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"

Old Friends

Spent the day with my family and friends that I haven't seen in what feels like a lifetime or more.  Some of them have children grown enough to not remember me, some of them look totally different then when we last spoke and still others haven't shifted in any way.  That amazes me.

Most people who weren't expecting to see me looked genuinely surprised.  They said Hello but then did the double take "Hello!" immediately after.  I hope its because I looked so good that they didn't know it was me.....or maybe they just never thought they'd see me there.  Either way, they were shocked.

Funny how time passes and life passes and a year can slip so quickly for some of us and crawl by so painfully for others.  I felt the loss of one friend just as sharply as ever, the empty seat where she should have been like a beacon to me, pulsing her absence, glaring in my face.  I saw her family, raw still and wounded from losing her.  I am happy to have seen each of their loved faces and held them in my arms, even just for a moment, but the loss of her was like a terrible bitter taste in my throat, strong and burning making breathing difficult and filling my eyes with tears. Its almost been a year. It feels like no time has passed at all without her. I'm still holding my breath, waiting for her to sit down.

Most of all I was with my family, my whole family, together under one roof...as it should be, as I have wanted it to be for a very long time.  The only one missing was Dennis, since he was abandoned by me back in Florida (for further guilty confessions on this subject please see the previous blog entry)

The empty seat next to me was a reminder of the fact that my life and the me I am in my life now has changed in a year too.  Dennis is my life now and even being with all these people I love and miss, without him there is no home.  I am home in location but Dennis is where I hang my hat.  Its a seemingly obvious conclusion to many, I'm sure....but a reassuring one to me nonetheless.   Missing my husband is a good thing in my eyes.

I feel exhausted from the day, all tattered around the edges but not in a negative way.  I feel spent and satisified that I was able to connect with so many people from the pages of my memories.  Especially some toward whom I had given up for lost, scratched them off completely whenever they entered my thoughts.  I am happy to see their faces again and share a laugh with them, as if we saw each other only yesterday.  I have missed them and being in their company again, falling into the old ways with them again was so natural and so right.  Easy....as if nothing has changed.  In a spinning world of change, an island of something constant has a nice feeling to it.

Old friends...old friends..sat on their park bench like bookends....

can you imagine us years from today..sharing a park bench quietly

how terribly strange to be seventy......

time it was and what a time it was it was

a time of innocence, a time of confidences

long ago it must be, I have a photograph

preserve your memories, they're all that's left you

"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"