The 25th Friday

Dear Phoenix on the WEb,

I am home tonight early from work so I am here at the time you were shot 25 Fridays ago. I look at your photo on my dresser/altar and what I remember in my body is what I have come to name "The Life that was you and I." The relationship: the eye contact, the inadvertent leaning against, the reaching down and feeling your ear in my hand when our we walk side by side, the feeling of you racing around the corner when I call you and your weight into my arms and against my legs as I lean down to greet you, the leaping of all four of your paws in the air when I arrive home, the love beamed back and forth, back and forth between us, no matter what.

Someone at work this week was recalling the time her father dropped dead right in front of her. They tried to revive him at the hospital and while she waited, she prayed to Jesus for one of two things to happen: first, she prayed that he would be healed, and if not that, she prayed for the strength to bear it. When she told me, I wanted to just weep right along with her. Her father died twenty years ago and she said that she still feels broken by it. I cannot believe how we go on on with such seemingly normal lives after this kind of loss. How do we do it?????? How do we have the strength to bear??? And this from women who live in a relatively peaceful, very privileged life? I can only imagine how it is for women in places and situations far less privileged than mine where the violence persists day after day. HOW DO WE DO IT? HOW HAVE WE DONE IT OVER MILLENNIA??It's astounding. I don't understand it really.

So, here I am 25 Fridays later, changed in ways that are noticeable and changed in ways inside that no one will ever really understand, including myself. And Phoenix...your body is gone, forever. Buried in my back yard, probably decomposed beyond recognition now. Your Spirit...well, it's somewhere...occasionally makes appearances through particular songs, periodic dreams, a sense of you sleeping in my room (or is that just really strong wishing?), synchronistic sitings of deer, heron and fox, and through this palatable Love I call "The Life that was You and I." I don't know much about death, really. I know something more about life because of death. Maybe that's all we will ever really know until we go ourselves.

Living the Life that is me forever missing my beloved Phoenix,
Melissa

Both And

Dear Web and Phoenix on the Web,

I have passed through the threshold again...the one that says I must choose to live or cease to thrive. This time I reached a place of deeper recognition of myself: Because of my Beingness, I choose to Live. To extinguish my life is not my Will. Not because someone says 'it's wrong' or 'bad' or 'selfish' or whatever the doctrine is. I choose to Live not because I am expected to or because it's 'the right' thing or the 'good' thing or the 'selfless' thing. It is my Will as the Beingness that I am.

After that...I cannot say anything else for sure right now. Phoenix has remained elusive in my dreams. There have been few signs of his presence. I am worried about our connection. I do not know what 'to do' about it. I've begged, asked, prayed for something...some way of knowing we are still together. It's not the same sense of absence like in the beginning of things. It's more a sense of his silence and/or withdraw. And I wonder if this is him helping me shift my focus to Life.

And I say to you, Phoenix, if that is why you are withdrawn: "My beloved, thank you for your Love, for wanting to help me along. Can we do this together? That is, why wouldn't it be possible to have focus on Life and on us? I cannot let go of you, of our connection, ever. And I cannot fully let go into Life without our mutual exchange with one another. I need that. I want that."

I will never let you go. And I Will to live.
Melissa

At the Crossroads

Dear Web,

I am
I am a nest
I am a nest of dried herbs, rose petals and the shell of single monarch butterfly in a cauldron.

I am.
I am a match on fire.
I am a match on fire igniting the nest.

I am.
I am smoke.
I am smoke rising.
I am smoke rising and drifting through the air currents.

I am.
I am a Priestess.
I am a Priestess Doula with a snake shaped athame.
I am a Priestess Doula with a snake shaped athame casting a circle around the burning cauldron,
fiercely on guard and speaking the truth: "The Fire has begun."

I am.
I am smoldering, my body heaving and curling
through the heat.
I hear the chants that
I cannot turn back.
I heed them
and
I also know
I can halt
this birth.
With my will to die.

I must know this place of will,
I tell the scared voices.
I must know I have weighed my options
so as not to be another unconscious living
dead.
I must know my own Will here
at the crossroads,
the most honest place I know right now.

I am.
I am here without Phoenix.
I am here without Phoenix and
this may be as far as I want to go without
my Beloved.

The Priestess Doula firmly reminds me to consider,
"If you do not want to go any further,
the new life will die with you."

I am.
I am sitting.
I am sitting at the crossroads with a burning cauldron,
knowing all life must pass through this threshold.

Love,
Melissa

Where are YOU?

Dear Phoenix on the Web,
WHERE ARE YOU?
I haven't had a sense of you for a while. No dreams. No WuWu moments when I know you are there. Your photos feel farther and farther away from me...that is...a sensory memory is harder to access through them! I hate this. Where are you, Phoenix?

I feel like I am in between, not here nor there. Not in the past, nor the present. Relationships feel mostly blah. I have moments sometimes of feeling ok in this place. But I cannot feel you here. I don't understand. Have you left me? Are you trying to teach me something? I need to keep a sense of you, Phoenix. I don't want 'to go on' without you. It's no kind of life for me.

Please, give me something.
Love,
Melissa

The 20th Friday

Dear WEb,

Last night was the 20th Friday since Phoenix was brutally shot and killed. I have been distraught about this. How can it be 5 months that I have lived beyond that experience!!? I am one month away from being directly 'across the Wheel' from March 19th! In now looking across the Wheel, I see myself one month before he is shot. We are together. Phoenix is alive. We are alive together. I am alive in a way I may never be again. The whole thing makes me weak with sobbing and despair.

So, this morning as I hand form turkey patties to bake for Beetle, I sobbed great big tears of despair. I wondered if I have already lived the best part of my life and now it's pretty much over, or at least the joyous part. I'm in the cross-current of Life insisting on going on (The Wheel does keep turning!) and the intense currents of my overwhelming grief that is screaming STOP this turning--I cannot go on! This living is unlivable without Phoenix! It's empty and it's profoundly alone, no matter how many are loving me fiercely through.

And, yet, I pick up another turkey patty and form it, place it on the pan until I have 12, then into the oven. I wait 18 minutes until the timer goes off, then I retrieve them from the oven. I look out the window and see my lawn being mowed. I see a slight breeze through the green. How can this be? How can this be? Growth, Wheel turning AND profound desolation that only seems to deepen, not lessen.

I have been listening again to Rosanne Cash this morning. She has an album called "The Wheel" and a song about rising from the ashes("I'm gonna rise from the ashes...") that played during my deep sobbing and cooking for Beetle. How absurd, I think, this notion of rising from these ashes of desolation that I feel. I have risen many times from others, but this one...this one is different. I do not think I will ever recover. Yes, I do remember all I've written over the last many months in this WEb log...the hope and the despair. And...I do not think I will recover in spite of the more hopeful places I have been. I am that sure today. And still, as Rosanne Cash sang those words of being a Phoenix rising from the ashes, I let myself be slightly, ever so slightly, open to the radical possibility that somewhere across the Wheel I might look across at some point and glance at myself rising, somehow. The notion is quite absurd. And...

And, I go on somehow to the next thing to do or see or experience. Without Phoenix. And I fall into more tears, more sobbing, more despair. Remember, this is still walking the labyrinth, I hear myself.

Ok, dear one who keeps going on The Wheel,
Melissa

Dream Response

Dear Phoenix on the Web,

Thank you for your exquisite response in my dreams: I face a beautiful scene of green trees, grasses and some wild flowers, all framed by an archway. Through the archway you appear: you are floating and your fur is an incredible design of mosses. As you float, you shed pieces of your moss coat and I effortlessly catch them in a white teacup I am holding. Then I see you (or is it us?) down on the earth in a play bow position. There are two of you (twins) face to face, you recognize yourselves/one another and begin to gently nuzzle and paw one another. Then you begin to play together. Exquisite.

When I began to surface out of the dream, I had a sense of awe, like someone had just gifted me something sacred. Like you, Phoenix, created a deeply beautiful altar just for me.

I love you. Thank you for your deep and abiding love of me.
Melissa

Wildly Lost

Dear Phoenix on the Web,

I am wildly lost today. These are the words that come with the sobbing on my drive home from work. Wildly lost. Living is biding time until....I don't know when. There is nothing I can imagine from this place that will soothe this pain, this desperate and frantic sense of being wildly lost in a way no one can understand and/or more importantly...no one can fix.

I begged you last night for another dream where you come to me, where I can experience you again. Where are you? How will I ever make it through?

I am wildly lost without you in my life and living.

Love,
Melissa