10 Year WAR

I don’t know how to even start. I could say that it’s been almost 10 years since Brian died. That would be factual, but not even close to accurate. Brian has died for me every single day, without fail, since that day. Every day I wake up and I lose him again. It’s the most horrible version of Groundhog’s Day. Time does not exist for me anymore. Time stopped at 9pm on Sunday November 25, 2012. I found out that Brian died … and I died, too.

That is not some exaggeration. I did die. My body and my mind and my voice have continued to function, but it’s just been going on autopilot. I have not been present for 10 years. I’m walking and talking and working and creating and evening loving, but there is no living once you die. I’ve spent 10 years waiting for my body to catch up and just die along with my soul. A very dangerous nearly fatal bout with sepsis almost accomplished that goal, but 4 years later I am still waking up, still breathing, still moving and grooving and still faking it all.

In 10 years, I have had some wonderful, very real experiences. I will never say that the connections I experienced were fake or insignificant because they most certainly were not. I did indeed laugh. I did indeed love. I did indeed learn. The circle around me has grown wider and stronger and more brilliant and beautiful. I have been so blessed to have had unbelievable experiences (who lives this life?) and I am not at all ignorant enough to believe that everyone gets those experiences and I am not numb enough to miss the magic of it all. I have seen glorious things, felt powerful love, watched my children grow into humans far better than I could ever be. I have loved and felt the love another … as much as I am able. I do not think that I am able to feel anything pure and full. I have built such a solid steel wall around myself and my heart and my mind because, honestly, it’s the only way I can breathe in and out. I live in a prison of my own making and it has kept me safe and moving and giving the illusion of life.

Illusion. It’s only an illusion.

PTSD is the most fucked up thing. It is time traveling through nightmares. It is being in one place and time and then suddenly being right back in 2012. I don’t mean that I just feel like I am back there. I mean that my eyes stop seeing what is in front of me and instead they see motherfucking ignorant asshole police officers standing in front of me bungling in an almost criminal way telling me that my husband is dead and refusing to answer any questions. I am seeing the snowy creek bed with burned limbs and bloody rocks and charred flesh. I smell the frozen blood found under rocks. I am running my hands through cremains. I am telling my children that their father will never come home. I am telling Brian’s family that their son is dead. I am laying naked zipped up inside his body bag. I am frantically calling Brian to try to find him. I am finding hidden bottles. I am wearing his underwear to be close to him. I am standing barefoot in the snow in the middle of the night crying and begging the moon to come back to life. I am living the very worst horror there is to live. Over and over and over and over again. I am smelling the burned clothing, tasting the bitter tang of death. All the while, my co-workers keep answering the phone, my vehicle keeps flying down the highway, the dogs keep going in and out, the coffee keeps brewing, the meals are made and bills are paid and I am still laying there, face down in a puddle of flesh and blood and rocks and ice and snow until the next day when I do it all over again.

I wrote this morning and posted it on social media:

So here’s the thing about PTSD:

It can fuck ALLLLLLLLLLL the way off.
But it won’t.
It won’t budge. 
It’ll hide, for awhile, like a 2 year old playing hide and seek by standing with a towel over its head. 
It’ll slink around sometimes, like a cat largely ignoring you until it DEMANDS that you attend to it before it shits in your shoe. 
And it will also latch onto you like a superglue-covered starving rage filled bear, fresh out of hybernation, that adheres itself to you with a permanent adhesive before it claws and bites and tears and eviscerates you, devouring every last cell, only to regurgitate you back up so it can do it again and again and again. 

It is personal and vindictive and holds a doctorate in gaslighting. 
Like a sadist, it takes you to the point of death repeatedly but never finishes the journey, making it all that more cruel when you realize you are breathing again because just fucking stop or finish the goddamn job. 
But it won’t. 
It never will.
It thrives in those moments of keeping you neither alive nor dead and this is where you will stay forever. 
It wants you to stop fighting.
It wants you to go under.
It wants you to lose every bit of joy, pin-prick of hope, every single tiny speck of light. 
And you do. 
Because it wins.
It will always win. 
And you can never stop playing the game.

I am not religious at all, but this has to be purgatory. Purgatory, not Hell. Not Hell, because Hell is where a person ends when it is over.

This is not over. A new battle has just begun.

This Life

 

As you can imagine, the last four months have consumed my entire being with thoughts on life and death.  What matters?  What is important?  What can we let go?  What should we grasp more tightly?  It’s all a crapshoot.  There’s no rhyme nor reason to it and none of it comes with a guarantee.  Here today, gone tomorrow.  Blink of an eye.  Just like that.  And a thousand other bullshit trite sayings that I’m so sick of hearing.  Sad thing is, as unoriginal as they are, they are all true.  We just never know.

We gotta live this life.

Buddhists say that Life is Dukkha.  Essentially meaning life is shit.  It just is.  It’s our attachment to it NOT being shit that causes us heartache and suffering.  I hear that, I truly do, but I expected to live this life with Brian and that was cut short.  Dukkha, indeed.  It’s so easy for me to get caught up in the end, be buried by the grief and suffering of it all.  It’s so easy to swim in the pain and let it crash over my head until I breathe the salty waters of grief deep into my lungs and I mummify myself into a shriveled soul.  Wouldn’t hurt me a bit, but it would destroy my sons.

They gotta live this life.

My parents married in 1967 and I was born 9 years later, the youngest of 3 children.  While life wasn’t always great, it was fairly good for a long time.  Until it wasn’t.  My siblings had left the nest and I was the last child remaining, born a full 5 years after my next closest sibling, when the shit hit not only the fan, but the motor, the housing, the wiring, and the whole thing went up in a blaze of the farthest thing from glory that you can imagine and left us all charred and gasping for breath.  Spring of 1993, the year of our own small version of Hiroshima.   Regardless of how old you are, being a first hand witness to that kind of destruction changes who you are.

Brian’s parents married in 1972.  While I’m sure that there were a few good years, the majority of their 39 year marriage was a mirror of the relationship my parents had, although much more subtle, underground, and prolonged.  My husband spent many years watching their slow demise and experiencing his own torture.  They divorced about 2 years ago. One enormous bomb or the prolonged exposure to radiation results in the same destruction and pain.  His long term exposure changed who he was, just like my different exposure changed who I am.

We had to live this life.

A little less than 20 years ago, when the debris had almost stopped falling from the sky, I asked my mother to give me her wedding rings.  She looked at me as though I were crazy.  I explained to her that I wanted them, not for the gold or the diamond, but because I needed some tangible proof that I came from a place of love.  It was so very ugly at the end.  She looked at me and said, “Someday.”  Let me say this here and now: neither of my parents intended for it to be that way, but they, like me, are human and sometimes things don’t go the way they plan.  They never meant to hurt me or anyone else, but … what can you do?

You live this life.

About a year or so ago, Brian’s mother, my MIL, came to him and told him that she was going to be breaking down the jewelry that my FIL had given to her during their years together.  She would be dividing the stones up equally between Brian and his brother.  She said, “You need to know that these things came from a place of love.  There was great love here. You came from great love. These things should be a part of another great love – the loves you have with your wives.”

I identified Brian’s body by his wedding band.  Somehow, even though his zippers had melted into grotesques, his wedding ring survived.  I’ve had it on the index finger of my right hand since November 27th, 2012.

Last month, my mother-in-law and I met with Brian’s personal jeweler and had one of her diamonds turned into an “engagement ring” for me.  It had been Brian’s plan all along.  I now wear my wedding band and the engagement ring that symbolizes the love he had for me, as well as the love he came from, on my left hand.

Last night, my mother looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, “You are the keeper now,” and gave me her wedding rings.  I wear them on my right hand.

Evidence of love in this life.

We all came from a place of love.  We all came from love.  We all came because of love.  We all are love.  And, while I might not choose to teach my kids how to square dance or how to say the Lord’s Prayer, I will teach them, like Brian taught them, that they come from love, that they are made of love, that they are love, and that our love for each other never dies.

We live this love.

We live this life.

Yes, my hands look like 90 year old gardener hands. I’ve been too busy watching Sons of Anarchy to moisturize. Don’t judge me!

 

Light

A couple of days ago, I wrote about the darkness.  Interesting thing, darkness.  You can’t appreciate darkness without having seen light, you cannot appreciate light without the dark.  It’s all a balancing act on a deceptively thin wire under which there seems to be no net, and yet I walk forward.

Having been snowed in now for 2 days, it is easy to be myopic about things.  I tend to focus intently on very small things that, at the moment, seem HUGE.  Yesterday I completely lost my shit over – get this – a meat thermometer.  I had roasted a chicken and was looking for the thermometer to make sure I wouldn’t be poisoning my children and, when I found it, I held it in my hands and fell to the floor.  The last time I used it was Thanksgiving.  Brian died Thanksgiving weekend.  Therefore, that meat meat thermometer was like a knife to the heart.  Stupid meat thermometer, so damn dark and hateful.  And then I also realized Brian gave me the meat thermometer and had given me 90% of the things I had to dig through in order to find said thermometer, and then I started looking around and realizing that he is in every square inch of this house.  Gah.  Overwhelming.

Triggers are everywhere for me.  Everywhere.  It could be a shirt, a button, a certain glass, a smell, or the bottle of Men’s daily multi-vitamins.  It could be the bracelet I bought Brian in Sayulita that I found hiding on the kitchen counter, the can of shaving cream that is still in the bathroom closet even though he hadn’t used it since September and we have no use for it at all now.  Often, the triggers are horrible.  They bring scary thoughts and feelings and ideas and visions and panic.  Darkness.

Sometimes, however, they bring light.  The boys bundled all up in their snow gear to go play in the yard with the dogs.  My youngest son’s snow boots decided to not play nice, so I suggested he wear his brother’s and I would let his brother wear mine.  As I put my snow boots on my oldest son and laced them up, I was triggered.  I remembered that Brian gave me those snow boots for Christmas a few years ago.  They are incredibly warm and nearly indestructible, and he bought them for me so that I could hike and play and be warm and safe.  I felt so loved and cherished and taken care of when he gave them to me and I felt that same love pass from Brian through me to my son as I laced up the boots.

After they came in and had their traditional post snow play  hot chocolate and toast, the kids did the dishes.  I was sitting in the living room catching up with a friend via chat and I heard them start singing.  Both boys doing the dishes and singing “The Highwayman” together, beginning to end, word for word, beautifully.  It took my breath away and triggered me.  For all the years that Brian and I were together, we would immediately get silent when we heard that song.  No matter where we were, what we were doing, we just shut up and stopped moving and listened.  It’s an incredibly powerful song and I have always associated it with Brian, even more so now that he is gone.  Hearing our children sing it – especially when Dakota took over and sang, “I’ll fly a starship across the universe divide…” I almost fell over.  I took a breath and peeked around the corner and was amazed.  There were not 2 Kohl boys doing the dishes, there were 3.  I couldn’t see Brian, but the eyes that see what isn’t there, the eyes of the heart, saw him standing right behind them and beaming.  Sometimes he shines so brightly through our kids that it is blinding.  Light.

I must remember that, even in the deepest darkness, there is light.  It comes in flashes, in waves, in surprising places and surprising times.  Let go and ride the tide.  I will hang on to hope, lay back, and look for the light of the moon.

Rooftop Moon Gazing, Summer 2012

The Fire Went Wild

There were a few Johnny Cash songs that I swear were written for us, although they were written long before we ever knew of him, and often long before either of us were born.  “Jackson,” “Walk the Line,” “If I Were a Carpenter,” and more.  “Ring of Fire,” however, is special.

When Brian and I fell in love, we did fall into a ring of fire.  It was the wrong time.  The deck was stacked against us.  We knew that we would hurt some folks, shock some folks, and, as it ended up, lose some friends.  But we fell deep into the ring of  fire and it burned a lot around us.  Amazing thing, fire.  It burns and destroys and yet you cannot live without it.  Another amazing thing is that what is burned grows back tenfold.  Brian and I burned a lot down, but what grew in the nearly 14 years after we fell into the fire grew and spread and went wild.  We made love, we made children, we made a family, we made a home, we made friends, we made a life.  The life spread and it touched people and places and things and they, too, started to burn only eventually  to grow and flourish.  I still hear often, in fact I heard it just today, that people are touched by our love and it has inspired them to not settle for anything less than what we had.

Brian was a man of countless skills and talents, but singing wasn’t one of them.  One night last summer, Brian and I went out to our little hidden hole in the wall bar with a couple of friends (and by a couple, I mean a couple of friends who are a couple.)  Admittedly, we all had a little too much to drink, but it just so happened that there was Karaoke there that night.  Now, while I sang in high school, I never had sung Karaoke before, but that was all about to change.  I went to the bathroom and when I came out, the other woman we were out with had us signed up and the music was starting for us to sing.  And sing we did.  It was HORRIBLE.  Brian and the other guy laughed and cheered and hooted and hollered and I vowed right then and there that Brian’s day would come.  Oh yes, it would come.

Now, I know that I have mentioned this before, but let me repeat: Brian was a very private man.  VERY private.  He never wanted to do much to show himself off (unless he was fishing and taking your dinner, or shooting pool and taking your money.)  Brian was a quiet man to most people and he vowed that he would never sing Karaoke.  Swore up and down that he’d never get behind that mic and sing.  I also know that I have mentioned how persistent I am.  As persistent as I was about the beard, I tried every single time we were at that bar for months and months to get him to sing.  We would laugh and joke and tease and play – we were great playmates – and have more fun than any two mortal humans should be allowed to have, but he would not sing.

Until the night that he did.

It was a slow night at the bar.  Regulars and maybe 20 other randoms floating around.  He got a twinkle in his eye.  I don’t know what happened, but next thing you know, he signed up.  While this bar is little and not many people know about it, there are some serious Karaoke regulars there and they run the show, so his name was way down on the list.  We sat and listened to others, cheered the good ones, giggled at the not so good ones, and drank beer and bided our time.  And then they called his name.  My amazing husband, the man who never sang, who never wanted to be the focus of attention, went up, grabbed the mic, took a shot of whiskey, sat down, and sang.  He sang “Ring of Fire.”

And it was horrible.

And it was wonderful and funny and beautiful and the most precious memory I have because he had never done it before, will never do it again, and I know as well as I know my own name that he would have NEVER EVER EVER done it with anyone else.  And I also know that he sang it, not only for me, but to me.  As much as I wanted to, I took no pictures, no videos, but I remember it like it happened five minutes ago.  It burned me up.  It burned him up.  And we both grew thicker, more vibrant and tighter together for it.

 

The taste of love is sweet

When hearts like ours meet.

I fell for you like a child,

Oh, but the fire went wild.

 

 

I Found Someone

Okay, I couldn’t help myself with that video.  I mean the hair alone is worth showing.  Seriously.  THE HAIR.  Can you imagine their shower drains?  < shudder >

 

This post might be shocking to you.  I know it’s shocking to me.  I’ve been debating writing it for a couple of days, but think that I should put it out there as I have been honest about everything else that has happened since Brian died 2 months ago.  I’m not quite sure how to go about saying it, but here it goes.

I found someone.   Yep, I found someone.

This is someone I have known for quite some time, but not always very well.

This someone likes to laugh and is funny.

This someone is kind and compassionate and helpful and supportive.

This someone is a wonderful friend.

This someone likes being silly, but can handle hard truths, too.

This someone likes music and movies and has been known to spend some time bending elbows at the corner of the bar.

This someone tells me I’m going to make it.

This someone tells me I am going to thrive.

This someone tells me that I am worthy.

This someone allows me to feel all that I am feeling, no matter how good or how bad.

This someone loved Brian very much.

This someone still does.

This someone is capable and strong and resourceful and creative.

This someone makes me feel very special.

This someone sees a future for me.

This someone sees me as a woman, not just a widow.

This someone knows how to make me feel good.

THIS SOMEONE IS ME.

Walking Through

Every day for the last 6 weeks, I have woken up with that song in my head.  I’m not sure if it’s a song about Brian, about me, or a song about us, but it’s been there relentlessly, so I figured I should do something with it.  I don’t know who made the video, but I’m trying to forgive them for the horrid font they used at the beginning.  ugh.

Moving on.

2 months ago today, Brian left to go camping and never returned.  While the death certificate states that he died November 25, I know in my heart he died 2 months ago tonight.  I know that because I knew Brian better than anyone and I knew his routine.  He was meticulous when camping.  When I arrived at the site 2 days after his death, I could tell immediately what he had done and not gotten around to doing yet.  He died quickly upon arrival.  He died on the 24th.  That said, the officials have to go on what they can prove and they can prove he was found on the 25th, so there it is.  Another wrong “fact.”  Does it even matter?  It matters to me, but I know the truth and that’s going to have to be good enough.  Just another walk through the motions.

When I was in Costa Rica, I took a walk down to the river.  It was mid-day and I was alone, or so I thought.  I was walking through the jungle path looking at the river hiding through the trees and suddenly I felt like I had just walked through something.  No, I felt like I walked through someone.  I felt like I had walked right through Brian.  I know that’s a very strange thing to grasp if you’ve never felt it, but I swear one step I was just me, the next step I was us, the next step I was me again.  You bet your ass I backed up a step and, sure enough, there he was.  Standing with me, me standing with him, me standing in him.  I could have lived in that moment, in that tiny footprint forever. It wasn’t like I could smell him or see him, but my heart recognized his and he was there.  Just like how I would be in deep sleep and still know when he came to bed, I knew, I KNEW I walked walked right through my world and into his.

Sometimes Brian walks through his world and into mine.  I have written before about how he visits me sometimes while I’m in bed, in the moments before sleep or just in those fuzzy moments before fully waking.  He’s been walking through to me more often.  Now it comes with some sound, too.  It’s still the warmth, the weight, but now it’s also the sound of not just his heartbeat, but a rushing sound in my ears – just like him breathing into my ears as his soft, bearded face rests upon mine.  Odd, though, that it doesn’t really feel like a beard.  It feels more like ..what?  Breath?  Grace?  Something.  And the other night, he kissed me.  I would bet my entire life and all that is in it that he kissed me.  My lips tingled out of nowhere.  He was laying with me, breathing with me, and then …kiss.

We are living behind this veil, he and I.  We are neither of this world or the next.  We are dancing across the lines.  He walks through.  I walk through.  Somehow we always walk the right direction and find each other.

Our children see him.  The other day, our youngest son got quiet and started to cry and smile at the same time.  I asked him what was going on and he whispered, “Mom, Dad is standing right by your left side.  Right now.  He’s right there.”  I almost peed my pants.  I felt him, too.

Here’s the thing:  I can get all caught up in my own grief and pain and loneliness and agony and feelings of injustice and anger that I forget I’m not (and my kids are not) the only one going through this.  Brian never wanted to leave.  This was not his plan.  This was not what was supposed to happen.  He got cheated, too.  He doesn’t have a fucking clue what happened and he’s pissed.  As much as I long for him to wrap his arms around me, he longs just as much to hold me.  As much as my kids want to play with him, it’s agony to him that he can’t wrestle with them.  He is sad and grieving, too.  He is trying like hell, as I am, to find the non-existant rewind button.  Here’s another thing: no one on this entire planet could make Brian do a damn thing he didn’t want to do.  Ever.  Period.  While this drove me insane for quite some time, it brings me wonderful comfort now.  He didn’t want to leave and circumstances might have made his body leave us, but nothing NOTHING can make HIM leave us.  He’s right here.  He’s here now.  He’ll always be here.

The trick is to just find evidence of that in new ways.

Yesterday my garbage disposal backed up.  INTO MY BATHTUB.  Yeah.  Gross, right?  We live in an old house with entirely too many screwed up issues.  When he put the garbage disposal in several years ago, it was a nightmare getting it all hooked up to the plumbing, but he did it and it has been amazing. Yes, occasionally it would back up into the sink and he would have to gut the whole thing and get it cleared out, but never once did it back up into the bathtub.  No, that little pleasure was left for me.  But you know what?  I fixed it.  I called Mom over so she could take a peek and go grab some liquid plumbr, but I completely disassembled all of the plumbing under the sink, cleared it out, put it back together, and fixed the damn problem.  Let me tell you, this is not your average plumbing hookup.  It’s all kinds of rednecked up, but I did it.   I walked through sludge and came out clean as a whistle.  I didn’t do it alone. Yes, my mom was there, but so was my own personal MacGuyver.  Brian walked me through.

There is a huge piece of the puzzle missing. I’m not sure what it is or where I will find it, but Brian keeps giving me clear messages that it’s out there and that he means for me to find it.  He doesn’t know what happened.  He has appeared to many people and told them each that he has no clue.  He has told me he’s confused because he doesn’t know.  It’s my job to be his hands and eyes and feet and it’s my job to walk him through and find answers for him.  It’s my goal and I won’t give up, regardless of how long it takes, how dirty or bloody I have to get.  I will find it.  I will walk him through.

We used to walk through this life hand in hand.  Now we are walking through heart in heart.  But we’re still walking.  We’re going to make it.

We’re still walking through.

I Want to Remember it All

It’s the last day of 2012.  Everyone who has a blog or a website is doing a recap of the year.  The goods, the bads, the whole nine yards.  I won’t be doing that.  I just can’t.   2012 was, up until Thanksgiving weekend, one of the best years of my life.  With one conversation, my entire life and my entire future fell apart.

There was never supposed to be a Sarah without Brian.  Moving forward not only seems impossible, it seems wrong.  It seems against nature.  It also seems inevitable.

Yet again something over which I had / have no choice.

There has been a shift in this process.  Brian and I are transitioning into a new relationship and I am terrified.  I am scared of not feeling the pain.  I am scared of healing even the tiniest bit.  I’m scared of what I know, even if it is the deepest level of hell, changing and being plunged yet again into the terrifying unknown.  People tell me that healing doesn’t mean that I love him any less or that he loves me any less.  People tell me that living my life doesn’t mean that he’s going to leave me.  People tell me people tell me people tell me.  Intellectually I know they are probably right.  Intellect has no role in grief.

Brian and I weren’t perfect.  We were human and thus flawed.  We were, however, the closest thing to a perfect partnership that I have ever known.  I know he will never leave me, I just have to adjust my expectations of what being with him looks like now.  Does he whisper to me now?  Does he show up in the white tailed deer that run through the woods, almost out of sight?  When I’m awash with memories so strong I feel like I’m experiencing it, are they memories or is it really him being right there?  When I remember the few painful times of our marriage, is it guilt or grief or forgiveness? Is he putting them there so I can forgive myself?  When I remember the never ending list of joyful moments, is he there with me?  Is he putting these memories in my head so that, for brief moments, we can love each other together again?

I don’t know.  I don’t know.  So many things I don’t know.  For someone who has spent the majority of her life, at least her adult life, being confident and sure and steady, this unending blanket of uncertainty offers no comfort or warmth.  Like new shoes that I’m not terribly fond of, I would rather throw it away than break it in.

Again, no choice.  Again, no answers.

What if I forget?  What if I forget the sound of his soft, deep voice?  The feel of his hands?  The soft spot behind his ear?  How the beard swirled on one cheek and how he had a handful of long white hairs on the other?  What if I forget which cheek was which?  What if I forget how we fought and made up?  What if I forget something for which I need to say I’m sorry?  What if I forget something I need to tell him that I adore about him?  What if I forget the way he smelled?  What if I forget?  This brings me to my knees in utter panic and terror.

And yet again, I have no choice. Someone came uninvited.  They’re leaving.  I’m scared they’re taking The Belle of the Ball.

“I’ll never forget you.  I love you in spite of your faults.  The good and the bad, I want to remember it all.” ~Waylon Jennings

The Two Hearted Woman in Love with an Itsy Bitsy Spider Man

For the last few years, every night I took a hot bath after dinner.  Brian would be home, we’d have eaten, and somewhere between 7 and 8pm, I would grab my book and a glass of ice water, and head off to soak myself in steaming, scalding water.  This became “boys time.”  Brian and the boys would wrestle around or watch tv or maybe just go off their separate ways reveling in the testosterone in the main part of the house while I (and Hank, always Hank) would close off in the bathroom.  Most the time, everyone would leave me alone in there, but occasionally Brian would come in and talk to me and refill my ice water or just to sneak a peek (I was, after all, wearing his favorite outfit.)  It’s been harder and harder for me to do that lately.  It feels strange to come out of the bath and not see him on the couch.  It is incredibly difficult to walk out and not hear his soft, throaty voice ask, “How was your bath, Baby?”  He was the first person in my life who could and would call me “Babe” or “Baby” and not have me want to kill them. I miss that.

But, life goes on and the hot bath I took every night served so many purposes to me that I have started to try to do it again.  I do it much earlier now, but I’m trying.  Last night I managed to pull it off.  I even managed to read a little bit, something I haven’t been able to do since he died.  As I lay there in the steaming water watching the pages of my book curl with the dampness, I looked over my left shoulder and saw a tiny black dot moving on the shower wall, just inches from me.  I swear it was not much bigger than the period at the end of this sentence. It was an itsy bitsy spider.  We live in an old house and when it gets cold, we get tiny spiders and other noseeums coming in for warmth.  Usually I just squash them with a finger and move on, but last night I couldn’t do that.  I was mesmerized by this tiny little thing.  It seemed to be waving at me.  It would move around about a 2 square inch area, but it stayed right there, not really going anywhere, just keeping me company for an hour in the steam.  An hour!  That’s like a lifetime for a tiny little guy like him.

I’m not going to get all Shirley MacLaine on you here, but I will tell you that I believe that we are energy in bodies and that the bodies will die, but the energy doesn’t. You cannot kill energy.  It is a scientific fact.  It can change shapes and forms, but it cannot die.  Period.  I have believed this forever, Brian believed it, and it’s what we have raised our children to believe.  Hell, it’s what The Big Bang Theory has raised our children to believe! It’s indisputable.  Brian is still around, although he has changed.  His energy has changed forms and is now in a condition where it can change forms as often as it wants to, needs to, whatever.  Last night I couldn’t help but think that Brian’s energy was in that itsy bitsy spider and was playing peeping Tom.  This opened up a HUGE train of thought and understanding and shift in me.  This is why cows are sacred in India.  I get it now.  Killing something might mean killing someone.  A whole lot of someones, maybe.  Yes, that energy will go on living, too, but do I want to be the one to do it?  Now all you vegans and vegetarians out there are standing on your chairs and cheering and I can’t really blame you. I’m not sure I’m ready to jump back into the vegetarian club just yet, but I will say this – I could have no more killed that spider than I could have killed my husband.  Period.  That spider WAS my husband.  I’m sure of it.

Hours later, after the boys were in bed, I closed up the house and put myself to bed as well.  I lay there and talked to Brian as I always do and asked him questions.  What was it that he wanted to tell me?   How could I still see him everywhere but not feel him?  Can he help me make sense of things I simply cannot but desperately want to understand?  And then the strangest, most wonderful, mind blowing thing happened. My breathing slowed waaaaaaaaaaaaay down.  It almost like I wasn’t breathing at all, but I was at the same time fully aware of the breath entering and leaving my body.  My chest cavity seemed to get HUGE and very full.  My arms and legs started to feel like they were weightless.  My pajamas started to ruffle and shift a bit although I was laying perfectly still. My right ear, the ear that was off the pillow and in the direct line of the box fan that we use every night, started to get very warm inside in waves, as though someone was whispering into it.  At first I thought my heart was pounding, was racing, and yet I felt absolutely no panic, only peace and love.  My heart seemed to beat so fast, but when I paid very close attention I realized it wasn’t beating fast – it was beating twice. Two heartbeats.  Brian was there, not with me but in me.  

Wrap your brain around that for a second.

This moment of pure amazement and bliss lasted for probably 3 solid minutes.  I know that doesn’t sound like a long time, but really it truly is.  Slowly, very slowly, my limbs started to get their weight back, the trippy ethereal feeling on my skin started to return to normal, my chest started shrinking, and I returned back to my normal state – except my ear.  My ear kept getting warm in waves.  Whisper whisper whisper.

Flash flash flash.

I am a two hearted woman.  Maybe I should write a song.

 

 

update:  As I was searching for images of two hearts, I came across this article that talks about a spider with a double beating heart.  Okay, it’s from Faux News, but still!  And the image is … whoa.  Check it out. 

A Thousand Things, A Thousand Times

I am now the sole driver in my house and I have two working (licensed, even!)  vehicles in the driveway.  I have my mom-van (that’s another post in and of itself,) and Brian’s (my?) LandCruiser.  Even if you’re new to this blog, you’ve probably picked up that we have a bit of a thing for classic LandCruisers.  Well, Brian had a thing for classic LandCruisers and, although I continually harped on him about his constant need to replace one with another without ever getting rid of the first one (TRUTH,) somewhere along the way we all fell in love with those old trucks, too.  The fact of the matter is that there is not another 4 wheeled road legal vehicle that would have been better suited for him.  Oh how he loved the old LandCruisers!  The only thing he liked better than driving that truck (any of the 3) was watching me drive that truck.  It’s old, there are certain problems with the truck: the gas gauge doesn’t work, 2nd gear is a little sticky, and even though it has air conditioning, he never dared try it because, well, because old trucks sometimes blow up if you try to do strange things like run the air conditioning.  It takes forever to start and it has to run for a bit before you can take off down the road, it guzzles gas, occasionally leaks oil, it’s not terribly fond of speeds over 65mph, the engine compartment is bigger than my laundry room, and I drive it every chance I get.  It’s easier than driving home in another vehicle and seeing the truck in the driveway and thinking, “YAY, Brian’s home!”  I thought that for over 13 years.  I think it a thousand times a day.

A thousand little things a thousand times a day.

Brian would have – and often did – give anyone the shirt off his own back.  He was kind and generous and when he asked you how you were, he genuinely cared.  I have gotten so many messages and letters since he died from former employees and old friends who all commented on the fact that he always took time for them, always asked about them, and always cared.  It’s true.  That’s just who he was.  He cared about who you were and what you liked.  He would listen to you until you were done talking.   That said, Brian was incredibly private.  He didn’t share himself, his true self, with very many people.  In fact, he told me often that he shared his true self with exactly one person: me.  I believe him.  The fact that I’m sharing this stuff online and that he’s now all over Facebook and the web makes me laugh – he’d hate it outwardly, but I think he’d secretly love it.  I think Brian always wanted folks to know the real him, but he didn’t know how to show it… except to me.

Every time I start the clothes dryer I laugh because he mostly did his own laundry, but would empty the wet clothes into the dryer and then start a new load in the washer, but forget to start the dryer.  He’d go down to get his clothes for work and they’d be wet.  Every time  I start the dryer, I think of him.

A thousand little things a thousand times a day.

Brian was one of the smartest people I ever met.  He was brilliant and so knowledgable about almost everything, yet he wasn’t a reader.  Yes, of course, he could read and read well, but he was so detail oriented that he literally read every letter of every word.  He wasn’t like me and most folks who skim.  Each tiny letter meant something and to skip one might mean missing something, so it took him a long time to read.  He also didn’t stay still very well because he always felt there was too much to do, so sitting down to read a book was not something he did.  Until this summer.  This summer he read 3 books while floating in the pool.  In over 13 years, they were the first books I saw him read cover to cover and, as an avid, voracious reader, I was thrilled with this new development.  He was so tickled with himself that he finally found a way to enjoy reading again.  One of the books he read is still in the mudroom.  I pass it all the time and I smile and think of how he found a new part of himself.

A thousand little things a thousand times a day.

For the last 3 years, my darling ginormous dog, Hank, would go apeshit crazy at 8:50am 5 days a week.  Somehow, even if Brian wasn’t in the room yet, Hank would go bananas because he knew that Brian was leaving for work.  Brian would grab his wallet and the knife he always kept in his back pocket, throw his workshirt over his t-shirt, and Hank would be running in circles, barking, jumping, whining, throwing a full-out fit.  Brian would look at him and say, “Dammit, Hank, I’m allowed to kiss my wife!”  And kiss me he would and then he would leave for work.  8:50 comes and goes now without remark.

A thousand little things a thousand times a day.

I don’t know what it is about music, but it’s highly personal.  I know it is for me.  My music collection borders on hoarding and I’m perfectly fine with it.  I have a huge range of music that I listen to and like.  I think most folks do, too, but it’s amazing to me how many people will avoid letting folks in to their full music collection.  We all like things that don’t fit our mold.  Brian was a country boy who loved Kid Rock and The Grateful Dead, but when it would be just us, he would admit that he liked old school Billy Joel and Phil Collins. Me, too!

A thousand little things a thousand times a day.

I hear a belt buckle jingle and I catch my breath,  I heard it every day.  The investigator still has his belt.

The kids grab the black coffee cup to make hot chocolate.  He always drank from the black coffee cups (we have several.)

I drive past the grocery store every day and pick up the phone to ask him if he needs anything.

American Pickers, Gold Rush, How the States Got Their Shapes, MacGyver which he loved.  Three’s Company which he hated.

Peanuts.

Sour cream and onion dip with wavy potato chips.

Zip ties.

Fields begging to be driven through.

Ripples in still water.

The Weather Channel.

Untucked sheets.

Chess boards.

Random nuts, bolts, screws, and corks.

Duct tape.

WD-40.

Weeds in the driveway.

ManTracker.

Socks on the floor.

Shirts on the kitchen chairs.

A thousand things a thousand times a day.

And growing.

Broken Marriage Vows

I still do

I remember the first time I saw Brian.  I was 15 years old, he two years older than me, and he was walking up the hill through the courtyard by the band hall of our high school.  His hair was longish and a bit shaggy and he walked with this stride that made me gasp.  Dark hair, dark skin, dark eyes and a smile bigger than his entire face, he took my breath away.  I didn’t know his name, I only knew that one day, someday, I would be with him.  I was sure of it.  It was instant and it was powerful and could have physically knocked me over.  I was almost always talking then and I’m sure I stopped in mid-sentance and stared, heart pounding, mind blown.

It would be almost another 4 years before he knew my name, a year after that before we spoke to one another, and three further years before we became friends and shortly thereafter fell hopelessly in love.  Well, before he fell hopelessly in love.  I had been in love with him since that first day.

One day in June of 1999, we took a rather spontaneous trip to St. Louis for my friend’s birthday party.  Things were very complicated.  I wasn’t exactly free to fall in love, but it was too late.  We couldn’t say it to one another with words, but our eyes and our hearts couldn’t help but scream it.  We got into my sports car and hit the road.  He lifted up the center console panel and looked at what CDs I had in there: Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Phish, Little Feat, Bob Marley.  He looked at me in the eye and said, “Well, it’s all over now.”   Very early the next morning, we raced from St Louis to beat the sun to Columbia so that he could be at work on time, singing “Jackson,”  “Blue Skies,” and “Willin'” at the top of our lungs the entire way.

A week or so later, in a gravel driveway / parking lot of our friends’ rural apartment, standing between a light blue Toyota LandCruiser (the first of 3,) and a Ford Ranger under the starry night sky, we said our wedding vows.  He looked at me in the eye and whispered, “I love you.”  Wanting to hear it again, I pretended I didn’t hear him. “What?” I said.  “Don’t make me say it again,” he whispered.  Being a very moral man, this was against what he believed and not something he would do, loving a woman who wasn’t legally able to love him back, and yet he was unable to not do it, just as I was unable to not love him fiercely, totally, completely, endlessly back.  “I do, too,” I said.  Our hearts signed the dotted line right then and there and the vows were made.

20 months later, on February 9, 2001, a snowy Friday afternoon, we stood in front of a judge and witnesses and promised to love, honor, and cherish each other until death us do part.  This was the official wedding, although we had been spiritual husband and wife since that night we stood sandwiched between trucks.  Our best friends were there (it was their gravel parking lot / driveway,) as was our 8 month old son.  He put the ring on my finger.  It is still there.  I put his ring on his finger.  It now lives on the first finger of my right hand.  So many things got destroyed when he died, but his wedding ring is still perfect, still whole, still gleaming perfect gold.

Brian came to me in a dream last night.  Unlike others, I was able to talk to him, to touch him, to hold him, to kiss him, to hear his voice, to feel his arms around me.  The dream took place in the house in which I was living when I first saw him all those years ago, the house I lived in when my heart found it’s partner.  Brian brought me back to the beginning.  It was a wonderful, beautiful, tender, exciting, loving dream that felt not one tiny bit like good-bye, but completely and totally like, “Hey Babe, I’m still here.  I’ll always be here.”

We have broken our marriage vows.  We broke the part about “til death us do part.”   Death has parted our bodies, but death will never part our spirits. I did then, do now, and will always and forever love, honor, and cherish Brian, and I’m not afraid to repeat it.

I do.  I do. I still do.