Restless Sleep

My nights have been restless these days and my spirit quiet and withdrawn.

This week I will let Gary’s ashes go on Vancouver Island.

It has been three years now and although I know it is time, I still feel this grand reluctance to hold onto that last remaining physical part of Gary that I have. Sunday, I broke the seal to the box that holds the bag of ashes sitting within. I took it out and it was heavy and filled with this charcoal grey gritty substance. The thought of his remains sitting in this bag seemed so incredibly sad to me. I went to my room and lay on my bed. I placed the bag on top of my chest and I instantly remembered the feel of his weight on my body when we use to make love and I began to sob.

They were different tears than those I shed in the year of his death. Those tears were the tears of a shattered heart, one that I felt would never recover. They were tears of pain and sorrow and disbelief. No, these tears I shed Sunday were more in memory of what we had, what we shared and what we were together. They were tears of sadness for the life I once had and now must close the door to. They were good-bye tears in the knowing that I must move on.

I have been in limbo state for quite sometime now. I have been learning lots about myself. I am confronting age and loneliness and fears that kept me in a place that I was always running from yet too fearful and comfortable to leave.

I am at a phase in my life now where it truly feels like I am free falling. Where once I might have wanted to control my direction, I don’t seem to feel the need to navigate my life course any more, nor do I care where I will land. I just know that wherever that is, I will survive and thrive.

It is time to close that chapter in my book and start composing the next chapter. Only this time I surrender the pen to my higher power and have faith that the latter half of my story will be written by a more confident, fearless and wiser woman.

I don’t care much anymore about a lot of things and I don’t mean that in a negative sense. It’s just all the things that seemed so important to me at one time, just don’t seem that important. I just don’t see the point to so many things that our culture has deem so important and I’m not afraid to admit it any more. I’m not afraid of much these days to be perfectly honest. Oh I have my moments when I let my fear catch hold, but I recognize it and call myself on it and correct it. But when all the insanity doesn’t matter any more, it brings clarity to the things that really do matter and once you know what really matters, you become fearless and calm. Like a warrior just before a battle.

I am restless. Restless in the knowing that my life is changing, my mindset, my focus, my direction, and it all seems so foreign to me, but it does not scare me. I am just impatient, eager to move forward, NOW! There is a great line in the movie Under The Tuscan Sun... "Let the ladybug come to you." And so I will follow my heart and be excited at the prospects it will bring.

Gary use to say to me "San, it's all a joke. We take things so seriously when really, it's all a joke." In other words, find joy and laughter in all that is life rather than making it a drama. The night after he died I dreamt he was at a telephone booth talking to me and I was begging him to come home and all he kept saying was..."It's true! It really WAS all just a joke San."

I have loved someone like we all desire to love someone and they have loved me back. I hold that close to my heart and allow it to comfort me and give me courage to live the rest of my life fearlessly and lovingly.

So long my dearest and most loving of friends... my soul companion... I love you.