Despacito

Despacito.

It means slowly. It has been my word of late. It is how I'm trying to see my world right now...slowly. I'm coming back to life in a big and fantastical way and I don't want to miss a thing.

I became aware of the sounds of traffic first, I knew it was morning. This morning. The 5th representing the 4th. I opened my eyes and waited for the fist to hit my gut and the hand on top of my head to push me under...it didn't come. Not this time.

I woke today with love in my heart and laughter on my lips, wrapped in such contentedness. Really. How amazing is that? Do you know? Do you get what a monumental thing that is for me?

These years since you left, since Evelyn left. They have been brutal, and honestly it still is. It still is...but I seem to have left the space I was locked in. The one where the air is so thin it hardly can find it's way to your lungs. Where looking out through my eyes was like looking up through the water when you sit on the bottom of a pool. You know what I mean? I wasn't seeing things in real time, life was moving around me way to fast and I was stuck in this damn space and it was killing me. Slowly. For real.

I think I've turned a corner. It was a process, I felt it happening and it scared me, but I allowed whatever was happening to happen. Getting back to work was the button that started the ignition. I slowly started feeling a shift and I was anxious to see what would come. Something major is happening I think. I feel like the world has slowed enough that it sees me now. I'm not in that invisible bubble I was inside of for so long. Life sees me. People see me and it's a good thing.

I am happy. I am so happy.

It's an odd space at the moment, Inside me is the shadow of the girl I left around the corner, it's standing just off to the side and behind. I'm looking forward but I see this shadow back there just waiting. Maybe it doesn't know it's ok to leave, maybe it isn't ok to leave. I don't know. I have been so many people that I just don't know where they go when they are done with me. I'm not sure if I feel sad to see this one go. The girl I have been since this day 4 years ago...God she was rough. She was a mess. It's painful to think just how fucked up she was. Too though, she carried me through. We did this together, her and I. I let her be whatever she needed to be at any given moment and I think that was good. We allowed anything and everything to wash over us, we'd shake it off and get the fuck back up. I did that. I freaking did that. I did that every damn day. Do you have any idea what that was like, what that felt like. Life is heavy, so very heavy and without gravity it is times infinity. But I've turned a corner, and it is good.

Life isn't the same. It will never be the same. I miss your face, I miss your voice, I miss your smell. I miss you David. I will always miss you and I will always cry for you but you are gone and I can only go forward. I think you orchestrated a meet, and it happened and it is good and I thank you and I love you. Yeah it is good.

Evelyn my friend, are you there? Can you hear me now?  (haha) I miss you and I worry for you. I pray you are at peace. There is still so much work to be done. I need to get right with what happened and I feel that time is nearing. Maybe some day soon. We'll see.  You are with me always Eve, not one single day goes by that you don't flit through my mind. I hope that you are okay. I hope that the most. Some day you will tell me all about it.

Today I was coming to where I last saw you two. I have felt drawn to come and look for you. But the rain, I can't come in the rain, I can't stand there in the rain and cold and look for you. I won't find you, and then I'll just be wet. Wet and cold...that ain't cool man!  I can't come today, maybe tomorrow.

I love you my David. God how I do. I hope you see all that is happening with me. I hope you are proud of the girl you see and I hope you never lose sight of me.  I love you Evelyn, yes I do.

I'm making my way guys...despacito.

My Rock, My Wild and Beautiful Tree

Two years...those small words mean nothing to me, other than to count how long I have been crawling, how long I have been lost, how long I have lived inside pain and darkness.  How long I have been fighting without you.  They mean nothing because it still feels like yesterday.  

It is an odd experience, you know...where you poor people died and yet were freed.  Where I and those who loved you were not.  I walk this earth with that day like a ball and chain.  I can not run, I can not hide.  I can only grow accustomed.  But free...never.

I keep a jar on the windowsill, inside are the moments I feel joy.  It hits me every now and again that I have not unscrewed the lid in a while so I make stuff up, I want there to be many moments.  I need there to be many moments.

I miss you both.

Evelyn...I miss your voice, your laugh, your advice.  I miss your face.  I miss your friendship and our talks.  The private moments between just you and me sharing our truths. I miss your crazy.  God how I miss you Eve.  I visit the neck from time to time, I sneak in and then sneak out.  I sit where we sat and I remember the things you told me, the things we said that day.  I remember it all, and I cry.  I cry for you, I cry for me, I cry for your beautiful boy and all the friends you left behind. I cry for your life cut short and your joy being extinguished.  I shake my head then I stand and walk away. I love you sister, my wild and beautiful tree.

My David...The hole inside me grows bigger and I fear that soon I will just collapse inward, never to look out and around again. It scares me huge and I fight it big. every. single. day.  I miss the scent of you. I miss your oh so handsome face. I miss your hands and their touch. I miss your love. I miss being in love. I miss taking care of you. I miss your smile.  I miss your laugh and I miss your voice.  As I write this I feel a little more of me dying. I have yet to reach a place of peace. I have yet to reach life. What I am doing can not be called living, not yet, but I hope some day. I'm working at getting my body stronger then maybe my head will follow.  I love you my sweet man, my rock.  I just so love you.

And still I shake my head in wonder of it all.

When great trees fall,

rocks on distant hills shudder,

lions hunker down

in tall grasses,

and even elephants

lumber after safety.

When great trees fall

in forests,

small things recoil into silence,

their senses

eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,

the air around us becomes

light, rare, sterile.

We breathe, briefly.

Our eyes, briefly,

see with

a hurtful clarity.

Our memory, suddenly sharpened,

examines,

gnaws on kind words

unsaid,

promised walks

never taken.

Great souls die and

our reality, bound to

them, takes leave of us.

Our souls,

dependent upon their

nurture,

now shrink, wizened.

Our minds, formed

and informed by their

radiance,

fall away.

We are not so much maddened

as reduced to the unutterable ignorance

of dark, cold

caves.

And when great souls die,

after a period peace blooms,

slowly and always

irregularly.  Spaces fill

with a kind of

soothing electric vibration.

Our senses, restored, never

to be the same, whisper to us.

They existed.  They existed.

We can be.  Be and be

better.  For they existed.

- Maya Angelou

A letter to heaven

Dear David, 

I haven't talked to you in so long I figured I would write.  In fact the last words I said to you were
"I love you", not sure if you heard me...but I screamed it loud.

Things sure have changed for us wouldn't you say?  A year and a half has passed since we laid eyes on each other, held hands...kissed.  So much time apart.  And we thought we had fixed that...being away from each other, out of each others lives.  Oh how we were wrong!  

I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm not really me anymore.  I tried, but she's gone, I think you took her with you.  Who I am now has yet to be determined.  I don't look the same, I don't talk the same, I don't think the same and I don't do the same.  I'm stuck in a black place between the light and the dark, a place between living and not.  I carry on, don't get me wrong.  Our house is clean, our bills are paid,  and our kids are well.  Occasions are observed, functions are attended and our families are appeased.  I've kept up with it all, I've done it all...but not really. My heart isn't in it, as there isn't one to give, I gave it to you a long time ago.  I function now like a robot, I work off of memory.  I don't know for how much longer I can do it though, what little life I have in me is waning.  My will to survive is about spent.

I need you David.  I need you to talk to me and help me fight.  We always talked, remember? We would face whatever there was head on and figure a way through it, together.  I'm alone now, but I still need you.  You calmed me and helped me to 'let go' a little, you were the soft to my hard, the laugh to my smile, the joy to my sorrow.  You were my everything love, and I don't know how to live without you, I don't even want to.

I wonder often where you are and what you are doing. I wonder what you think and what you feel. Are you sad? Happy? Do you feel like me? I hope with all the hope I have that you are well. That you are content and that when you look back on our time together you feel good. I know you wish me the same, and I do, look back and feel good. The rest though I haven't quite mastered, the living is where I have trouble.  I'm in dire straits.

I wanted to tell you though, I love you, and thank you.  Thank you for the life we had. Thank you for loving me the way you did and making me feel like I was the most perfect human being on the planet...for you.  Thank you for bringing me back to me, for showing me I was so much more than a Mom.  Thank you for your laughter and your silly antics and your goofy side.  Thank you for loving my children with your whole heart and for being the Daddy Gillian never had.  She loves you fiercely and hurts for you hard.  Thank you for sharing your boys with me, I love them like my own, I love them enough to let them go and be.  And mostly David...thank you for our story.  It is a treasure among treasures and I will never forget one single moment of it.  Not the part that began when we were children and not when we picked back up as adults.  It is one for the ages I believe and it means the world to me.  You enriched my life in more ways than I could ever express and you taught me about myself.  I have never had anyone love me the way you did, nor will I probably ever again.  I am blessed to have known that if only for a little while.

Wherever you are and whatever you are doing I hope that you will always find me, smile, and remember when...

I love you David John Machado, I love you big.  Please help me to be well again.

The Death Train

I recently read about the Death Train, you know, the one where the grief stricken stand on the platform waiting and listening to the roar and clanging of the train that will no doubt run them over on the death date anniversary of the one they have loved and lost.  

For me it is a series of hours and days and weeks where you feel a clenched fist gripping the throat of your soul.  My eyes are closed because to see what is coming is just too much, to know that it will come for me is just too much...there is no more room within these eyes for even one more image of doom.  I do not want to stand and wait for this train, I do not want to get on it and ride around year after year after year recalling the worst day of my life.

Instead I want to stretch my head up high, eyes wide shut, and spend every day, painful as it is remembering the love of my life.  

I want to honor every day we ever had together.

I want only images of the boy I loved as a child and the man I married when I was all grown up.

I want to always see my David walking down the hall towards me at KP High to pick me up from school, in his skin tight wranglers, his wife beater and his tan work boots unlaced and that look of pure love on his face.

I want the picture of seventeen year old David teaching fifteen year old me to body surf up at Hampton Beach and how horribly I failed but how huge he laughed.

I want all the images from our youth, our childhood memories to step forward.  I want EVERYTHING from our life together as grown ups to stand front and center.  

I want to NEVER forget the moment we met again after 27 years in a tiny airport in Little Rock. Or when I opened my eyes the next day and saw him laying there looking at me.  If love had a look it was what I saw in those eyes in that moment.  

It is these things that I need to stand and wait for, to carry me forward year after year after year after year.  It is this boat I need to ride on for the rest of my days.  I do not want to be on that platform waiting to be run over by a train of death that will bring me nothing but devastation for the rest of my life.  I do not want to be one of those people who wait for the anniversary of death. It is not my friend, it is not kind, it is not my David, nor is it my friend Evelyn.  They are not on that train, only pain is.  They are somewhere out there watching over all of us and they need to be remembered and celebrated for who they were every day to all of us...not for how they left us on that one horrible day.  

I know, because it is easy to know this, what I want will not be easy.  The pain I hold is very real and very raw.  The wound is deep.  I will need strength that I do not feel to bring me past this, to make me look the other way.  I will need sunshine and wine and the love of my friends.  I will need only to close my eyes and see the face of my love, and the face of our girl to bring me back  from the brink.

I will do this.  I will overcome the death date.  I will overcome the bad.  I will not allow one bully to wipe away all that was good.  I will do this...but not this time.  This time I will stand where I stood on that day and I will see what I will see.  Head stretched high and eyes wide shut.

Thinking, or not...

We are 15 days into the new year and 10 days into month 8.

I sit her shaking my head in order to scatter the visions forming...it happens so often still, it feels like second nature now.  The head shaking that is.

I've been trying to think of what I have learned from all this, but my mind is too noisy to think.  I am not in that place yet, that place of calm reflection, because I can't think of a thing.  I still play what if from time to time and I long for the day when I don't.

I still ask 'what happened?' pretty regularly.  As if actually seeing the moment you fell...the moment Evelyn hit her head would provide me with the peace I am craving.  I know, where my smart resides, that seeing those precise moments would not make a difference.  I would still be asking 'what happened'?  I want reasons, yet I know too that no reason could make up for the fact that you two are gone.  What does matter in my world is that you are gone from my every day.  It is an unbearable thought.  It tears at my soul over and over and over again.

I do know this...I am not me.  I have changed so drastically, I fear you can not recognize me...why you don't come to me with signs anymore.  Why Evelyn has never come to me.  You can not find me.

A lot of death has come to my life in eight short months David.  A lot of hurt lives inside me.

The death of you, the death of me, and the subsequent loss of our life together.  Our dreams, our future, our story that we were still writing.  The death of Evelyn, my dear sweet sister friend, and the friendship we had been building over the past three years.  My Jewels, the sweet little four legged friend who was by my side for twelve long years. There is not a memory in all that time that she is not a part of.  She was with me through all that came at me in those years, she was a good good dog.  Millie is gone too, 17 years of companionship, memories, hikes, rides, puppies...life.  She was a dear dear dog and her loss is hard for many.  And finally my little Fluffy.  HA...who would have thought I could love a rat!  I remember when we got her.  I drove home as if there were a tarantula loose in the car and when I pulled in the driveway you were washing your car...I jumped out and warned you to brace yourself.  But within the hour she had found a place in my heart. I know you thought I was a little loopy!  I know you did!  She would sit on the porch with us enjoying the spring sun and sips of wine.  And on the couch with us at night snuggling under the blanket when it was chilly...she was a dear sweet little critter and I miss her a ton.  Yes, a lot of death has come to my world.

There is still so much work to be done.

To Whom It May Concern

I just wanted to say...I know you are hurting too, I know you lost one or two of your friends on that day, and for that I am sorry.  I am sorry for your sadness and the pain you feel, the pain you don't show me.  I know this didn't only happen in my world, it happened in yours too and I wish there was something I could do or say that would make you feel better.  I recognize that I am not alone in this sorrow...and neither are you...we all have each other.  So to EACH and EVERY one of you who relates specifically to this matter...I'm sorry for your loss and I'm sorry for your pain.

PEACE!

Gratitude

Well, I am no richer nor poorer...I did however sleep 8 solid hours, first time in 3 months and for that I have gratitude.

For many many things I have gratitude actually.  Never think that I don't baby, you know me better than that.  I may write about great sadness...a lot.  The shear magnitude of the loss, the void, where you once were brings me there often and I cry.  Many many many times a day in fact, but those moments are fleeting.  They are just little bursts of energy...like fireworks...where you have the HUGE bang of reality and all the little fingers of light that reach far out into the sky but then just as fast they fall backwards and disappear as if ti never was.  Standing there, you know that you were rocked to the core and you still feel the vibrations inside, and you know you are now prepared for the next huge bang to come...

I am still no clearer to understanding, I feel just as lost and confused as to the purpose of all this. How such a dear dear man and a dear dear woman could be chosen, two very gentle souls taken just when they, you were hitting your prime.  I'm not sure I will ever understand David, I'm not sure it could even matter or make any kind of difference in my world...the knowing.  The loss is large, the void is big, the pain is time infinity but the love is far greater than all that.  The love is to infinity and beyond...said like Buzz Lightyear just for you babe.

So now, with gratitude in my heart, I say Good morning lover...and Good morning Evelyn my sweet sister.

Peace, LOVE and happiness!!  xoxo