DIRTY HANDS & DISQUIETING DREAMSCAPES

I have been saying dirty hands are healing hands for decades, and now science is backing me up ;-)

(https://realfarmacy.com/antidepressant-soil/)

I can’t wait to get my hands dirty in a few weeks – it’s still too wet and cold here to get out into my gardening area.

I’m going to try to get to the Adna Nursery around Mother’s Day; Bob took me there every Spring to get my onion, tomato, and pepper starts – I think I can remember how to get there.

Adna Nursery receipt from our 2018 Spring gardening trip, April 15^th. I said “next month” on the video … but they don’t actually open for business until April 15^th every year – I’m just chopping at the bit to get my hands dirty. LOL!

Route directions I jotted down along the way; while Bob drove: I just wanted to be sure I could drive us to and fro if Bob wanted a break from driving … I had no idea then that Bob would be gone, and I would need to rely so heavily on them.

I wasn’t very happy with the starts that were shipped from Territorial Seeds last Spring: they didn’t do well at all last year – in fact, the peppers never did recover … and the onions sets limped along.

Of course, I couldn’t spend as much time as I usually do outside in my garden last year. ron’s house was up for sale, but it didn’t sell right away – he was holding out for more $$$$$; and every time I went outside, he’d find an excuse to be outside too, to make my life miserable – glaring at me while I tended to my garden beds, standing right next to the property line blowing smoke in my face, boldly cutting across the front of our property and crossing between my garden boxes to get to his property, actually telling me to ‘go back inside your house’: he was going out of his way to annoy the hell out of me. One day when he snapped, ‘go back inside your house’, I finally had enough off his bullshit and candy pooh-poohing his outrageous behavior, and told him he had no authority over me at all; and if he didn’t like me being outside, HE could go back into HIS house. I also told him that he killed my husband with his constant paranoid bitching. That was the last I heard from ron … he moved in with his girlfriend up the street, and accepted the bid he had had on his house. Bob didn’t miraculously come back to me, but life was tolerable again.

I hope I have a better gardening experience this year.

Bob was in one of my dreams this morning – the one just before I woke up: in the dream, it was storming with slashing rainfall. I heard him (his voice sounded so good to my ears!) say, ‘Val, look.’ And I looked out the front LV window to see a strong wind keep pushing at the ‘WELCOME’ double shepherd’s hook he has put in place a year ago … it was being pushed to the ground by the wind; the bird house he built me, and the bird feeder he built me were broken. I woke up – I didn’t want to see any more.

I don’t like dreams that leave my spirit feeling disquieted.

Dreaming of something broken symbolizes stress, damage, or loss in the awake life of the dreamer (yes; I have been stressed, my life has been damaged on several levels, and I have suffered the greatest loss of my entire life). If the broken item happens to be the dreamer’s favorite object, the dream is suggesting that changes must be made and the dreamer has to let go of something … or move on from the past (Bob made the bird house and bird feeder for me 7 years ago; I KNOW I have to let go and move on … just not sure HOW to do that). To dream of something breaking implies that changes are taking place – or the dreamer needs to change the direction of their life; it can also mean that the dreamer needs to take a break from everything happening in and around their life: or there are financial difficulties (I am aware that changes need to take place - and are taking place. I have done what I can to eliminate stressors. And as far as I know, my finances are doing okay). When we let go of something precious, it is okay to grieve it – to feel sad. Dreams of broken things may be a request to honor what is passing: broken things in dreams may be exploring our feelings around those things.

I know what my “issue” is; and I am working on it. I was married to the love of my life for 44 years – I loved him for 52 years … I love him still. It will take longer than 14 months to “get over it”.

I am moving forward as best I can at the moment.

Meanwhile, since I can’t get my hands dirty yet; and moving forward is temporarily between a rock and a hard place, I’m working on Spring-themed dustcovers for my countertop cooking appliances. I finished a Dahlia trimmed cover for the 3-pot crockpot the other day (https://jeastofeden.blogspot.com/2020/02/mod-dahlia-dustcover-3-pot-crockpot.html), and last night I worked on a cover for the electric skillet – I should have it finished by tonight.

That is the plan ;-)

Corner detail for electric skillet Spring themed dust cover.

Nearly finished. I stopped work on it at midnight last night.

SECOND YEAR SLUMP

I think, at this point in my journey, I’m somewhere on the bottom end of these “stages” – and I gotta say that I am surprised to be there. I think … all things considered … I’ve really done pretty okay these 430 days/14 hours & 18 minutes since my solo lobo journey began: and losing my entire family nucleus as well. But lately, it’s been hard: real hard.

I have been told that the second year is worse than the first: I could not comprehend how anything could be worse than that first 6 months of raw grief and the following months of heart-rending missingness – but now I understand that the loss of my husband in my present life is a low, consistent frequency between heart and brain that hums away in the background … and then suddenly intensifies to a crippling frequency; seemingly at the drop of a hat. But, on closer inspection, the hat drops always occur at specific times. Widows and widowers tell me this is the “hypnotizing death march”: an unconscious macabre dance with the calendar timeframes that remember exactly when the Grim Reaper and his imp, Grief, invaded your happy personal space and turned your life tipsy-turvy with a maddening and vicious shake of a cosmic wrist.

It is sinking in that I can expect this nerve-wracking occurrence to be a life-long ‘thing’. Christians are not exempt from experiencing deep sorrow – Yeshua, Himself, experienced hematohidrosis (a condition in which capillary blood vessels that feed the sweat glands, burst under extreme physical or emotional stress) while praying in the Garden of Gethsemane days before his crucifixion. Scripture tells us, “Being in anguish, He prayed so earnestly and fervently, his sweat was like drops of blood falling on the ground” (Luke 22:44).

I don’t feel guilty for sorrowing – but I do feel a little guilty that my ‘drop of the hat sorrow’ at times, bleeds over onto my friends; who are doing everything humanly possible to help me get through these hard days.

My friends are great – and I’ll be spending time with them again this Thursday; I would not have made it this far with my sanity intact if not for Cheryl & Pam. And, of course, my small circle of friends at Keenager’s too. But Cheryl & Pam know me … they’ve been in my life just about as long as Bob was – and like Bob, they radiate love in my direction. I am blessed.

I’m 414 days/14 hours & 18 minutes into my 2^nd calendar year without Bob physically present, and that just drives home the fact that time is moving the reality of him further and further away from me: I don’t like that encroaching reality. 

I guess I’m realizing just how alone-a.l.o.n.e. I really am. Yeshua was alone too - he had his 12 disciples, and throngs of followers ... but at the end of the day, He, too, was alone: separated from Elohim. Alone, surrounded by crowds of people.

I can identify - and if He could overcome loneliness; so can I!

Yes, I have my friends in my life that fill my life with life – and I am thankful and grateful – but, at the end of the day, I come home to an empty house.

It’s hard not to get depressed; the only thing keeping me from depression is knowing that my Faith overcomes depression: I have sorrowing moments, certainly, but those emotions do not consume me. The Ruach Ha’Kodesh helps me bear the unbearable. Thank You, Yeshua!

I may be sorrowing.

I may be without familial love and support.

But I always have Elohei.

I have my friends.

And my house is on order.

Bob, from the time he slipped that little simple gold wedding band on my little finger, secured my future as best he could: by the time he graduated to Heaven, dubbya and obama had changed marital laws – we did not know that as 2018 was waning, so ALL our joint accounts were legally erased after Bob passed from this life to his eternal life: the new Laws did not honor Bob’s honoring me with the safeguards he had lovingly set in place – and left this world believing would be honored. All of 2019, I had to scramble, fight for, and insist on those contracts/joint account/and other legalities be honored: some were retained, some were not. The new legalities seriously undermined my securities and constantly kept me off-balance. But at least I had a secure roof over my head, and a reliable new 2 -year old car; and I did not have to renter the work force to make ends meet. I’ve spoken with other widows – online globally and off-line locally – who were not left with even those basic securities. They have had no choice but to go back to work at a time when others are retiring, and most have lost their homes when they were still in the depths of their grief.

Yes, I still get nailed with ‘drop of the hat’ sorrow.

Yes, I am grappling with being alone-alone at the end of the day.

Yes, I am tired of the yo-yoing present, and the uncertainty of my future.

But, all in all, I’m really doing okay ...

... all things considered.

And I am expecting an upswing to this 2^nd year slump.