I know, I should be excited this morning because in a couple of hours, I’ll have a brand new car. However, I woke up battling a huge bunch of sadness today, instead.

Part of it is because I’m still not quite believing that I’m the kind of girl who will be driving a Honda Civic. I know it’s a great car. But I would be more excited if I were driving a Hellcat. My dream car.

The other part of my sadness stems from this business of it being September. The cooler weather; this closing-of-the-windows business. The birds leaving for warmer climes.

I used to love September. I used to love fall. I guess since I wrote about this in Letter #2 of Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse, I can just go ahead and write about it here.

(And as an aside, Letter #3 began coming out yesterday, entirely unexpectedly and all of its own accord. It appears to be titled, “Baltimore.”)

Anyway, in Letter #2, “A Beach to His Waves,” I wrote about an older man who died, but who managed to thoroughly change my life before he left.

I knew him for less than 4 months, but they were the most intense, amazing, beautiful, magical 4 months I ever lived. He was terminal, with cancer, but wound up dying very suddenly from a heart attack instead.

He was in his early 70s, extremely happily married — kids, grandchildren. He’d had a really successful career.  But his wife and his kids were absolutely devastated by the fact that he was dying, incurable, and we met honestly by sheer accident, but it then did seem like it was no accident — it was some miraculous type of fate, or destiny, or something. But we did indeed meet, we were pulled together. And he just wanted to be with someone who didn’t treat him like he was fragile, and who didn’t treat him with kid gloves, and who wasn’t crying all the time. Even though he really did love those people, his wife and family, without doubt.

It just happened, we became lovers, and then it took over my life for just under 4 months. Not only was it the most amazing sex, he also taught me, for the first time in my life, how to accept being loved.  As far as I knew (or even know still today), I was never really loved when I was growing up. My (adoptive) mother told me point blank that I was not loved. My (adoptive) father told me the same thing, in different ways.

At best, I was tolerated, and usually just barely, since throughout my years of growing up, I was relentlessly abused.  A large part of it was the fact that I was adopted so I had nothing whatsoever in common with the people who adopted me. Nothing. I couldn’t have been more different if I were trying. And on top of it, I was very smart, very sexual, very psychic, very creative. Just this weird little kid from Jupiter and they really, really didn’t want to deal with me. Both parents eventually told me that they regretted adopting me and wanted me to just go away.

Anyway, I don’t want to drag all that up now, it is sufficient to say that I have never felt loved and never took it as a given that I ever would be loved, even though I am intensely loving on the giving side of that one-sided equation. (And of course went into the Ministry because of my relationship with Christ and his love, and my understanding that I was capable of being an endless supply of giving love to others.)

But this man, he changed all of that for me. He had been raised by a mother who had truly loved him. His whole life had been surrounded by love, so he could not even believe that anyone (me) could be coming from a place of never having been loved.  Felt loved, Even felt deserving of love. Any of it. And that put us in the curious position of him having fallen in love with me, and needing me to accept that love because he knew he was dying and didn’t want to leave life feeling like I was refusing to accept his love.

He managed to get through to me, you know. It wasn’t easy. But it did happen. And it changed my whole life. Everything about how I saw life, and felt life, and all of that. And what I allowed myself to feel, for the first time ever, was pretty staggering. I mean, I was already well into my 50s.

So, of course, he died. And it was quite sudden when he did. And I couldn’t go to the funeral or anything like that, because I didn’t officially exist.  He was married and all that. So my grief was very private, and very intense. But what got me through it was knowing that he didn’t want me to be sad. And I also immediately felt his true presence visiting me from the other side.  And he helped me find my way through my grief.

He doesn’t visit me every day anymore, but for awhile he did. He was with me constantly in spirit. I couldn’t see him or hear him, but inside my head, I heard him perfectly. He was there.

Well, my main point is that he died in early September. So there you have it. My inability to let summer go anymore. (And then Tom Petty also dying suddenly of a heart attack, and dying at the begininng of October — that stuff didn’t help me deal with my private loss.)

And until the Muse came into my life last fall, I really thought I was done with living. I didn’t want to kill myself or anything, but I really, really wanted to cross over that great divide and go be with that guy again, for eternity, even though I knew he had felt that his wife was his soul mate. So I wasn’t (am still not) really sure where that leaves me for eternity. But, the Muse came and suddenly all this writing came out of me. Just pouring out. Planting me really solidly within Life again. In a really joyful way. Still, when I wake up in the morning and realize it’s September now, that fall is coming, it is a battle not to get sad.

This morning I just felt overwhelmed by it.  Just too many question marks right now in my life — about both plays, about my novel, other projects that are still un-anchored anywhere, needing a firm home. You know. Just too many projects I’m generating that are not anchored anywhere yet. And still more projects on the back burner, waiting for my complete attention.

It was all I could do this morning to get through my meditation, then my Inner Being journaling thing, anything to just hold on and not feel so incredibly sad.

So. I’ll head out and get my new Honda Civic and not think about the Hellcat that perhaps deep in my heart, I would rather have. And you know, in terms of signs — how when someone you love dies, you long for signs that they are still with you? With him, early on, I once asked him to please show me a sign, and then he unleashed just a barrage of signs, until I was finally shouting out loud, “Okay STOP!!” because it was freaking me out. All the sudden signs that he was with me in spirit.

But a few months ago, out of the blue, I had to drive into the city and deal with all that horrible ugly traffic that I hate, in a city that I also hate, and suddenly, there on the freeway, moving into my lane, was a purple Hellcat. My dream car. I never actually see Hellcats on the road, only Dodge Challengers. Hellcats are pretty expensive. And this one was purple — the exact car I wanted. And the license plate is what told me it was his sign of signs for me. When he was a little boy, he had loved Elvis. Just worshiped him. And the license plate on the Hellcat read: ELV1S. So not just “Elvis” but that Elvis was #1. And then there was also a picture of a rocket blasting off on the license plate, too, which to me was symbolic of what he had done for a living (aeronautics).

A true SIgn of Signs, in my opinion. I followed that car for quite a while that day, until it sped off onto another highway.

Well, I got out of bed this morning crying, but determined to somehow save this day from the oblivion of my sorrow, you know? I’ll go get my new car. I’m sure I’ll be really happy once I’m driving it way too fast in Muskingum County.

It looks like it’s going to be another stunning day. I have to say, I don’t understand any of it.  Life, death, grief, joy, love, sex.  None of it. I don’t understand it. But I still choose to feel all of it.

Okay, so, have a great Friday, wherever you are and wherever it takes you. Thanks for visiting. Oh, and Iggy Pop’s new album Free, is very interesting. I haven’t heard the whole thing yet, but it does fill me with a lot to ponder — this aging thing.  Iggy Pop is managing to grow older quite gracefully. It is so interesting to me. Okay. I leave you with the song that came into my head the moment I came out of meditation and saw that dawn was approaching, and I was determined to stop crying and somehow face this too beautiful September day. I love you guys. See ya.

“Here Comes The Sun”