REVERSE METAMORPHISIS

REVERSE METAMORPHISIS


I was a beautiful butterfly.
You found me when I was a flower dancer basking in the sunshine.
We gracefully soared together towards the open blue sky.

Then the world changed color and the leaves began to fall.
We watched each one float away to finally settle dry.
So soon, the storms of winter came to crash their destruction.

I wandered.
Slowly I stilled becoming a chrysalis that could no longer move.
My wings crumbled.
Wrapped in darkness and quiet, I slept, I cried.
I mourned the days when we were butterflies.


A few butterflies flitted among the spring flowers praising the nectar I no longer tasted.
A ray of summer sunshine would flash its ultraviolet light but I never felt its warmth.
The fall winds tossed me cruelly until winter’s silence again filled me.
I slept, I cried, I mourned the days when I was a butterfly.

No longer cocooned I crept alone outside.
New layers forming as I walked away from the shells discarded.
I searched endlessly to fill the hungry void inside.
I closed my eyes and cried.
I remember the days when we were butterflies.

I turn my head to look up at the sky. I yearn to fly.
I remember the bright clouds and the endless sky.
Yet even now when I cry, I know I am no longer a butterfly.


By Me

6 Years, 9 Months - Wishing

I hear our wedding song and smile. I wish you were here to dance with me in the living room.

5 Years, 9 Months - Why I Blog My Grief

It is nearing the six-year death anniversary. Recently I started a blog as a means to organize my earlier journal entries. For a period, my only question was how to stop the pain. There were times I thought I was crazy and the only proof I had otherwise was a handful of other young widows that felt the same way. I finally reached a point where I worried how long past the traditional mourning deadline the grief would last.

Blogging my journal reminds me of how much I have healed. My continued friendship with widows refreshes my soul, as they are my true confidantes. Grief has been a non-linear journey that no longer overwhelms me yet has become a part of who I am. I hope others find in my blog the reassurances I have received from that diversified group of young widows that met when our grief was visceral.

5 years, 9 Months - Holidays

My mother's birthday, the anniversary of our engagement, Thanksgiving, the anniversary of my mother's death, Christmas, my birthday, New Year's Eve... if only my husband's birthday, the anniversary of his death, our wedding anniversary and Valentine's day could be squeezed into the same two months. Then all the bad days would be done with for the year. There are too many, too close together, as I fall with Autumn to the darkness of winter.

5 Years, 8 Months - A Glimpse of Grief

I was starting to do okay. The fall was a bit rough. I stopped cleaning my house and gained a lot of weight but I was not too blue. I started feeling rather cheerful this last week. Today, on the way to the post office, I had the radio on in the car. A man jumped from the bridge. Automatically I prayed for his soul, for his family, for the rescue workers as the sisters instilled in me. Then my next automatic thought was, “I understand”. On the way back home a sense of panic started to constrict my throat. I had a flash of my honey sick. I was panicked, saddened, and grieved. My heart was gaining weight and crushing in on my lungs. I had just a glimpse of that old feeling of grief. I experienced ten minutes of the old grief. I tasted the grief that is a full body experience and not just sadness or depression. How did I carry that feeling unending?
I went to a drive-thru for a hot fudge sundae. I did not even think of how he would take me if I had a bad day at work. Nor did I think of how we would go get sundaes on evenings of laughter. I have stopped associating this tradition with him. It is just I, getting a calorie-laden snack to pacify my mood. I think it will help bring me back down. Not up, as in uplifted, but back down from the edge of the precipice. Quickly I walk to the house. If I can write then I can breathe. I will not jump. However, a part of me envies that man today and feels sadness for the people that love him.

2 Years, 1 Month - Hope

I am deep in depression on days and yet other times I feel on the verge, the brink. I am leaning forward, knees straight, body stiff, leaning and peering over the edge of an abyss and I am a bit excited.
Am I healing? Am I feeling hope? Is this what hope feels like raw? When you have not felt hope in so long, it is new again, unknown. Have I become a virgin to hope too?

3 Years, 2 Months - Black Arm Bands, Reclusive

Society should also implement the use of black arm bands again. I stood in the locker room stepping into a Speedo, pulling it over my old body. I looked at the young girls bodies, laughing. I did not look in lust or even admiration of youth and health. I looked in yearning. I wanted to scream. I was screaming inside. Can you not see me? Can you not see how much pain I am suffering? My husband died! My husband died! Can you not hear me screaming? I looked a little to long and had to turn away. They might wonder why I was staring. All the answers in their heads would never be the right one. I was not jealous of their bodies, or their youth, or friendships. It was not bisexuality that I did not recognize. I was not a dirty old lady or even rude. I was staring blankly screaming in my head. If I could only have slide the black arm band on after my swimsuit. Then they would know. They would quietly turn away and possibly stop laughing, leaving me in my grief alone. Nevertheless, they would know. It would not hurt so bad maybe if people knew. If the lady at the cash register gave me just a little extra patience because of the arm band. If people were a little quieter around me, a little more gracious, then it would not be so hard to go outside.

3 Years, 2 Months - Covering Mirrors

I now know why people used to cover the mirrors after someone died. I used to think it was to put aside vanity and focus on mourning. I think that is what the nuns told me when I asked. No, that is not the reason. It is because you cannot look in the mirror. You can lift your head. However, you are unable look forward with your eyes. If you accidentally catch yourself in the mirror the pain is overwhelming. That is you and you quickly look away. It does not trouble you that your roots are grey, your hair disheveled, your face without make-up your clothes slept in. That is not why you turn away from you. It is not the pain or sadness in your eyes. You just can not see yourself. You can not look. It is not that the look of sadness or the tear swollen eyes remind you of the pain. The pain actually bounces off your eyes' reflection and hits with force in the chest. You carry the pain everyday. Yet if you inadvertently see yourself in the mirror, unfortunately see your eyes, the pain not only resides in you but comes from without and rushes from the mirror to physically push you. I do not know how long it lasted. I avoided looking in the mirror for a long time. Then I would look but never at my eyes. I learned to put on make-up with minimal use of a mirror and never looking directly at it. Society should cover mirrors again.

5 Years, 8 Months - Smiling

It is just the money. I had a great day in sales yesterday and today I am in such a good mood. Even listening to the grief ‘blog’ music makes me want to dance not cry. I can barely stay in my chair and work. I just want to get up and dance. There is a smile on my face.
I listen to our wedding song. He was such a better dancer than me and I am the one that used to make a living dancing. Nevertheless, he was a graceful ballroom dancer. When we took lessons for our wedding the instructor suggested he take the intermediate course. He pointed at me. I was dancing with another partner at the time. He said, 'that is my fiance'. An ‘oh’ was the only response. I can see us dancing the Waltz on our wedding day. He tried to make wider, faster circles and I had to ask him to keep it simple. Otherwise I had to focus on the steps too much. We would dance at random times. Once we started waltzing in a McDonalds, much to his daughters’ horror. Of course we danced in the kitchen, just a few steps, and a few moments of bliss, in an ordinary day together. Hearing other songs reminds me of driving in the black Camaro with the t-tops off, the stereo loud, you driving fast.

Today I am smiling.

2 Years, 2 Weeks - Conditioned Responses

I was watching a movie and I heard the keys jingling together. The force of hitting the key in the lock, turning it to open the door without pause, without slowing down from work, and I thought ‘He's home’. Inside I was happy, hopeful, and ready to stand up and go hug him. Years of training, knowing right when to stand, turn, and walk to the door to meet him. Just as he pulled the key from the lock and stepped inside and before he closed the door. To hug him, kiss him lightly, but not carelessly, or fleetingly, or abruptly, as he reached behind him with his right hand and swung the door closed. I was conditioned. My mind forgot the movie, the day, the year and turned to the ‘greet him home from work status‘. Just as my body set in motion, a slight turn to the right, the momentum to lift and stand, then my mind broke in. It shut down the Pavlov response and shouted, washing through every cell. My mind replaced the weight, the suit of grieving I wore invisibly like a tight wetsuit over my clothes day and night. I remembered.

Then my niece walked in the door.

I could not reply to her hello. I could not even look. The tears just fell in a stream from the outer corners of my eyes. I finally lifted myself, pushing as if a leg press was blocking me, and headed to my room. I needed to run, to hide. I wanted to scream, yet to curl up tightly holding myself hidden in a dark corner. I quickened my step. I reached behind me and closed the bedroom door. I skipped the last two steps and flew forward onto the bed, curling up arms full of pillows, putting my face deep within them. I let myself cry. Yet, it was only for about a minute because I have already grieved losing him. It was just the shock. It has been so long since I expected him to come home, since I have expected him at all. So long, since he snuck up and surprised me in the laundry room. So long, since he was there to tell me it is time to go to bed, to hold me before I go to sleep, to kiss me on the forehead as I sleep and he leaves for work. So long, since I expected him to cook me dinner, drive me, to provide the mortgage, or to comfort me when my family hurts me or saddens me. It has been so long since I expected that rush of hope to be satisfied.

2 years, 16 days, 12 hours

2 Years, 6 Months - Grief Writing

I thought I could write but I only feel the grief of my words.

4 Years, 9 Months - Your Death

It is the fourth season of Christmas since the last time I watched his chest lower, heard the last beep of the heart monitor, felt his energy crash into my chest, filing the space between my back and front ribs and once fully contained rushing with force up my spinal cord and shooting out the top of my head.
I knew without looking at the monitor, I had kept reminding myself not to watch just be with him, that the line was flat. He was gone now. I knew with finality. Then I looked and watched the flat line move across the black screen eating the mountains. The line moved fast erasing all that was left of his life. When the line devoured the hills and the mountains and conquered the screen, I looked away. I saw his older brother holding his left hand. The world was still. I heard his mother say we should get him ready. I replaced the head that had been my husbands away from my bosom back onto the hospital pillow and turned to look at his mother who held his right hand in both of hers. She told me to close his eyes. I knew how to do it from training by books and movies. I ran my fingers over his eyes bringing the eyelids to rest before brushing my palm against his cheek stubble. Why had I not shaved him when he asked? He never let me shave him even when I had asked in the shower. Because after that moment was gone, he no longer wanted to be groomed. I took the wet towels away. We had used towels to prop his head straight on the pillow when he no longer had the strength to keep it from falling forward. He would make the sign for rain to tell me to pour a pitcher of ice water on his head. We had not been able to replace the towels after the last rain. I tried to close his mouth but it would not close. It was set open in a gruesome tilted manner. I was sorry that his daughters would have to see it this way.

1 Year, 9 Months - Suicide

I try to think of reasons not to kill myself again.
I picture curling up in child’s pose and slicing my wrist, pealing my rib cage open or taking a gun and shooting my chest.
I try to convince myself it is just the financial worries and I have been worse off financially. That it is not the ache I still have for my husband, the constant unsatisfied yearning for him to hold me, to let me feel loved, to know that I will be all right. That it is not my mom dieing. Memories of her naked in pain, saying she was a good person, why was her life so hard. Why is my life so hard? I am good. I try to convince myself it is only money. Just wait. Don’t kill yourself today.

1 Year, 8 Months - Fading Memories

I curl up. I lay in yoga position of sleeping child. I try to remember you.

Remember more than your name, the thought of you, or visiting how I loved you, visiting my ache of missing you. I see only photographs or scenes from the day of those pictures in my mind. I want new memories. I do not want to be limited in my memory of you. I want to see a vision of you including your head, which seems to be fading. I want to remember your smell, your voice, your smile, your eyes, your body, the way you moved, where we were, all at once, without the need to focus and recall. I want memories of the everyday, driving, waking, watching TV, and eating. Oh, and to hear your treacherous snore!


And in the other bed my mom is dieing.

1 Years, 7 Months - Reminders, Memories

I am stripping the bed to wash the mattress cover. I lean over and look between the bed and the wall. Seeing all those mismatched socks brings tears to my eyes and such longing.
Every morning your alarm would go off before the sun rose. Sometimes it was dark and other times of the year the sun would be rising, with the color changing on the horizon, the lighter colors advancing across the deep blue sky. You would turn off the alarm and quietly sneak out of the bed. I would be awake, but not quite, with my eyes closed. I would listen to the familiar sounds, the creak of the bedroom door then the creak of the bathroom door. Silence for a few minutes, sometimes longer, then the shower turning on. I could tell it was the hot water and then a pause, the sound of the water increasing, as he turned on the cold faucet. Hearing the rings, as the shower curtain moved open and closed, I would drift to sleep.
I would awake again as the bedroom door opened. Rob dressed in jeans and a t-shirt for work. If it was cold his uniform would include a button-up cotton shirt over the t-shirt, blue or green, opened and un-tucked, cardigan style. The air would be damp from the steam escaping the bathroom. He would lean over me. I could smell his Contradiction for Men cologne, his Neutrogena T-gel shampoo, the Right Guard Active deodorant, and Orange Listerine. He would smile. His hair a bit damp but always surprisingly dry since it seemed I just closed my eyes and he was in the shower.
He would shake the covers and straighten them, standing at the foot of the bed, flinging the comforters in the air momentarily losing sight of each other. I would complain of the cold, to leave the blankets alone. He would complain I pulled all the covers up around my head and left my legs bare, that is why I was cold. The last comforter would drift down, floating unevenly between us, wafting his fresh shower scents through the air. He would come to the head of the bed and kiss my forehead, one arm extended next to my ear, the fresh Right Guard winning the aroma contest.
He would smile and say ‘I love you‘. I would smile and say, ‘Be Careful’. I used to worry. He was always so tired from working long hours in the heat with the long commutes. I worried because he tended to fall asleep anywhere, even when driving. I would say ‘Rob’ and he would snap awake. ‘I was blinking’. And I would respond, ‘That was a long blink. Let me drive’ and he would. I worried he would fall asleep driving or be electrocuted at work. Men were always getting hurt, going to the hospital, some died. Rob was always going to the emergency room for himself or taking other construction workers. I would say, ‘I love you, be careful.’ As I drifted back to sleep I would be comforted by the sound of the key in the door lock.
I often still wake at 4:30 or 5:00. The time of the alarm and then the good-bye kiss. I still find comfort in the sound of the key turning the front door lock of our house when I am in bed.
Oh yah, why the sadness tonight? When the covers floated above our heads Rob would playfully scorn me. My socks were always under the covers. Cold toes as I went to bed became hot. He always fished the socks out of the tangled covers and put them in the hamper. To find a collection by the side of the bed, well it just emphasized that Rob was not collecting them anymore. They just gathered dust until I collected them while changing the sheets or dusting under the bed. Rob was no longer here.

2 Years, 3 Months - Dove

A dove flew inside my car today. Its wings above, its body forward, hovering for a brief moment like a hummingbird, faced towards me, belly side up. I was startled, then amazed, and unsure of the significance.

2 Years, 3 Months - Love

But I am still in love.

1 Year, 4 Months - Praying to the dead

Honey, can’t you help? Why isn’t it working? I promise I’ll lead a fulfilling life and not just stay inside, predominately in bed. Help me honey.

2 Years, Twenty Days - Songs, Alone

One verse keeps running through my head, "I don't know what to do, cause you know I still love you". I sing it over and over to myself like a jewelry box opening and closing its lid with the lonely dancer spinning in circles. I have done three rewinds before I realize it.
The toilet keeps running. I know it is the flap. Isn't anyone going to fix it? Do I call a plumber? Do I go to Home Depot? Do I tinker with it? When did I become so inept?

1 Year, 6 Months - Do Not Recognize Self

When I see the old lady in the mirror I know it is not definitive. I can see, just under the surface, where I am hiding. Just under the surface but I can not quite reach her. Nevertheless, I tell the eyes that look back at me not to worry, not to give up hope. I am still there. It is not over.