I imagine sometimes people who visit my blog wonder about the title. "To Pirate Gold and Windy Days" is the name of a poem that I wrote for my husband, years ago and that I never showed to him. I regret that now because I let my own insecurity keep me from sharing something with the man that I shared my life and everything else about me with. It is the one thing that I held as a secret. For some reason I was afraid that he would not approve of it, think it was childish, laugh at it, something like one or all of those. It was written very early in our relationship and I guess I was still a bit unsure of myself when it came to Dave. I was wrong on all counts.
I should have shown it to him but after several years, I simply forgot about it. I found it again when I was packing up our life after he died. Over those same years, while the poem was misplaced, I learned that I could say, do, think, feel or share anything with him because any emotion or feeling that came from him was always pure because it was always the truth. He never lied. I don't think he knew how to lie. Even if it was painful to hear him say something ("Yeah, your butt looks really big in those jeans."), you always knew where you stood with him because you never had to worry about him playing some kind of game of words or manipulation. There was never any agenda with Dave...he was as pure a being as I have ever come across and he was hard to to understand at first because that simply was not what I was used to.
For most of my adult life, until the time when I met Dave, I worked in the same industry. Finance. Stocks and Bonds. Buy Low and Sell High! Sell, Sell, Sell. So, it may have been the nature of the business I worked in that attracted a certain kind of person, but I always felt that there were not a lot of "real" people in my workplace. Not that I was surrounded by people who were dishonest, just people that were so unsure and insecure that they felt that they had to "invent" themselves or hide behind possessions to impress others. Maybe to impress themselves.
I was like a fish out of water at work much of the time and if I had not been very smart and relatively ambitious, I doubt that I would have progressed through the ranks of my profession. It was one that weighed too heavily on appearances, instead of substance, and I had no patience for playing games like that. And even though someone like Dave was what I craved, it was not my reality for many years. When I did finally find him, it was like he was too good to be true and I was resistant to believing that he was as good as I thought him to be. I was wrong, though. He was better. And I should have shared that poem with him.
Now I write all the time. It is what is keeping me sane through the grief of losing him to cancer just 7 short months ago. I write things for Dave, about Dave, about us, about the cancer. And I write about the grief I feel and how it is affecting mylife. It is all I seem to have now...that and my memories.
So here's to you, my love, and "To Pirate Gold and Windy Days". I miss you.
I should have shown it to him but after several years, I simply forgot about it. I found it again when I was packing up our life after he died. Over those same years, while the poem was misplaced, I learned that I could say, do, think, feel or share anything with him because any emotion or feeling that came from him was always pure because it was always the truth. He never lied. I don't think he knew how to lie. Even if it was painful to hear him say something ("Yeah, your butt looks really big in those jeans."), you always knew where you stood with him because you never had to worry about him playing some kind of game of words or manipulation. There was never any agenda with Dave...he was as pure a being as I have ever come across and he was hard to to understand at first because that simply was not what I was used to.
For most of my adult life, until the time when I met Dave, I worked in the same industry. Finance. Stocks and Bonds. Buy Low and Sell High! Sell, Sell, Sell. So, it may have been the nature of the business I worked in that attracted a certain kind of person, but I always felt that there were not a lot of "real" people in my workplace. Not that I was surrounded by people who were dishonest, just people that were so unsure and insecure that they felt that they had to "invent" themselves or hide behind possessions to impress others. Maybe to impress themselves.
I was like a fish out of water at work much of the time and if I had not been very smart and relatively ambitious, I doubt that I would have progressed through the ranks of my profession. It was one that weighed too heavily on appearances, instead of substance, and I had no patience for playing games like that. And even though someone like Dave was what I craved, it was not my reality for many years. When I did finally find him, it was like he was too good to be true and I was resistant to believing that he was as good as I thought him to be. I was wrong, though. He was better. And I should have shared that poem with him.
Now I write all the time. It is what is keeping me sane through the grief of losing him to cancer just 7 short months ago. I write things for Dave, about Dave, about us, about the cancer. And I write about the grief I feel and how it is affecting mylife. It is all I seem to have now...that and my memories.
So here's to you, my love, and "To Pirate Gold and Windy Days". I miss you.
