Kind of like the roots of a tree. Without them the tree would die.  So if this is true then do we not attach too much emotional significance to the heart? Is it really not just an organ?  No one says "you have a good liver", or kidney or spleen.  Right? Are they not kind of the same thing...all organs that help run the machine that is our body?

What happens then when the heart dies?  If the heart is all that was good in a person, as we so often attribute it, then when that vehicle stops being alive all is lost?  It can't be. That goes against everything we have ever been taught. Right? It does. Whether you agree or not.

It's the soul that is good then, not the heart, right? It is the soul that is the light of our being.  It is the soul that drives the vehicle that is our physical body.  Not the heart. So why do we all say things like...bless his/her heart, he/she has such a good heart, when what we really should do is replace the word heart with soul. Am I right?

And who is it that decided love is the shape of a Valentine's heart?  Is it because to picture love as the venous muscle that it really is would be gross? Is this muscle even really where all emotions live?  No.  I think it's the soul. It has to be. I can't bear to think that when the love of my life died all his feelings and emotions stopped when his heart did.  That would mean...that would mean...no, I can't think it and I can't say it.  It is the soul then.  The soul makes someone good and kind and loving, the soul is where all emotions dwell.  It is the soul that is energy and light which carries on once the heart stops beating so then the heart really is just a muscle. Got it!

We have all just been saying it wrong all our lives.  Bless his heart...he has such a good heart. Maybe so...but the soul is the thing.  The soul is the real deal.

The soul is where it's at.

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.

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.

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.

One Half of One Year

I'm sitting here thinking about how much time has passed since that day with shock and amazement.  I usually try not to think about that day too often because I instantly will visualize the events and then I'm destroyed and the tears flow freely as they are right now.  I see and hear those moments always.

I feel like I have walked a lifetime away from then without actually leaving at all.  A lifetime of slogging through wet sand ankle deep, it's so hard but I know I can't just stand there doing nothing so I walk on and on and on...I know I have gone a far distance but each time I look over my shoulder that day is right behind me.  The pain and astonishment and confusion and fear is still within me, I carry it everywhere I go as a tattoo on my soul.  

This grief thing with it's many levels and layers is such a strange phenomenon.  It is kind of like looking into a fogged up mirror after a shower, initially you can't see anything at all but after a little time has passed some of the fog lifts and you think you can almost see an image, then after a little more time more fog lifts and now you are sure you can make out something but it's so unclear your eyes have a hard time focusing.  With each moment of time a little more fog lifts and a little more something is revealed until eventually enough time and enough fog has left and you are staring at your reflection in that mirror...only you don't recognize yourself for the pain of it all.  The face in the mirror, mine, has been beat by the horror of that unimaginable day...it has been beat in a bad most painful way but not defeated. 

I HAVE NOT BEEN DEFEATED.

I am fighting.
I am crying.
I am moving.
I am hurting.
I am climbing.
I am alone.
I am doing.
I am broken.
I am trying.
I am still here....

...I am fighting and I am moving and I am climbing and I am winning.  I will win.

It is slow, it is fragile, it is constant, it is exhausting...physically and mentally, it is life, it is necessary, it is a must.  I owe it to David, I owe it to Evelyn, I owe it to my children and I owe it to myself.  I was the one chosen to stay here, there must be a plan for me and it is my job to become healthy enough to recognize it when it shows up.  I have to do this...I have to fight.

Six months later, six months after...I am feeling stronger, I am not whole, I still cry all the time, I am still broken in a million pieces,  but I have a fire a determination to keep moving forward to be who my husband loved, to be who my friend loved.  I am determined to find a new kind of me. 

I will never be the girl I was on May 4th or all the years before, but I will also never again be the girl I was in the evening hours of May 5th.  That girl, that poor helpless, screaming, soaking wet, shivering girl, she is me but not.  I feel protective of her, my heart is broken for her and I have carried her with me all these miles, all these hours, all these months.  And I will carry her still to a new life, a strong life, a second chance.

One half of one year later I am fighting hard, I am smiling through my tears, I am loving them still and I am missing them always.

Happy November!

PEACE

August 7th

Extreme highs
Immensely low lows
lost time 
lost love
lost
lost
lost
smiling 
then not
crying
then not
alone
but not
yet am
breathing
but not
alive
yet not
but trying

I'm trying love, and I'm doing, and I'm inching my way through.  I just pray you will be by my side through this journey, you said you would be by my side for the rest of my life...I know I can't see you now, but I hope you are still there.

I love you David and I miss you big.