Finding the Light Within

I am still grieving for Mr. Frodo.  If I see a picture of him, I break down and let the tears flow.  Also, we are facing the fact that it is time to let Arwen go too.  She's suffering from her bladder cancer, and we know the time is drawing close when we have to say good bye to her too.  But it is so close to losing Frodo that we just can't make ourselves do it.  She won't eat except Milk Bones an an occasional piece of meat.  Her tumor has grown enough to cause her problems and now her Cushings has kicked in so she's got a double dose of disease making our little clown close down.  Every once in awhile, her normal self is back, but it then gets hidden away from us.  We are just taking it one day at a time, but it is going to be soon.  And I think about my Grandma daily.  She was such a big part of our lives once we moved from California back to Southern Ohio.  I can hear her laugh all the time which was one of her favorite things to do. 

So with all this striking me at once, I have felt my heart heavy and broken.  I asked myself what do I done when so heart sick with grief. Do I drown my heart with tears?  Do I build a wall up around it so no one or nothing can penetrate it?  Do I attack it leaving it even more sore and weak?  Do I stab it with an icy pick filling it with holes so the pain can leak out?  I don't think any of these things are healthy.  I believe that all these people and animals and places we have cherished are inside our heart.  They are never truly gone. We carry them with us on this long journey through life.  And when we miss them or want to feel their love again all we really need to do is reach inside and Find the light of their love within ourselves. 

They day after Frodo died which was exactly two weeks after Grandma died, I sat at my work table with a piece of fused glass that a new friend had sent me.  I stared into the glass through teary eyes looking deep into the colors fused into that piece.  I looked up and mysteriously my hands began to find beads and other pieces of glass and vintage crystals to compliment the fused glass.  Then I reached for a bright yellow piece of Nicole's Bead Backing and glued the focal glass piece on it.  Oh my heart soared with the colors forming there on my work table.  In almost a frantic pace, I sewed each bead, each bugle, each spacer, each drop onto the collar not stopping for rest.  At the end of the day, I would lay it down, but as soon as my eyes would open or I had time, I would pick it up working away letting all my grief drain from me.  The bright colors wrapped me with healing powers and the dark metallic spacers with drops of green light poking out through them were there to remind me that there still was a few pieces of dark left for me.  For can we really let all that grief out?  Small pieces cling to the love of that person, animal, place forever because that is just how we have to keep the memory. But that one piece of dark memory is so small that it has become comfortable and easy to comprehend.  I still can touch the dark memory surrounded by the light of losing my Great Grandmother many years ago, or our beloved Lady who we had a funeral for when I was only 8, or the gigantic elm tree blighted by disease and cut down.  It is still there ready to be re-hydrated with our tears.  But the light...oh the light calms us and brings back the smile and the memories.

So when I finished this collar in what I was told a record time, I decided that it would be called: Find the Light Within.  I wore it yesterday even though is clashed horribly with the shirt I had on, but reaching down and stroking the cool glass as I sat calmed me and made me once again smile.  My heart is going to be broken and sore so many more times, and I know soon it will be once again attacked when we lose our little clown, our little Arwen.  But I have delved down and brought the light up once...I know it is there.  And when the time comes, I'll find it again and let it sooth me.