Living a Dream

Alone in a Crowd

Dear Mike,

38 years ago we were living a dream

now you’ve been gone for 23

tears still form when I play your songs

now I’m old and still alone

sometimes I feel life has passed me by

but I’ve lived long enough to know

I’m not missing anything…

except you

remember the time you wanted to leave everything behind?

I made you promise to take me with you

many nights I wish you could have

but that was not your call

I haven’t done much since you left me behind

18 years in the health and fitness industry

and I’m so sick, I’m bad for business

remember how no one knew what was wrong?

well, I have a long list of diagnoses now

seizures, autism, Lupus, PTSD with flashbacks, 

migraines, vertigo, and severe anxiety disorder

only half are true, but I don’t know which half

on a brighter side, my faith finally feels real

yes, I knew it was real when you were alive

yet I never felt like I belonged

things got awfully dark before I could see

you’ll feel it too when you come back

although I might seem a little different

I’ve lived 14 years longer than you so far

but we’ll be living a better dream then

I live in an RV now, which you’d enjoy

although, you’d make the bed bigger

ok, and the bathtub too

remember that night we froze in our tent?

we could be warm cozy glampers instead

traveling wherever, planting gardens along the way

we’ll stay a few years in each place

making friends everywhere we go

that’s what I’ve been doing since you’ve been gone

no real place to call home

even our house felt estranged

a place for roommates to land

the RV makes moving so much easier

I can take my home with me

6 years with a PO Box address

is as close to home as it gets

the latest PO Box is shared with some wonderful friends

I can’t wait for them to meet you!

this dream feels so real now

I just want to share it with you

Love always,

your Happy Camper wife

 

Doodle Therapy

These are some of my doodles using the Automatic Drawing Technique that I mentioned in the previous post, where I try to draw without thinking about what to draw, and let my subconscious take over. I usually spend about 20 or 30 minutes on them, and then try to decipher any subconscious meaning they might have. The deciphering happens this way - When I open my writing journal and then look back at the drawing, I write down the first 2 words or phrases that come to mind. Then, I just start writing about my day. Generally the meaning starts to come to me, but then I'll either look up the 2 words in the thesaurus or some of the images in a dream dictionary, or both.

Processing Death - colored pencil

Regeneration - colored pencil

Alienation - ball point pen

This last one, I spent several hours on, because I had found that place again, that I knew as a child, where the hours would just slip away in peacefulness. It's been years since I've felt that way while drawing, and it felt good. When it was done, I remember thinking, "wow, I had forgotten how much fun this was."

I was talking with a friend about it the next day, and we came to the conclusion that as self employed business owners, we had gotten in the habit of planning everything, including our art. It's been about 5 years since I first started trying intuitive art methods with finger painting, and I'm just now starting to break that habit of planning everything in advance. It amazes me that what I took for granted as a child, has been such a struggle to get back.

Winter Colors

Remembering when this time of year wasn't so depressing. I don't care for the poem much, but again, kind of like the picture. The poem was written for Legacy Writers of Harmony Pub picture challenge.



Twenty one years ago a church bell rang
Tolling pale azure and white
Against an iridescent midnight
Refrains of devotion, candlelight sang

Olden ritual with white rose petals misted
New birds chirp warmth into the frozen
Borrowed from time, sterling vows are spoken
Blue, truer than all ancient affections listed

For fifteen years the colors tolled
Now silent, their hues have faded
In shadows of grey, winter is shaded
Rose petals withered by the colorless cold

The Season's Solace

Dear Mike,

Annually, I make my trek to memorialize the day I brought you home to a rocky land of cactus and Mesquite thorn. Ceremoniously, I cling to you through your family in a silence that is interrupted intermittently by the call of a wild turkey. We gather on this harsh prickly land, and I brace myself for the season’s chill. Your family comforts me, though, within this Hill Country’s beauty that you knew so intimately.

Burnt sienna and burnt umber whisper with a frigid November breath. There, vermillion dotting rolling hills against an azure sky, hushed briars nestle in for winter. A sunset highlights the spiny edges of a Prickly Pear and the golden seed heads of wild grasses. Muted beauty that you are continuously revealing to me still.

I never cared much for Fall. I never wanted Summer to end. You and I together finding so many sun bright things to do. Since your death that blindingly blank summer day, I long for Fall’s consoling blanket of solitude. I long to escape failed expectations of summer togetherness, like the way a fallen leaf is alee the cold Autumn wind. Now the quiescent place you call home mirrors my parched brittle soul that is beginning to adorn new colors of beauty you’ve yet to see.

Fitting it was then, that it was Fall when I carried you home. We spread your ashes among rock and bone under changing trees. We held each other to say good bye and remember you, but that reclusive fire that took you, laid hold of me. It’s been changing my hues to burnt earthen pigments. A newfound beauty decries the emptiness that the fire refines. Fire and ashes in my veins, but my bones are growing cold. Autumn’s beauty carries me beyond the soundless deer seeking shelter, beyond your ashes undisturbed.

Mike's Song

Illustration Friday: Captain / Emergency

We're wading through haunted waters after losing our captain in our own personal 9/11.

6/30/01

Syringe caps litter my bedroom floor
Like ammunition shells on a barren battlefield.
Smoke rises from the ashes in my heart forevermore,
And the emptiness that's left behind won't be healed.

The quiet morning is so much louder than the night before.
Battle cries that sounded so distant and unreal
Are now echoing screams through a sunlit door,
And the settling dust and nightmares are unrelentingly real.

Your last breath hovers
On my lips lost forever
In the torment of a terrorist strike.
Blowing desperate pleas
Into lungs that gurgle and wheeze,
And still your losing the fight.

The vision of finding you on the floor
Frozen stiff in pain and fear haunts me.
All your spirit and strength is reduced to this horror,
And my helplessness appalls and taunts me.

Pounding on a gentle heart that used to care,
The whites of your eyes are turning gray.
You heave with all that your might can bear,
And strain to keep your life from fading away.

I love you,
I miss you,
I can't stand seeing you in pain.
I wish I treated
You better, I wish
I could've stopped the pain.

Illustration Friday: Missing 2

Studio Lolo's post a few weeks back reminded me of Max. Max was a huge 110 pound loyal Lab whose love for my husband, Mike, was so great that he knew the sound of Mike's truck from several blocks away. He waited each evening to hear that sound of Mike's return from work. The rest of the time they were inseparable.

Max's sole purpose in life was to retrieve anything that was thrown from Mike's hand. As soon as he heard Mike's truck, he would fetch his tennis ball and wait at the door. When Mike pulled in the driveway, he would bark with tennis ball in mouth a loud ear piercing bark. Nothing about Max was small. Not his bark, nor his appetite, nor his smells and messes, nor his desire to please Mike.

Once, Mike made the mistake of taking Max fishing. Before Mike's cast line could hit the water, Max did with an enthusiastic splash. Max swam straight for the little orange bobber with his usual skill, while Mike nervously reeled his line in as fast as he could, yelling, "no Max, no!" It was a race to see who would get the bobber first. Thankfully, Mike won. Barely. After which, Max was promptly tied to a tree. Poor tree! Max would charge full force toward the water then bark helplessly every time Mike cast his line. No fish were caught that day because I'm sure the echos of his cries across the water scared them all away. Max just didn't understand this "new game".

Another thing I don't think Max understood was Mike's death. He still waited every evening for the sound of Mike's truck. When Mike hadn't returned be night fall, Max would howl a slow, sad, mournful howl up into the sky. During the day, he took to head-butting fence boards to make his escape from the backyard. Something he hadn't done since he was a pup. Then he would search the neighborhood for his Mike until evening when he would wander back home and hope for his return.

I tried to console Max by spending more time with him. After all, it was just the two of us now. I could tell, though, I just wouldn't be able to take Mike's place. Any time a man would come over, be it my brother, a friend, a date, or just the repairman, Max would bring him his tennis ball wanting to play. I would try to throw his ball for him, but I couldn't throw as far as Mike, and he seemed to get bored with it after a while. I would try to take him for a walk, but unfortunately I'm not as big as Mike was, so I was usually dragged down the street much to the amusement of my neighbors. As Max got older, though, I would just lay with him in the grass of my front yard and watch the clouds. He would lay his head on me and seemed very content. He didn't have the energy of his youth anymore, and this is probably when we bonded the most.

Max was 11 years old when Mike died. I knew he probably wouldn't live much longer, and we had several scares, but each time I was able to nurse him back to health. Then one day when he was 15, I knew it was his time. I had tried to prepare myself for this day, but that was impossible. I cried, "oh Max." He tried to lift his head and wag his tail, but he couldn't. I held his head in my lap and petted him while I cried. Friends helped me get him to the vet where they put him to sleep. Again, I held his head in my lap and cried while they gave him the injection. He looked up at me. I covered his eyes with my hands and said, "it's ok Max, everything's going to be ok." Then he closed his eyes and took his last breath.

It suddenly occurred to me that he had been hanging on for me. All those afternoons laying in the grass when I thought I was consoling him, he was consoling me. I miss him.

Photo Friday: Barren

"There's an empty space where you used to be..."
Listening to "Still Got The Blues" by Gary Moore.