Tornadoes Rip Through Our Lives

When I was a very young girl, my mother took us to a lighthouse. Normally, this would be just an adventure for a young person. However, we climbed the lighthouse in a hurricane on the outer banks of North Carolina. It was really scary and even today strong winds can conjure up feelings of helplessness in me. Upon reaching the top of the lighthouse, my mother stepped outside and quickly had her raincoat ripped off and sent into the heavens. Luckily for me, my brother and I were not outside or we, like her raincoat, probably would have been sent to the heavens as well.
Today, president Obama spoke of grief in the wake of the Oklahoma Tornado. He stated that Americans would be with the people of Oklahoma as they begin this road to recovery and personal grief. Death is so much like a tornado that comes out of nowhere and just picks up your life and throws it away to places you can never reach again. What was once such a happy home becomes a heap of trash that you are scarcely strong enough to rebuild. You pick through the rubble with no understanding of what is to come. Few have a real understanding of grief and its myriad roads to wander. I know, for me, that lighthouse is a powerful metaphor. It represents a safe place I can go hoping somehow I will be alright. However, now that lighthouse is within my heart. Why we must survive these storms in our lives is still a mystery to me. The answer may not come in my lifetime, or maybe it will.

A Brilliant Love Untarnished

Today I have been polishing copper pots. It is kind of therapeutic for me just as is polishing silver. Yesterday, after I finished my blog, I began to go through old papers that needed to be thrown out. This process has taken much time since my love died. I found a valentine that my love gave me and it was so sweet. Then, I found something I wrote about my love more than twenty years ago.

Why I Love My Sweetheart

Such a gentle man he is. He even loves the ducks that swim in the lakes outside my window.  Loving this man has opened up the whole world for me. In his gentle arms, I have seen the Tropic of Capricorn and the bluest skies above the Timor sea. He has hypnotized me and brought me to tears with his poetry. He was born to a great father. He drove me in the funeral procession of my old best friend. He is my best friend. He has kept me from harms way so many times I cannot count. He feeds me soup and orange juice when I am sick. He picks out the sweetest cards and brings me roses for Valentine's Day. He cried when I read this to him. He loves me, and one million words could not convey why I love his sweet heart.

Happy Birthday To You And Me Wherever We Are

Waking up this morning, it was obvious that the day would be somewhat gray. The sky was filled with clouds and it was chilly. In my head, the first thing that came to mind was the happy birthday song. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you... You know the rest. Well, today would be my love's birthday if he were alive. I tried to imagine holding him. The last words he ever spoke to me were "I love you." Those were my last words to him. I don't know exactly what to do with myself today. Sitting around crying is probably not what my love would want for me. I do know that the world my love was born into was a very difficult place. He would come to know hunger and pain many times over before we would meet and begin a life together. He was so strong that he lifted himself out of poverty to become a happy and successful man. He really did live the American dream. Myself, being born in America, I never had such difficult trials and tribulations as my love. Today, I will remember his strength and everything he taught me about life. I will try to be kind and help people less fortunate than myself and always take care of myself. These were things my love always did. He liked to "work hard and play hard." He really was the most amazing person I ever met. I'm not going to bake a cake. I'm not going to light any candles. Still, I think I can take this day as my new birthday and begin again. Happy birthday to me.

The Captain of My Heart

In the late 60's I use to enjoy a television show entitled "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir." Mrs. Muir is a widow who is visited by a ghost, a ship's captain, played by Edward Mulhare. I always thought the character of the ship's captain was so handsome and I watched that show for most of its two year run. They had a dog in the show whose name was Scruffy and my dog Duffy reminds me of that little dog. Today on the television, they showed the original film upon which the television show was based. Rex Harrison played the ship captain and what a gorgeous sight he was. Gene Tierney played Mrs. Muir. The two fall in love even though they know their relationship is impossible. This week I revisited a place my love and I use to go 30 years ago and it was as if I were that young girl again. I could see the pool where we use to swim and the beautiful white columns that surrounded it. I could look up and almost imagine the ghost of my love watching me swim in the warm water although I know this is only wishful thinking. Still, all my memories came back to me and I was very happy. Today, at the end of the movie, Mrs. Muir quietly falls asleep and passes away into the great beyond. The ship's captain takes her hands and lifts her soul into the next world. Happily with him she goes. Someday, I hope that my love will take me from this world, holding my hands, joyfully on our way into eternity. I can dream.

Carry On & Chase Your Own Tail

Today I received a call from an old friend. He apologized for not calling sooner. He's the kind of person who will give you chocolate, when you need it, out of the blue. It was nice to hear how well things were going for him. He didn't say anything foolish or uncomfortable. He talked about his love for his two dogs. I never knew that side of him since he never spoke about his dogs before. I told him how I had gotten this shelter dog, Jamal, soon after my love died. Jamal has an under bite and his eyes go a tiny bit cross-eyed. He's all black with a long white beard and the biggest white paws you have ever seen. He is the only dog I have ever seen chase its own tail. I remember how much I laughed the first time I saw him do it. It was my first real laugh since my loved died. Lately I've been hearing a song on the radio that I am taking for my theme song with the words, "When your lost an alone or sinking like a stone, carry on." This young singer, whose voice is like a smile, is from the group Fun. I fell in love with their music last year. I don't know his name, but he even sings a duet with Pink about being bent, but not broken, "...and I will learn to love again." Oh boy do the tears come when I hear that one. Still, its a powerful mantra for me and it is so that I will learn such things. My love was the first real true love for me in my life. I suppose my wonderful dog Jamal is kind of a rebound relationship for me (lol). So, tonight, if you are lost and alone or sinking like a stone--carry on. I am.

What Comes of Not Grieving

I watched a show on television today about hoarding. One man, perhaps the saddest and most desperate, was hoarding rats. It seems unimaginable that a person could let thousands of rats live in his home running everywhere. Yet, that was the case. After watching for awhile, we learned that his wife had died several years before. He was so depressed and when he talked about his love for his pet rats, he would cry. Actually, he was very fragile and cried easily. He couldn't talk much about his wife at all. The doctor that was working with him told him that he had a great deal of grief inside of him. He never got any help with his grieving when she died. I suppose, in his own way, he did the best he could. His wife died of a heart attack so very young. Obviously, this is an extreme case. Still, it is a tragic example of what happens when one does not grieve and feel the bad bad feelings you have to feel when someone you love dies. I have so hated feeling sad and alone, but I am not nearly as sad as I was. Today was a really beautiful sunny day, and time marches on.

Singing my love Into the next life

Many years ago, before I even imagined the new millennium, my love and I went to Australia. This is the place of the "dreamtime." It's hard for me to explain the dreamtime, but I understand it as the Aborigine people of Australia's explanation of creation. There is also the notion of "songlines" or ways that people travel across the land. A part of this idea is that things which happen are connected to specific places. The place where my love died is strangely connected to my family's history (but that is another story). I remember the first time I ever went to that hospital with my love, long before he died, and how I felt very connected to it. Stranger even still, when we met the doctor who would save my love that first time, and then help him transition from this world, I felt as if I knew him. During that first meeting, as stressful as it was, I told my love to ask the doctor where he was from. Sure enough, the doctor was from the same town my love was from (not exactly a town and very very far from where we stood). Years later when my love began to die, I was with him in that very same hospital. I didn't consciously know he was going to die. I still held out hope that he would live, but unconsciously I knew the time was near. Alone with my love in the room, I began to tell him where he was going. I told him his life's story on earth and I began to tell him about all the people who were waiting for him in the next. I knew his life story better than my own and knew all the people who had loved him and had to leave him when they died. It's funny how I knew to do this. Somehow it seemed correct. Not long after this, even though I did not want to, I told him that if he had to go,"Go." Not long after that, he died.
Today I read this statement by Sylvia Brown:
"It's such a shame that we can't convey to people how lucky the are to be going Home and really mean it. Convey the truth: 'You are going Home. Your work is finished. You are graduating.'"  It does feel like I conveyed this to my love at the end. It felt like a "dreamtime." Those were very strange moments at the end. Still, I felt like I was "singing" him into the next world with his story.  There is no knowing if this was true, but who can say.