Remember the Flower

It was an horrible PTSD day yesterday...too scared to leave the house of the man I love, except to walk Max. I kept having visions of the house burning...and the animals and woman inside.

The woman who died: I'll call her Rose. She was an excellent horsewoman, and had a gift with all animals. I would foster kittens, and run them upstairs so Rose could play with them, and watch them launch themselves like rockets around her bedroom. She had a gift with horses and cats, in particular, and she loved them without reservation. Her life was tinged with tragedy: her father was a Vietnam vet with PTSD, and died young. Rose always wore his dog tags around her neck, and they were placed in the pink roses and yellow carnations that adorned her coffin.

She is free and resting now, walking barefoot in some distant meadow with her favorite horses, and the cats and dog she lost. She is reunited with her Father and Mother. What a party that must have been!!!

I will visit the small graves in the backyard on Thursday, and plant something on their graves for her...
Later, when the house is rebuilt, I promised Rose I would plant a tulip tree in the backyard for her.

I was just starting to deal with being assaulted by muggers in January, when Minkins died, and then the house burned. I long to see Rose and Jazzy June, and Gracie and Tippy again. I would like to take Rose out to her pool, and sit and chat about animals and their pure love, and the strange ways of the human heart.

Now, there is a small spot of earth in the town of Vinton that belongs to Rose's body, and a lovely garden to visit in her memory.

So, here I am, this morning, trying not to drink and to practice 'radical acceptance'. That is: to simply accept what is. My mind has a hard time with that one. Because of the trauma in my life, it is so much easier to just not think about what has happened to me, and on the casual cruelty that exists in the world. My mind simply does not want to contemplate that the world is so bad.

I know that sounds simplistic and naive, but I was raised that way. Both sides of Mom and Dad's families were farmers. There is stark necessity on a family farm, but death is the way of the world.

Hell, now I'm depressing you, too.

But I walked Max this morning, and the sun rose and the breezes are lovely. There are small flowers in the grasses, much smaller than clover, that no one notices, but they are there.