Oh my!

It's been just over a year.
Poems

When you smile and cry
From the joy in your life
Your heart expands with love.

When you smile and cry
From the grief in your life
Your heart caves in from the pain.


HOPE

I sit in a chair and slap my arm
Trying to figure out where I came from.
Not who I was when I was born, but who
I am not that you are gone.

Window panes of see thru glass
Coloring books with a lifeless past
Two dimensional photos staring back at me
While  I just sit and cry

You died. I cried.
My soul bled red life.
My heart did crack
Never to be whole again.

And now I sit in my rocking chair
Dreaming of life gone by
Tomorrows come with no relief
Todays I can only bare.
Where is the hope that I once had...
It crawled into a hole and died.


GRIEF
I don't do death and dying very well.
And you don't need a referee between you and your conscience.
You know the difference between true and real and false and phony.
And if you don't you'll learn very shortly.

If this is your first true close encounter with the face of death you'll understand why I can't be there.
It wears a mask of sadness but underneath is a shinning light of pure peace and forgiveness.
For it  is life that wears a mask of happiness but underneath is pure pain and revenge. The unforgiven walk the earth as do the unforgiving.

Regret stops at deaths door for those dying.  They can't do anything about it now. It's the living that keep hate and sorrow fed.  Death is a wake up call that slaps you in the face.
It asks the question, are you trying to hurt the one you love or do you want what's best for them?

This is not a recollection of all that life is.  Just a reminder to be careful of what you wish for, what you pray for, when the last seconds are ticking down.
Some use god to take away the pain like the morphine drip for the dying.
Some pretend and some just don't really care.

As much as I've tried to hide my grief, put on the facade of strength and courage, I have not "healed", I am a walking wimp.
I do what it takes to get by, hanging on to those who put up with me.

To those who morn, you do not want me around you in these last hours before death brings relief.  I would be a black hole sucking in the life around me.
You need  perseverance (not strength) and solitude to understand what's happening to you.  And some day you might.  I haven't yet.

I don't do death and dying.
I am not good at it.


Those are a few things I wrote over last year.  So much more in my head and it's expanding too fast.  I hear people thinking that it's time to let go and get on with my life.  I just ignore them.  They don't understand.  But the direction has changed.  It's time for me to take the blame for the relationships in my life.  Take a good look at myself.  And hope I don't throw up.

A different kind of pain...

The first year after Mary left, was taken, disappeared, I needed to be as close to her as I could be. At first wearing her clothes helped, keeping the pictures of her  up and around, I thought would help but it didn't. Listening to her music hurt worse.  I was not in control of my life.  Yes I know no one is truly in control.  That's probably why religions tell you that god is in control. I think it's a way to not take responsibility for you actions.  But..... I did take control of the only thing a person can control 95% (nothing is 100%) of the time - what I ate.  I wanted to weigh what Mary weighed, 100 pounds.  She's 5'4" and I am an inch shorter so I knew it was possible, mainly because I wasn't hungry. 

I got down to 105#. My doctor and friends didn't like seeing me at that weight. But I stayed there for awhile. Last year I got back to 120#, bought new clothes, even started wearing makeup. 

Now I have lost control of even that. I am eating no more than I have been for the last year and yet I have gained 12 pounds in 4-5 months. My clothes have slowly gotten tighter. I have been eating the same amount or less. But less slows down your metabolism.  So with the new year I started walking on out treadmill.  One hour up to level 3, 2-3 times a week.  Still gaining. 

Here's the worst part, my hip muscles are having spasms, I can barely walk, and am on pain meds that don't seem to be helping. All from exercising too much. My last vestige of phantom control, gone. My doc is checking my thyroid level.  If it's off then there's an easy fix.  If it's not, more tests.  Meanwhile I may have to start wearing baggy clothes.

Danny couldn't really control what he ate since everything affected his heart.  But he controlled when, where, and how long he slept. Doesn't sound like a big thing but every little bit helps.

My little bit is gone, at least for now.

Who? Why?

Who am I writing for?  Why am I writing?  I don't want to write anymore.  I don't feel the urge to start cutting on my arms just to see the blood flow either.  I know what's under the thin layer of "resignation" skin that I so carefully caress.  Every time I see or hear something about a child dying I turn the other way, stop reading or listening, lest I fall apart.  

I am handling my life as best I can. I am not joyful, gushingly happy, frantically positive but I'm walking and breathing.  I have things to do to keep me busy enough to give me time to focus on today with out falling into the "life sucks" abyss.   And believe me, life does suck - even when you think you are having fun.  

Other people are just as good at fooling themselves about reality as I am.  I'm not the only person who ignores pain and truth.  People believe in life after death because they don't want to believe it's the end either for themselves or someone else.  But since no one actually knows what happens after your last breath it's easier for them to pretend.  I choose, in this matter, not to pretend.  I have just resigned myself to knowing I'll find out one day.  Getting to heaven is not a reason to be a good person.  You should be good no matter where you end up.

Anyway, I can't write everyday like I promised. And who, exactly, did I promise?  Who reads these words?  I know who read the ones I wrote after Mary left.  I also know they stopped reading them because it hurt them too much to read it.  So, in the end I was writing to myself anyway.  I supposed it helped because I thought I was writing to the world.  And I wanted everyone in it to know exactly how much worse the world was without Mary. I wanted to scream it at the top of my lungs.  But no body was listening in the end.

It's not that I don't want the world to know how much it hurts not to have Danny in it. It's that I can't stand the pain of describing it.

So I won't.  He understands.  

My bad!

Yes, it is hard to get back to putting on paper what rattles around in my head.  But I'm trying.  I will write more today or tonight.  I just don't have that "life is great" feeling anymore.  I think I've lost it somewhere....I've fallen and I can't get up.  Or I don't want to get up. 

Day 3

Some one said "tough times don't last, tough people do".  Replace the word "tough" with other words - hard, soft, mean, funny, etc.  What do you get? Meaningless dribble.   Lots of little sayings to make you feel better but they don't.

We'll talk about "hope" tomorrow night. Another phantom meaning.

I did walk on the treadmill tonight.  2 days in a row.

Day 2

There we go.  Another year come and gone, another year to get through... I was supposed to start this yesterday but I only thought about it. I did start one new action.  I am starting each day off with a big glass of water. And I'm going to try to eat something for breakfast. Today I even did a few sit-ups.  That which is displayed in my mind hardly ever gets to my arms and legs but I'm going to try this year.

New Year's Day was uneventful.  Moved my shoes and sweaters to Gabe's room and neaten end up my shelves. Went to a movie with Bonni, knitted, played a game, fed the doggies, worked on plans for Ann's party. When you put it on paper my life is boring. I'm sure I did something else but what I didn't do is wash the dishes.

I guess that dude will start working on the floor this week.

Talked to Sherrell for a few minutes.  She made it back from the other side.  I was a little worried she might not make it.  I'll go visit her once and then let her and me get on with our lives.

Gotta get ready for work.
Love you Mary, love you Danny.
Holding on to Julie.

Not sure any more

It's getting a little harder each day to fool myself into believing Danny is in Alaska. But then if I know that it's not true, who am I really fooling?

I hate going downstairs to his room to let the dogs out.it's empty and cold and so not him. Know we couldn't just keep his room the way it was. That's reality. Not the one I want but the one I'm living in none the less.

Those that possess something in great quantities sometimes tend to devalue it. Those with money, burn it. Those with people, take them for granted. And those with time on their hands, waste life on the unimportant. The only thing you can't have too much of is love and sometimes it's not enough.

So I wil keep playing the fool, pretending that all is fair in love and war. But the hurt isn't going away. And the dam is going to break one day.