About me...

Because this journey is intensely personal, there will be times when my posts will be about more than just rebuilding the physical aspects of my life. They may be random and sometimes I think they may not even make sense to some. But whatever I post here will be as honest as I can make it, no punches pulled, telling it like it it. I hope that I can share some insight with others who might be going through a similar transitory period in their own lives. With luck and perseverence I know I will eventually successful in my new life. I have very high hopes for all of this but then I had those when Dave was alive, too. I am naturally a pretty optomistic person, I think.

In that last post, I mentioned that I lived on top of a mountain in a tent for almost a year. That is totally true and a great story.

Sorry about yesterday's rant. Today is a better day.

I was tottering on the rim of  Despair Canyon yesterday but I am back on solid ground today. Have recovered most of my balance overnight.  After the last couple of months, I was actually starting to feel pretty okay with my situation. I had just gotten settled into what I thought was going to be a comfortable, semi-permanent space while my new diggs are being rehabbed but then found out that I had to move yet again and I had 12 hours to do so. Had to pack up everything I had moved in and store it yet again.  Now I am living out of my backpack....oh well, I lived in a tent on top of a mountain for almost a year, I guess I will survive this, too.  I will survive this, I will survive this, I will survive this......
I think that this blog may be becoming passe.  There is no more organic farm for me to expound on and talk about how wonderful my life is.  My mother-in-law saw to that almost immediately after Dave died. I can't believe that the very people who were supposed to be my family could turn on me like that at a point where I was dealing with the most devastating blow of my life. Over 4 months later and the hurt from that is almost unbearable and I fluctuate between anger and misery at being treated so shabbily.

So, now I am living in as a virtual homeless person. Oh, I do have a roof over my head and people all around who love and support me but I have no place to call my own, not really.  And that is very depressing for someone who is and has always been, fiercely independent. Having to depend on others for everything is depressing and embarrassing but I simply have no choice. But I am so very lucky that I did have someone to turn to in my time of need that all I can feel for that is gratitude and love.  That does balance the negative energy from the other situation, but it is exhausting to be on such an emotional roller coaster. Until I can get myself together, nothing will change and so I am trying to hang on best I can.

The love of my life is no longer beside me and I am so lonely for him that some days I can hardly function.  I run on the adrenaline of the near panic that I feel at being in this situation. Everything I own jammed into a storage unit where I can find nothing.  I packed up our entire life in a haze of numbing grief and tears and now I can't recall  if I even managed to pack some things. (Many widows I have talked to have taken literally years to be able to part with things that belonged to their spouses yet I was forced into doing just that literally within the first weeks after Dave's death. I wasn't allowed the privilege of having even time to process my loss emotionally and that has taken a dire toll on my psyche.)

I know that I have to do something but the grief that I still feel at the passing of my best friend/husband is paralyzing me into non-action and I don't know what to do about it.  I spend all my waking hours trying to fill the void that his death left me with while I try to figure out what the next step I should take will be.  Some days I am jazzed about new directions I think I might take and other days getting out of bed is like dragging a 2-ton weight out with me.

Don't misunderstand this post today.  I am just venting some feelings, I guess.  I still feel hopeful for the future and I know that I will survive this.  I have had other tragedies in my life and I survived them. What doesn't kill you really does make you stronger sometimes, even though it really doesn't feel that way right now.  I have to get  back to the business of living...really living...or I am tossing away everything that Dave and I so firmly believed in. He left me with some powerful lessons about life and I just need to get to a point where I can act on those lessons again.  He wouldn't want to see me this way and I know that I have to live the best life I possibly can.  That is all he ever wanted for me and helped me to do that for 16 years.  I owe it to him and I owe it to myself.
Think that the heat might finally let up a bit this week and I will be able to finally get some of these plants in the ground.  I have 50-60 heirloom tomato plants growing in pots and to tell you the truth, they look better than most of the tomatoes I have planted in the ground in the past.  Probably because I have focused so much attention on them. I do have to tell you their story and why I lavished all my ministrations on them.

When I moved here to Lincoln County, back the first week of June (that was the final move week), I had several  flats of these heirloom tomato plants that were just about ready to set out for the season.  They were about 8-10 inches tall, robust and healthty.  My friend who was helping me move and I loaded the plants in the back of her truck and covered them with a tarp (it was over the top of netting and about 6-8 inches above the plants. The covering was to keep the wind from whipping the plants too much and damaging them.

Imagine our chagrin when we got to my new location, took off the tarp and were greeted by most of the plants looking like I had sauteed them in olive oil.  It was one of those blistering hot days and the heat under the tarp had literally "cooked" my plants.  It never occurred to either one of us that the heat under that tarp would be at such a level. I would have imagined that the slight breeze that did circulate around them would have kept them cool but no such luck.

Anyway, it was a huge setback but I was determined that they would survive and so I spent the better part of a month, nursing them back from near death.  They are big, healthy and starting to bloom as I am typing this entry.

That is true of people, too, you know. Love and some serious nurturing can make a huge difference in someone's life. That is the beauty of a living, growing thing, that it can be so close to death and then come back to health and vigor with some strong belief and some tender loving care.

I treasure these lessons that I learn from growing things. They are so simple and yet so profound sometimes.

Here they are, back from the brink. To get an idea of their size, they are planted in 3 gallon pots. You can't really tell from this picture (there is something wrong with my digital camera and this is the best and only picture I got) but they are blooming. All that pink you see around them are Crape Myrtle blossoms that are falling on them because I have them setting in the shade under a huge CM in the backyard.  It is so big, you can't even see the canopy in this picture.
Starting this week off with a bang (at least that is my plan).  Since I have been offline for a bit, with the moving and all and so I will try to play catch up on this post. Then we can press forward with the real intention of this blog.

For the last month, I have been in deep transition. I have gone from living and working on a 30 acre organic farm to living with my parents, having the majority of my worldly goods in storage and trying to keep from having as nervous breakdown. On all fronts, I am still here.  Battered, bruised and beaten on some counts but trying so very hard to start the healing process in all of this.

For anyone who hasn't read any of my other posts, blogs, etc. and so does not know what I am talking about, here is a thumbnail sketch. I lost my best friend, husband of 16 years and soulmate to kidney cancer in March of this year. I am 57 years old and he was only 50. Dave was diagnosed with renal cancer in January of 2005, went into remission for the next 3 years. From that crisp autumn day in 2008, when we realized something was not quite right again, our life was changed forever.  Mine will never be the same. But I am determined to make my life a testament to the power of the love and committment that we shared and so I am using this blog as part of my platform.

For anyone who hasn't experienced grief at this level my only advice to you is that if you find yourself in this dark place that you just understand that there is no timetable for how you will feel, no blueprint for what you will feel. There is no right thing to say to me but plenty of wrong things.  Most of the wrong things are said by people who have nothing but kindness and good intentions with their sympathies and advice, but until you walk a mile in my shoes, as they say....

And sometimes, the right thing to say is to say nothing, just to hold out a hand or put an arm around me.  Death is a part of life and so it comes to us all. When it comes, why it comes, how it comes is different for everyone and no one can truly understand another's pain or reaction. That is what makes this kind of thing so hard to deal with, I think.  We can't remove ourselves from the world, when that is exactly what some of us need to do and so we press ahead never fully healing or understanding what we are feeling.  Pretty much what I am saying is that all of this sucks and I am stuck with it. I am trying to deal.

So, now that that is out of the way, let me get on with it.  As stated in the blog, I am chronicling my experience. I have lost everything that I held dearest and so I am basically a blank canvas in the life department right now.  I was a blissfully married woman who got to spend nearly every hour of every day with the most amazing man I have ever had the pleasure and privilege to have known.  Now I am a widow and I am alone. I made my living as an organic grower (for the last 10 years). I lost access to the farm when Dave died (it was the "family" farm...some family) and now have no job, no income, no savings (his medical bills took almost everything we had saved).

Rebuilding my life from scratch at this stage is not going to be easy but I think I am up to the task. If not, then I guess my future involves shopping carts and a "Welcome to Walmart" badge.  That is strong motivation to succeed, trust me.

Finally back on line!!!

It has taken almost a month, but as of today, I am finally back online.  I don't have time to play catch up on the blog right now, but plan on doing all that tonight.  Things are going slowly, mostly because of this extreme heat wave we have been having for the last month.