Nora Roberts, Superpoke Pets, and Loneliness

Tomorrow is Easter and families will come together for Church, sharing a meal, and/or spending time together.  My son is at this moment driving up from Florida to spend that one day, all day, with me, then get up early Monday morning for the drive back, bless his heart.  My daughter, who lives here, will join us when she gets off work.  The Three Musketeers will be together for our first holiday without our fourth.  I'm lucky to have such children.

But today is slow, much like every day that has gone by since he died.  I've had a myspace page for a year or so now.  The main reason I joined was to upload photos into albums for my children to see without overloading their inboxes with email.  It was just an easy way to let them see a lot of photos at once plus the writing and commets back and forth.  But now, in my loneliness, I've discovered Superpoke Pets. Oh, Lord.  I feel like I'm ten again with a dollhouse.

I will sit for an hour and play with my silly Superpoke Pet.  I don't charge gold coins to my credit card though some of those gold items are tantalizing.  No, I stick with the regular coin that I earn from playing with my pet and others' pets.  I am befriending people I don't know in a cyber world of innocent fun with a dragon that I swear looks like my husband.  It's our story actually.

When my husband was introduced to me for the first time, he was introduced as a knight in shining armor.  I didn't want a knight at that time in my life and I told him as much.  I had said I'd wanted a dragon who was cranky and protective and had honor. He evenutally convinced me he was a dragon in disguise.  It sounds sappy when I look at it written here but, it was one of those things between two people that make them a couple. 

So back to my Superpoke Pet.  He's a dragon and I feed him, give him food and water, play with him, and tickle him to make him laugh.  I've shopped for him at the pet shop and bought a Marine sticker, a military teddy bear, an American flag, and black roses in flower pots with painted broken hearts on the pots.  I've bought him a lot of other things but those things listed are the constant.  I'm grieving and I couldn't stop myself from setting it up that way.  It's my little virtual dollhouse and I can do what I want.  And it fills some time.  I look forward to every Thursday when the pet shop gets in new things.  I feel like a crazy widow with nothing better to do.  I know for a fact that I will not tell the others at the widow's group meeting that I play with a virtual dragon.

I actually have a lot to do.  I'm starting up my own business.  I'm sewing, creating textile art and wearable fabric for some stores and my time is precious.  I'm also working on three books for a literary agent, but I can't not spend time with my dragon.

Another thing I spend time on is reading, as I've always done.  I am a voracious reader.  I go to the library twice a week and check out five to eight books, returning four every time because I go through that many.  I read at night now when I can't sleep.  I'm dealing with my insomnia by getting up long enough to get a cup of hot tea and then I go back to bed and read.

I'm through with reading books on grief.  I can't do that anymore.  I know what I'm going through.  I know what will happen will happen and I'll accept/deal/survive/live through it as my heart and soul will decide.  I don't fit any timeline I've read nor any goal some of the books set forth.  "You'll heal and put it all behind you in one year, two years.  You'll live for yourself now and not be defined by being married."  Yada yada.  I don't know what I'll feel like tomorrow so I can't set my expectations on six months from now, or a year.  So when I read at night, I find I'm gravitating to Nora Roberts romance novels.  I'm almost finished with The MacGregor series.

My favorite is the Alan-Grant book.  Grant is an artist who lives in a lighthouse on a remote coast in Maine.  He's arrogant and cranky and independent.  He doesn't love easily but once he does, it's forever.  He reminds me of my husband.  My mate wasn't an artist.  He was a Marine, a soldier but his self-confidence was high in the way only a man whose lived through a few wars can be.  He was cranky but mostly at people who were rude, cruel, insert any vice that hurts or offends others.  He was independent for the same reasons as I stated when I said he was a Marine.  And he didn't give his love easily, but he gave it to me and I was all the richer for it.  And oh, how I returned that love.

So now I read Nora Roberts, and Julie Garwood, Linda Howard, and other romance writers looking for descriptions of men that remind me of my husband.  I don't get upset but I do feel a sense of melancholy for the beginning of our romance.  He swept me off my feet.  It was magic.  There's not another out there like him.  That's not to say there aren't any more cranky, arrogant, independent Marines who act like dragons but there are none that are right for me.  I found my soulmate.  I married him, loved him, and lost him to an early death.  The magic is gone and all I'm left with are my memories.  So I play with my Superpoke Pet and I read romance novels.  And I sew and write for a living.  And I don't think my loneliness will ever go away.

Yesterday, my daughter was upset because I'm alone so much.  There is nothing either one of us can do about it.  I work from home which I like because my dogs are good company, and I don't have to pretend I'm doing okay when I'm not that day.  But looking into her eyes and seeing her sorrow for my situation, I felt a knot low in my throat that hasn't gone away.  I'm going to be alone from now on.

So I comforted her as best I could but I could not take away her knowledge that I'm alone.  My beloved mate is dead and I seriously cannot see me wanting, desiring, or even thinking about meeting anyone else.  I had the best of the best and now the memory of that will have to last me the rest of my life.  And I'm okay with that.  It just doesn't take away my emptiness or loneliness or sorrow, it embroiders the edges of it.  So after my daughter left, I sewed a bit until it got late.  Then I checked in on my dragon Superpoke Pet.  And then I took my latest Nora Roberts book and went to bed and read long into the night as lonely people do.