without

first birthday without him.
I have mostly done alright...it hits me in moments and I find
I just get confused; tired; immobilized.
Thank goodness for our friend who I asked a while back to come and take our daughter on a motorcycle ride today.
That was a special thing John did for her on her birthday and she LOVED it.  She was
thrilled our friend could come today.  Tonight,
while she was falling asleep,
I told her that her daddy's spirit was here hugging and loving all over her.
She put her arms up in the air and hugged the space in front of her.
She told me she hugs him and talks to him sometimes.  I told her that makes me glad
that I talk to him, too.

And Neil is sick.  102.6 fever.  And a neighbor came and walked to dogs so I didn't have to.  I barely know him, too.  Just a nice guy.  So strange how regular things get done, are still needed, still occur...

I have gotten through.  When I think of how I wish I didn't have to "get through", the bottom drops out of me...my muscles momentarily release...

he his here somehow.  but we are still mostly
without.

Happy princess popcorn day!

Our sweet baby girl turns 5 today!!!  For her birthday, I got her a popcorn maker, ala my friend Elaine...this morning it is popcorn for breakfast and Despicable Me...that is the fun stuff for right now.

What is really on my mind is domestic.  Not as in the opposite of foreign, but as in domestication and housekeeping types of things.  I would say that, on a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is Pig Pen as a hoarder and 10 is maybe Jack Nicholson's OCD character in As Good As it Gets, I probably fluctuate between a 4 and a 6.5- maybe on a special occasion or oddly motivated day I might hit a 7, but if I do, it doesn't last long. 

Keeping my little world here clean has been an extra struggle since having Cilly and Neil.  Aiden is pretty self contained.  When he was 2, I don't think he ever took out toys- he just ran back and forth and plopped onto the couches full speed face first.  And wrestled with John and jumped on the couches and even danced.  (see?  my genes are in there...) 

Cilly was a different story.  She took out toys all the time.  Which was cool, just hard to keep up with.  For her first birthday, the theme was duckies- something like "Rubber Duckie, Cilly's 1!"  and we got tons of rubber ducks- some tiny on her cake and bunches to put in the little blow up pool in the back yard...and as she grew, she would take them out-all of them...and there are a bunch...I never counted them, but upwards of 20 before our little dog started to eat them.  She would take them all out and line them up.  Seriously...  my two year old princess would constantly get her ducks in a row.  Ha!  Yeah...then she would take all the magnets off the fridge and line them up.  Then she would pull out all the sippy cup tops, put them on the floor, suck on them all (quality testing, toddler style?), and then put them all back.  We thought it was hard to keep up with her antics...and it was.  But not in comparison to Neil.

Granted, John had cancer basically all of Neil's short existence.  And anyone who has had a family member fighting cancer with little kids in the house knows that there is an extra layer of crazy that, I am sure, looks different in each family.  Basically for us, it meant that when John was home with the little ones during the day and I was at work, if dirty dishes were left in the sink and toys and blankets were strewn about, well, I tried to remind myself that it meant that he was still here with us.  But Neil would be tricky in any household.  He would not just take out some toys.  He would take them all out.  And not necessarily to play with them, although sometimes he did that too.  No, just for the fun of taking apart the toy bins.  He would empty them, then head to the kitchen and take out all the sippy cup tops, chucking them onto the floor.  Then we would swing his arms in large, sweeping motions to knock off all the magnets and watch them scatter.  Then he went to the dog bowls and swatted the food around till dog food nuggets were everywhere.  Such a cutie, though...seriously.

Suffice it to say that right now, with my addled brain, bizarre emotional and energy roller coaster, this house is absolutely impossible to keep up with!!  I find suitcases in the bathroom, hair brushes on the living room floor, cat poop in the sink (don't ask), oven mitts in the kids rooms, crayons EVERYWHERE, and all I am doing right now is stepping over it all.  Well, most of it.  I clean the sink poop...so yeah....me and grief and three kids, two dogs, three cats = about a 2.5 on the domestication type scale right now. 

Just sayin....

it showed us

I am crying...hard enough to make my nose protest...that is something new since grief...it is hard to describe...

and as I lay on the hot front steps, sending back the sun's blaze from the day as it is almost midnight,
I find myself talking to him...asking him to be my guide

but I realized...the universe...god...life....
it showed us.
It showed us good.

Years before him, I wrote of the thing that scared me the most.

Being alone.  afraid, crying, in a corner, lost...

His greatest fear was dying.

show me stars, somehow together

show me stars
show me the moon on the grass
let me smell
the moist earth that comes with quiet darkness
water moving over rocks

because these things calm me

show me how to make broken
things
whole again

let me show you the paths
my tears take
when I choose to let them fall
without wiping them away, cheeks, chin, chest and crevices

I came down
in the dark to write it right
even though
my eyes are swollen salty
my breathing deepened by my sleeping pill

because like before you
my writing is the only thing
that holds me

somehow

together.

not much

I won't link this one to facebook. Nothing here but pain and desperation and a sobbing plea for help. An old flame reconnected. Being in his current state of matrimony, suffice it to say he confessed this, ignited this, and soiled things....I don't want to say that. I want to say that just like the heart wants what it wants, the loins have a mind of their own...and from back to my beginnings, he owns mine...he trained them initially, and I his...oh, but I am alone. Everyone says I am not, but I am. Who helps me clean up all the poop messes each day, the trash in the living room, throw in a load of laundry, now the lawn, or walk the dogs, or figure out dinner? Who holds me and makes me feel cared for or feel desired, even in an annoying dude-let-me-sleep kind of way. I don't know who the hell I am without John. I don't know how to do this. And I feel like I will always and forever have to do it alone. And he doesn't understand, this phantom from my past. And, really, why should he?  No one does. Because they are not my family.  Many people love and care for me, but I am no one's family. I am no one's heart, no one's love and joy and safe haven...I have never felt more like no one in my life.

And just leave the kids out of it. This isn't about them tonight. It is about me.

now I am yelling

So for a moment or two, there was a fantasy...alive and warm and wonderful
And it made me whole
took away so much fear
I was invincible insatiable invaluable

for nowhere near long enough

before, there was doubt and regret

so now that it is over, I am overtaken anger
at all the wrong things
at everything

so my voice no longer tender screams deep and hurtful
at things unseen, seen, honestly at everything

I didn't die that day.  But I should have.  I don't know
what parts of me will come out of this alive

not sure how to hold who I wish I was close to my heart,
to recognize who
I could be

*She says life is "brutiful"- brutal and beautiful
Buddha's first noble truth is that life is painful.  Sometimes miserable
there is no Neverland, no real magic,
no coming back to me when things are done...

and I am angry.  Angry at love and death
and cancer
the past that hurt so bad
the present that hurts even worse
angry at being needed so badly every moment of the day
and having no one to hold me and help me and soothe me
angry at the happiness my children display
angry at my own anger, hopes, confusion, desire...

screaming into the darkness
into my soul
looking for the waters of Lethe to bathe
and maybe even drown me...



*Glennon Doyle Melton, an amazing, honest, wonderful woman who blogs at http://momastery.com/blog/

the universe is yelling...

Since I was about 16, I have felt sexy, but unlovable...you might think that could be a good feeling, and it can be.  But not if it is sustained.  And not if you are romantic at heart like I have always been.  It leaves you feeling lonely, dirty, and hollow...for years I fought to find worth in me.  John tried to help me see how beautiful I am but I even doubted him.  And now he is gone...and I have to try to believe in myself and my worth all over again.  But things in the universe are colliding to help me see that maybe I have been gorgeous and lovable and sexy and so much more, all along...

For years, my relationship with my husband has (had?) been twitchy.  Awkward.  No, scary for me...sort of.  I lost weight for the wedding in a slow and healthy way and when we were married, I was the strongest and thinnest I had been since high school. Not that I was ever very heavy.  Just curvy.  When I got pregnant right away we were ECSTATIC.  I was several months along and a friend even complimented me saying she could barely tell I was pregnant.  I was the opposite of what you might think: so upset!  I stuffed my face thinking I WANTED to be pregnant and LOOK pregnant.  Then my mom died.  And one after another all these big stresses lined up and the weight decided it would stay.  I spent the better part of the last 7 years pregnant, breast feeding, and/or severely stressed out. 

Needless to say, I lost weight and gained it back again.  And I was safe with John.  He was completely AMAZING in bed.  Really.  And he loved me.  Even if I had a big belly.   So I figured I would lose the weight some day and even if I didn't I had this guy who could make me go completely berserk and I knew we would find that again someday.  And cancer took him.  This lover, listener, this man who was annoying and amazing all at once, who taught me what it meant to argue and fight and not have your tender feelings move even a nanometer.

Now I am almost 40, as heavy as I have ever been, and I need to see my beauty.  A friend who saw a picture of me years ago, I can't remember who she was, recently told me I don't seem to age...Except for the grays I am getting, that seems pretty true, more or less.  I remember my Nanna was quite an attractive lady.  My mom, not so much, for all the drinking and years and years of self hatred.  When she was young, though, va va voom!!  For lack of a better term.  Seriously, she was a hotty! So I guess I have good skin and aging genes.  And, like the nasty bumper sticker I saw years back in Bishop's Corner (West Hartford friends know where that is), "I may be fat, but you are ugly and at least I can lose weight".  So, I need to see myself as beautiful, just a little on the big side.  And remember that I have built a lot of muscle along they way, as Aiden tells me.  It is the good kind of fat.  He says that when he pokes me in the belly and it isn't too squishy.

This is too much info, I know, but what the hell.  I often give too much.  And how can I remember any of it if I don't put it out there??  But listen....I am a warrior.  I have lived through date rape, rape, rejection, loneliness, verbal abuse, self abuse, abusive co-workers and bosses, and all I want to do STILL is LOVE and be loved...to forgive.  To give and receive...those are the only things that matter.  I believe that.  I always did.  And have always fought to keep on believing that.  When I told my first "love" how I felt and he said "thank you", and when every guy seemed to love my best friend and only want to sleep with me, even though she cheated on every single guy she ever dated, I fought to maintain my connection to love.  That is all that matters.  I am a teacher because I adore kids.  There are not bad kids, just bad choices.  We all make them.  Kids need our guidance to learn better.  Really, adults do, too... I think my biggest sins have really been against myself...hating myself, hurting myself.  And I don't want to continue that...I choose love.  Still.