I've seen Fire and I've seen Rain

I have a playlist of songs entitled "songs that make me cry".  At my old job, during surgery we would sometimes listen to a list we affectionately called "songs to kill yourself to".  Dennis looks over at me and says "why do women do that? Listen to music that upsets them?"  It is crazy. But somehow the weight in your chest that feels like it has no release, when you listen to certain music and let the pain out, the pressure lessens. Or so it seems to.

There is a bottle of water on the table in front of me. And it made me think about how much water we have drank since we went food shopping a few days ago. And that we need more water...and then I thought, my life has gone on. I'm living, breathing and drinking water. How could I when people I love are gone.

"Just yesterday morning, they let me know you were gone........

I've seen fire and I've seen rain, I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end, I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend but I always that that I would see you again"

Grieving has a process, life moves forward. Its healthy and natural. But it feels so wrong. How can life move on when a huge piece of you is missing? How? There are so many stories I haven't told her, so many things to ask her, so many ways to make her laugh, so many things to get her support on. How can life just keep moving when I don't want it to? How did I let this happen? Am I forgetting her?

And then you think about the people still in your life that you don't get to see. You are missing out on their lives, the moments every day that mold them, change them.  Daily events and decisions. Joy and fears, highs and lows. And no manner of distant contact can make up for not being there. And I am not there right now. I am so very far away, from all the things I love. 

Life is even more fragile then I ever thought, even more fleeting.  People simply disappear and there is nothing you can do. No manner of wishing or wanting or pleading will bring them back again. I went to France in a bubble of newness and joy the first time. And while I was gone, everything changed. And that changed me. I'm sitting at this table staring at a bottle of water, listening to James Taylor, crying over memories I am afraid to lose. Crying over the memories I am missing out on. Crying because I am living when people I love are sleeping. People I need. And no matter how hard I cry, the sun will rise and we will need more water tomorrow and we are forced to live, live without them. 

There is a grief that arises from the healing of a pain. As if the sharpness of the pain was tangible enough to hold you tight to that person. And when the pain fades, will they fade with it? Will you be letting them go? Is their face, their voice, their laugh vanishing? I find comfort in the pain. With the pain I know she is close to me, I can see her tossing her salad with her cargo pant capris and lipstick on. She is alive in my memories, even within the cloud of pain so heavy I can't take a breath. She is there, cheering me on, laughing at my stories. She is still alive and well in my mind. If I heal, I will forget. If I forget, I will die.

"thought I'd see you one more time again"

Heat Wave

It's a heat wave.  The weather has turned on me and we now are enjoying 90 degree days with tons of humidity and no breeze.  The water of the Mediterranean is still and the tops of the trees outside my window are likewise motionless.  The fan I depend on in our room stopped turning, just began to slow and then completely gave out a few days ago and refused to move.  So we were forced to move the portable AC unit into our room and we keep nice and cool while we sleep.  Denise is not bothered by the heat at all and so when I woke at 2 AM for a drink of water I noticed that every door was shut in the house and Denise was sleeping deeply, covered up in her flannel sheets and several wool blankets.  I quickly ran down the hallway and dove into the cool bliss of our room.  An added bonus is that the whir of the AC blocks out almost all scooter noises at night from the road. We live along a very busy route between Monaco and Italy with constant traffic coming and going.  Even in the small hours of the night, scooters and motor bikes throttle along on their way to where ever but with the cool wind from the AC unit I've named Gus, I am not disturbed from my dreams.

A few nights ago, we had taken Denise for a walk down by the water at dusk.  With the setting of the sun, the tourists and locals take to the streets looking for food and entertainment.  It was about 8 PM that we found ourselves on the cliff walk listening to the waves crashing along the rocks, sneaking a peak at an outdoor restaurant with tables set right on the rocks and the smell of barbeque wafting up towards us.  Once the land begins to cool a heavy scent of wild jasmine fills the air.  We have searched  for the flowers themselves but can never seem to find them. However, the scent is every where like a mist hanging about your shoulders as you walk at night here. Only at night.

Once we could no longer maneuver Denise's chair in the dark along the sidewalk and around the ancient trees that break through the pavement and hang toward the water, we came home and ate a late late dinner on the rear balcony, watching the lights of Monaco twinkle in the distance.  With one candle lit on the table, we sipped wine and listened to Denise tell us stories of the farm she lived in as a child.  Of washing clothes over the fire, of reading by kerosene lamps at night.  For entertainment, her step-mother played the piano in the evenings. She spoke fondly of the 'modern' house in Marseilles that they moved into after her father sold the farm/vineyard and how she remembers how excited she was by the bathroom with its running hot water. When Dennis would ask something that Denise could not remember she would say to him in her French accent, "I don't remember Denny, I didn't think to write it down". And when we spoke of how different life is now she said, “we did not know what we were missing or what we did not have. We didn’t miss electricity or running hot water or washing machines because we never knew of them. We were happy as we were”.  And as she spoke with the soft candle light flickering on her face, with her eyes cast back through to the years of her youth, I could see a glimpse of the young woman she must have been, smiling at her future, living in a simpler time before war came to the country and changed everything.

"And if the darkness is to keep us apart, and if the daylight feels like it's a long way off, and if your glass heart should crack and for a second you turn back...oh no, be strong..walk on"

I took myself out of the house this afternoon for a walk to clear my head. My feet found their way to the local olive tree garden just steps away from our apartment. Peaceful and quiet with the scent of wild flowers and the olive trees themselves, it felt like the right place for me to think and be alone. Most of the trees in this garden are well over 500 years old. As I sat there feeling overwhelmed with my sorrows I thought of all that those trees have seen. The joys and the sorrows. How many people have come and sat under their leaves and breathed in their scent and found comfort, just like me? How many have walked here and sat and just let their tears flow without restraint until there were no tears left. Imagine the stories these trees could tell me if only they knew how. If only I knew how to listen. Imagine the secrets that they are guardians of.

Maybe they were speaking to me...maybe their silent sympathy was the comfort I needed. I walked among them until I came across a patch of rose bushes and I stopped to smell each different one. Then I wandered to a batch of sunlight by a very large olive tree. There I found a bench that I laid across and looked up through the leafy arms of the old olive tree to the blue sky with its scattered clouds. I watched the clouds dance past and let my mind think upon things I have been too scared to think about for the past 24 hours. Memories I was afraid to remember, certain that just the mental pictures of my dear friend and all she did for me would crush my glass heart completely. Somehow though, I found the comfort I was seeking and for a few moments the clarity I needed. We are such small pieces of a picture too large for each of us to begin to understand. Laying there among my new friends, breathing in the clean perfumed air I felt less alone in my pain. Miles and miles away from the ones I love, being unable to help them and forced to simply wait to hear, I found a measure of peace in the olive tree garden.

"Who's to say where the wind will take you, who's to say what it is will break you. I don't know which way the wind will blow.......I know that this is not goodbye"