Caught in a Grieving Eddy

I am full of nervous twitching!!

I sit in one of only two chairs where my feet can actually rest on the floor naturally. This is how my mind feels. Unable to place myself somewhere. Somewhere where I fit. I feel cold yet I could get dressed in warm clothing and out of my night ware or drape a blanket over my lap.  Instead I sit by the sliding door in my wicker chair with my elbows firmly wedged. Outside is the cold and white snow. The sun is cold as well. Showing no visible effort to push the grey clouds that surround it. That is how I feel today.

I am not a wind with energy. I am not the sun with warmth. I am barely visible to myself. I feel comfortable here. 

Is it Sadness?

Is it Laziness?

Is it Emptiness?

Is it the pull of what was?

The Undercurrent?

Undertow?

Am I caught in a Grieving Eddy?

Sometimes I can barely breath. Is this self pity that I feel? B would not approve. He would not be feeling this right now. He would be getting on with his life, like a friend of mine has. This makes me happy for him but also I wonder how it can be possible. They all say that men get on with it very quickly. Does this mean that they do not feel as intensely as we do? Do we hold on to our love to show its volume? I don’t know. They will argue that the love they fell is just as powerful and deep but how can it be when they move on so effortlessly. At lest it looks that way.

Loving hard is what I do. I don’t fall in love easily. At first my reflex was to seek desperately for someone to look after me. This dissipated as I felt sick when I found myself doing it. What a way to sabotage the self! 

Truthfully I never want to love with that intensity again. I don’t have another in me. 

swirling snow eases my mind

Today I sit in the back room of the house. Pyjama top still on. Facial mask on my face. The sun shines off and on as the clouds travel east. Mom always wanted to me shovel the back porch but now I don’t. I like the simple lines that the snow drifts create.

I feel as if I am sitting on a bus by the window with no one else on it not even a driver, yet the bus is traveling. I look out onto the houses and open yards and street lights, store fronts. There are no people. My mind wonders and I look up to the advertisements. My thinking is all over the place. The sun is again shadowed and I can feel the coolness of the air on my arms.

I have somehow managed to fill this house with ‘stuff’. All kinds of things that have no organized method. This house is me! This house represents my mind. The sun and furnace both kick in and one arms feels warmth while the second that is shadowed feels cool.

In front of me is a mission copy of a side table that I pulled from my bedside. on it is a hand mad sweater for a baby from Ireland. It represents one of the visits i backed out on this christmas season. Next to it is a miniature chest of drawers with a primary white coat of paint on it. It was to go with one of my sculptures. Yes, the show that has been cancelled. Cancelled may be the wrong word for he says it never was pencilled in.

The sun is so bright my eyes reflectively close and a wonderful bright orange/red/yellow veil fills them. Then again its gone.

I had a dream that  there were four beautiful young men for me to chose to marry. I picked the most beautiful and the wealthiest. Then everyone set up the wedding rooms with candles on some tables and lamps on others. Everyone seemed happy, even the ones I did not pick. We all    enjoyed the party then I woke. What a strange dream.

My mask should be ready to wash off now. I will put makeup on to attempt to look ok for I am hopefully getting my passport photo done today.

How Does One Spring Clean The Brain

How Does One Spring Clean The Brain.

How Does One Spring Clean The Brain

Yesterday my show got cancelled, well maybe cancelled is the wrong word. What he remembers is it was never fixed in place. Talk about  throwing a steel rod in your wheel!

This is causing me to question everything! I have started cleaning which is commonly my stressed out reaction. Then I started to sew up a new duvet cover!!!. I stopped myself from that luckily. I am feeling FAT and really I would much prefer sitting,  having a scotch with my husband. BUT HE’S DEAD!

For over thirty years I have had a GO TO PERSON. Now that person is gone. Sure many will tell me that I have many ‘go to persons’ but they don’t understand. They may understand always having someone to be with there and with, but you really don’t understand the emptiness and black hole that is always next to you. When your spouse dies, your world gets thrown off keel! Gravity changes. Everything seems to fly around you like being caught in the tail of a tornado. The only place I seem to be save is under two duvets in the secure place of my bed. A bed that is always half full of pillows that take up that space next to me. When I roll over I can feel  the fullness of it and for a millisecond, I pretend he is still there lying next to me.

I have all these paintings that express some bits of how I have felt these past four years. I also have boxes of bronzes waiting to be finished and bases. What do I do With all OF this NOW?

My confidence has been shattered. How will I build it back up?

 

Manic Highs

Oh dear, yesterday I had another of those manic highs! While your in them you feel fantastic.

You think clearly, at least you think you do.

Your mind races, ideas flow without effort.

You connect with friends.

You speak of the future with such incredible conviction. All of this is gone the next day, today. I think I like the lows better.  They only effect me. When these highs come there seems to be no controlling them. It’s not like going down a snow hill uncontrollably its more like being attached to a helium ballon and enjoying the thin air. Not having any concerns to the increasing space between me and the ground below. Believing that all will be well and when and if I let go of the string I will only bounce like a beach ball till I stop.

I really should know better. If only we were given a warning like ears ringing before it happens.  I think one of the  attractions to this is that we immediately want to contact friends. Like this is the opportunity to show them that we are fine. Perhaps that is one of the reasons for the highs? To periodically let them know we are ok so we will be left to grieve. They accept them willingly. They breath a sigh of relief. They can then continue on thinking all is well for another month.  Oh dear,,,, another month.

We Have All Had Days

 

 

The nature station on t.v. helps put me in a rainy day mood. This is a good thing. Although the distant sounds of parrots is foreign to me.  I have just put my friends wig on for my head and mind feels cold. I now understand the importance of artist residencies. A place to go and be alone to work. I have been so fortunate to have mom’s house to be in for this time. Spring is coming though and my siblings want their money, rightly so. I look at it an another chapter, another page to draw on another sculpture to create. This wig is making me seem better then I was

My friends husband passed away last week.  She was a fellow confidant, another wife that was in the same ship. I am 15 months in my journey, she is just starting. Oh dear I would not want to be just starting again.

My bed has become my closest friend, my lover my security, protector. Everything around me seems to be feather orianted. feathers under me in bed and over me. Feathers in my paintings. Feathers in jars as bouquets. Perhaps its my need of flight?

As I write I remember the things that helped me in the first month. A basket of  chocolate, oranges, crackers, fancy jelly, teas. As I would pull myself out of bed I would eventually just allow my fingers to creep their way in the basket, landing on anything that caught my eye. This is how I ate for the first while. I think that this is what I will do for my friend. give her something to assist her in this time.

 

.

There are so many days that I wonder how much longer this will last. I have been having a difficult time doing anything except paint canvas not walls! and sit and watch movies over and over.

My sisters have really tried to give me time to get over what they think they know of as grieving. Not one has had to experience the loss of a husband. Two have lost children and I can’t even imagine how hard that was and probably still is.

Today one sister needed to vent about another and somewhere in there I was able to intercept with my view. Mostly because all their problems stem from me taking so long to get over grieving. 

I know that non of this will make any sence. I have not got the energy to put it all down. Suffice to say she repeated back to me

” i don’t know how you feel” 

I can only try and tell you how I FELT when she said this.

HOLY SHIT! SHE HEARD ME!

you see I have three sisters waiting for their inheritance that I am living in, mama’s house.  If and if I was of solid and balanced mind I would be out of here! You can believe it. But the truth is that I am mentally ill. I am grieving the death of my soulmate and husband. I am finding that so very hard to get past to get over to concur.

Grieving is not the same for everyone. My friend is doing so much better them me. A widower a month less then I he is doing much better then Me. Mind you I was with B for 32 years every day 24/7 [minus three weeks] He was with his mate I think 7 years, maybe more. That does not mean he felt less love then I I just mean more years.

In a  world that cares:

 I would live by the ocean in a gingerbread house with a studio. I would have enough money to live simply but always be able to buy art supplies. That is all I want in life/

Duties of a Sculptor’s Widow

When you hold copyright, it does not only mean you can complete editions etc. It also means that its your responsibility to honour the intensions and wishes of the deceased artist.

Last year, four months after B passed away I felt that I had been thrown to the wolves. Word had it that  one of his monuments would be moved to make room for another. Well you can imagine! Barely able to get up in the mornings I somehow had to organize my thoughts properly to make sense my feelings to reporters. This  was my first encounter and I ended up coming across as a wounded, disoriented widow. Which I was.

Words were said. The public got involved to support me mostly then things rested till this christmas. A call from a reporter informed me of a copyright infringement. There was feelings of “OH DAM NOT AGAIN!” then calm with the great advice of a family member. I had decided that I would look and decide myself to see if in fact I felt there was an infringement. 

It was horrid! A plastic tube of coloured flashing lights wrapped around the neck of the sculpture! To make a long emotional story short, I ended up calling in reinforcements from CARFAC’s lawyer and things were removed and resolved.

This brings us up to date. Yesterday I had my first meeting to look at new sites for the sculpture. Five were shown and one was and is so perfect I am fearful to mention it till its a done deal.

The thing is would they have had this fantastic location if I had not shown my strength and defiance last year? I think not.

But I takes so much energy to be strong in face of others even for three hours. Last night I bought myself a bottle of red wine and by 8pm it was done. 

My friends have been wonderful with me but I do feel in myself that I can’t open to them much more because it has been 15 months and I feel that I should be over all of this. I don’t want to ware them out. They say don’t be silly but you can tell when no one wants to hear anymore from the grieving widow.

In so many ways I am finding this second year harder then the first. I’m fortunate to have my artistic talent so I can vent.  I would like to curl up in my chair and put a pillow over my head and sleep till its all been processed. But I know that when I woke I would have to continue and go through it. 

Its exhausting.

 

I Dream of a Place Where we could all go to mourn.

Had my regular dreams of horrors of long term care. People being made to wait on toilets.

Having to over hear the care workers, [take that word ‘care’ lightly] tell dear old people that their time to go to the washroom was over and if they had to go that they should go in their diapers!

YES MY FRIENDS! this happens and we can all say, ‘That’s Terrible but really you don’t fully understand the HORROR till you have heard it time and time again. At times I would intervene challenging the care worker with bodily harm, but as time went I too begin to choose a handful that I could I could let in my heart besides B. I am often haunted that I have only been back twice. Not being a relative restricts my powers greatly.

Having completed two more paintings I had decided that with a freezing rain weekend upon me I would treat myself with a bottle of wine and admire my own work. Well by the end of the night the bottle was empty and my night’s sleep ruined. The waking at 2am destroyed any plans for a productive saturday.

I get so annoyed with myself. I dine alone. Sleep alone. Live alone. Alone alone alone. When do we adjust to this? I am torn. I like and want to be alone but I don’t think its good for me.

I am following my gut and grieving fully, completely. Every book says you have to go through it! You have to let it take its course. I wish we had places to grieve. A town would be good, somewhere by the ocean. All of us could ware a sari or afghan of the colour we feel that day.

Black for the darkest of days and not to be approached.

Blue for days requiring hugs.

Violet could be for days of wanting to speak and days open for therapy circles.

Saffron for days healthy enough to go for walk or day trips.

Red now this would be the colour of warnings waring red would signify alert and should be monitored.

Pink could be days of discovery. days to create.

White… The pureness of this would be days of meditation, thought, processing, resting, writing. 

Melon green, the colour to refresh, salt baths, massages, reflexology, touching.

Now there should also be beautiful long silk scarfs of separate .colours that we could add to our robes to signify touches of different transitional moods.

Pale Grey, now this colour would signify wanting to help others. Waring this colour would open us to assisting in what ever way we could. The would be the colour of giving back or paying forward.

AH would life not be wonderful.

  

My dream ended with live white horses on display in a gallery how odd is that.