Donna and Jim

Donna and Jim

Monday, August 11, 2014

Learning to sleep

I went three weeks before I even considered getting in our bed. I turned it into a filing cabinet, with stacks of sorted mail,bills, and papers to be looked at, put away, or contacted. I felt revulsion at the thought of climbing in between the sheets without you on the other side.

Finally, in desperation of sleep, I decided to try. The first night was awful. I woke up every thirty minutes or so, in a cold sweat, panicked, searching for you with my hand in the darkness. It met nothing but empty coldness where you should be laying. My heart shriveled up even more than the black, twisted thing it had already become. But I stuck it out.

The next night, I went back, armed with the clothes you had on when they took you to the hospital, which have become my security blanket. I carried them around with me everywhere for the first few weeks, only resorting to keeping them in the bedroom, on your pillow, when a friends little one drug them out of my chair onto the floor. He didn't know any better but I don't want people touching them. They still carry your scent.

Now, a week later. I have a routine worked out and some comfort in the ritual. I framed and hung a collage of pictures of you above the headboard. I turn your pillow sideways so that I can feel something of you up against my back. I put the picture of you that looks like your looking straight at me beside the bed. and I cling to those clothes. And eventually, I sleep.

So I guess I'm learning to sleep without you. But its not a lesson I ever wanted to learn.

Sunday, August 10, 2014

Sundays are the hardest...

On Sundays, we always lazed around in our pjs and watched movies. I'd pile up in Jim's lap and we'd laugh and talk or sometimes just sit in silence and snuggle. This is my fifth Sunday without him and it gets harder with each one that passes. There seems to be no relief from the pain. I want to scream. I want to die. I want to feel something besides hurt. It seems like it will never ever end. I was reading another blog written by a lady who lost her husband fifteen years ago. I shudder to imagine fifteen years without Jim. I don't want to. People say that will change. I don't know that I believe that. I want to live a little longer. I want to see our boys out on their own and doing well in life. Then I want to quietly go to where he is, waiting for me. I see nothing else to look forward to.

I wallow in self pity and pain in the evenings, during the times when it would have been just us, at home, boys in their rooms doing teenage things, and the business of the day has ended. Multiply that by ten and it's what Sundays feel like. I should try to distract myself, I guess, but it's hard to do. I can't focus or concentrate on anything for more than five minutes or so. Then my mind just wanders back to Jim. Then I remember, he's left me here all alone. And I want to die all over again.

I carry your heart

The title of this blog is from a poem by ee cummings.

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)

i fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want...
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)~ee cummings