“How do you pick up the threads of an old life?
How do you go on,
when in your heart you begin to understand there is no going back.
There are some things that time can not mend.
Some hurts that go too deep…that have taken hold.”
Frodo Baggins
“The Return of The King”
Modest Mouse
“I know that starting over
is not what life’s all about.
But my thoughts were so loud,
I couldn’t hear my mouth.
My thoughts were so loud,
I couldn’t hear my mouth.
My thoughts were so loud.”
“They say Memorial Day weekend is the weekend for lovers. Lonely widows and widowers crying over the tombs of their dead lovers, mostly, but still, love is in the air.”
Um, say what?
From Widownet:
“My suggestion is to find an outlet for the love you have in your heart. If you don’t, you’ll explode! Love is a good thing, and should be shared. It is meant to be shared.”
I’d like to share.
Julie talks about “What friends are for” and I am forced to think about how important it has been that our friends truely are those friends that you could call in the middle of the night for help. But it also makes me think about how often you can rely on those friends before they get tired of helping. We all have a limited amount of time and energy and at some point I think that you can wear out your friendships. I can’t afford to wear out those friendships because without them I don’t think I could make it from day to day.
I’m trying to see if I can do more by myself this summer and already it is wearing me down. I’m hoping for a second wind once I get used to the shift in my schedule.
Julie also talks about “The sexiest man alive” who is the man who does some house work. I’m constantly doing the dishes, hanging up towels, picking up after the kids, washing the floor to get that sticky goo up. I’ve been known to operate a mean Bernina as I mend clothes, or help my daughter make a new shoulder bag. And I do laundry too! The problem is I don’t have that wife there to think about me that way, and to make me feel that way.
I noticed an interesting post over on Widownet. It has to do with our sense of self and of our self worth. We used to be the number one person in someone’s life, and now we aren’t. So much of what I am was perceived through the lens of how Cindy saw me. I knew I was important, actually the most important to at least that one person. That feeling is gone. That part of me is missing.
Maybe it just takes time to fill that feeling with new people that need me. How can that be when all I feel is my reliance on everyone else? I’ve gone from being the most important person, the person that it so needed, to a person who needs everyone else.
cocokat posts a piece about those that have gone from our lives. It points out one of the things that keeps happening to me, the constant thoughts of those who we loved so much and the equally constant realization that they are never coming back.
The Dead
“They’ll never kiss your forehead at midnight
as the moon chalks its zero across the sky,
or kneel at the side of your bed
and whisper of the afterlife,
their words abundant as stars. “
…
“They’ll never come,
though this won’t keep you from calling their names
when there’s music in the elms
and you’re snapped awake
by the dream that’s trying to kill you.”
–Bob Hicok, The Legend of Light, University of Wisconsin Press 1995.
Here is a little irony. Try searching for Kratochwill on this search site and look at the list of related searches.
There is a daily realization that no matter how hard I try I will never be able to do this all on my own. I can’t get both kids to their schools on my own, I can’t be there to pick them up after school and still work full time. I can’t get them to their skating lessons and their music lessons. There is a constant reminder that there is so much I can’t do on my own.
And there is the constant reminder of why I’m in this position. I’ve said it before, the thing that hurts more than anything else is the thought of what the girls have lost and will lose. I want so badly to be able to give them everything I can, and sometimes it seems like it’s too hard to try and give them all the things I want to give them.
I want to take them to school, I want to pick them up after school, I want to take them to the after school activities, I want to take them to the beach during the summer.
