Two Pretty Damn Amazing Weeks

Well I just got a text letting me know my departure from Jacksonville to Chicago has been delayed.  It appears I still have an hour and 21 minutes  between gates in Chicago for my Lincoln flight.  So I decided I might try to type out a quick Oratory.  I am now at JAX waiting departure so I thought I would finish this one. 

So today I head back home from spending 2 weeks in Jacksonville Florida.  I was completely unplugged from everything, work, house, bills, and most of all my puppy, Handsome Petey Kabuki McPants McGillicuddy, more commonly referred to as Larry O.  From all appearances, he has enjoyed himself.  His tail was pointing up every time I watched, and that I know means he is happy.  Plus, he had extra cuddle time, that was a great upsell at drop off.  I am looking forward to scooping up the butt dart from the border and loving on him.  I have watched him playing every day, their camera system could you some work, I think I will suggest a trade of my expertise for boarding days. 

I shared space and a lot of meals with a lot of chosen families on my trip.  I went to have a meal with folks at places we always went to when we lived here.  Well, except Lubi’s, Bride could not stand a loose meat sandwich.  They were probably heart attacks on bun but damnnnnnn, they are good.  I shared three home cooked meals as well, and they were equally yummy. 

I watched the sunrise every morning, one of them was in Ocala and the rest were at the beach.  I love sunrise, but boy watching in a chair in the surf at the ocean is something everyone should do at least once in their lives.  I just wish I wasn’t learning how to love it again without her.  I remember back in the day a great friend of mine came down here to Florida from Ohio and we went to sunrise as his first time seeing the ocean – it was magnificent and a gift to me to watch someone see that for the first time.  Coincidently, my Niece and her family were also vacationing here so I got a sunrise with her and got to spend some time with her family.

Jacksonville is very much different and very much the same, it just does not feel like home anymore.  I’ve  always said home is where I hand my hat, but it turns out that wasn’t quite right.  Home was wherever she was.  That is what Smithlandia really meant.  All but the three hats I brought with me are still in Lincoln, and I have hundreds and that collection started all the way back to high school.  And yes, since the Beach Diner is closing, I bought one of their hats.

I got to hug a lot of necks, and that was very much needed.  There is something special about that kinda hug, the kind where nobody is really saying anything, and yet everything is being said.  Some of them held on a little longer than normal, and we both knew why.  Because for a few seconds, it filled a space that has been too damn quiet, for both of the of us. 

While I saw a lot of people, I also had a lot of alone time, that was good and bad.  Still writing down three things every morning looking for forward momentum.   Some days its three steps forward, and then, in the same day, its two more backwards.  And every morning I’m still waking up to world she is not in anymore, left wondering how that’s even real.

Overall I have moved forward but the pace is spotty.  And that is the new norm so that is just OK.  I am glad I sprinkled a few ashes as well, while not closure it did feel a bit like adding a period at the end of a sentence.  Problem was, I was not ready for the sentence to end.  I just sat there for a bit after.  It was nice to have that time when I was out of my element.  No constant reminders, no work things, no house things, no dog things, just me, myself and I.

And now for an abrupt topic change, I rented a Hyundai Sonata, it was a hybrid and I kinda liked it.  Well, I liked the efficiency and tech.  Over the two week period I put gas in it twice, and the overall average for my two weeks was 44.7 MPG, which is a hell of lot better than my truck.  Not enough to make me switch yet, but it got my attention.  The tech package was pretty impressive as well, lane drift protection, adaptive cruise, and self steering, although I turned that off after just a minute or two.  The only thing I did not like about it was it was low to ground, I’m old and fat so…  and the drivers compartment was crowded, see aforementioned note on being fat and old.

So I will be back in Lincoln tonight, and will pick up Larry in the morning, after his bath and nail trim and other pampering.  Fingers crossed the two flights are uneventful.

So I Stay, and I Keep Reading

I keep reminding myself that this is going to work out, that Smitty is going to be OK.  Even though there are days when it just doesn’t feel like it.  Maybe days is stretching it at this point.  Maybe it’s hours, or minutes or moments where it just seems overwhelming to me.  I also remind myself that I will not have the dynamic duo I had for so long.  The we, the us, and the they are gone.  I  am now just the me, the he, and the I.  It still feels weird to be using those tenses, and I stumble over them all the time.  I guess that will be the norm for a while, maybe forever and I don’t even mind anymore, small reminders of who we were together.

I know this is not my forever, this is a chapter and thank goodness chapters come to an end and a new one begins, that is the way of things in the world.  If I span across the whole journey, this chapter is the one I like the least.  It has been the most difficult, I think because I was so used to having a partner in the game.  Someone who would listen, encourage, support and love me, just like I did for her.  It feels a little isolating to be thinking about this and working my way through it without her, I miss her wisdom in moments like these.

I still have to fight the urge to treat this moment like the whole story.  It feels so large and heavy that it is sometimes hard to see over or around it and recognize that this is just a chapter in a much larger story.  The story we created was simply amazing by any standard.  I knew that and so did she, but I don’t think I understood the magnitude of how amazing we were together.  Spending a couple of weeks here in Florida, surrounded by chosen family, has been a great reminder of that, and I am grateful for each of those reminders, spoken and implied.

Somewhere out there, there is a version of me who made it through all of this.  In some ways I wish I could time travel forward to that dude.  Other times that feels like cheating.  I don’t really know how to explain that part.  I just know it hits wrong.  I just know there is something about skipping ahead that feels wrong, like I’d be missing some ugly part that was necessary to help me become whoever I am supposed to be after this chapter.  I don’t like that, not even a little.  But I also know I don’t get to only read the good parts the story.  So, I will keep moving through the pages, wherever the story goes and however difficult to read, until I get to that future me, who will have been forged into that future me by the journey itself. 

Realizing I’m no longer the one writing this story is really messing with my head.  It is disorienting in a way that does not make sense to me, her absence just turns up the volume on all of it.  It’s like the whole thing gets louder when I try to make sense of it.  I feel like most of that comes down to how badly we want to believe we are in control, like if we just try hard enough or think clearly enough, we can simply negotiate with the page to say something different.  But that ain’t how this works, not really.  Letting go and just being feels wrong, almost like I am violating some of the base code I am programmed with.  Every thing in me wants to push back, rewrite a few lines of code, to do something other than just sitting with it.  Submitting to the page I’m actually on is hard.  Real hard.  It feels very much in conflict with my fight or flight instincts, the ones that have been baked into our DNA since before we made it to the top of the food chain.  All I have is how I show up for the page in front of me, even when showing up sometimes feels like the hardest thing I have ever had to do. 

I don’t like this chapter.  I would not have chosen it in a million years.  It kinda like in book club having to read a book that ya don’t like.  You read it anyway, out of respect for the one who selected it.  This is the book that has been selected for me, and not reading it is not an option, that would be disrespectful of Beautiful Brides memory.  So here I am, slogging away, slower than I want to be moving and this book appears to have a lot of pages to turn.  Some days I make progress, other days I have to go back and reread the shit I didn’t like the first time I read it.  I just keep showing up, and that counts! 

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, I found myself on the same beach where we said our vows again at 20 years in.  Sunrise, the same kind of quiet, the same sounds of the ocean doing its thing.  Only this time it was just me, well technically just me.  I had carried her there and did the only thing  I knew how to do, I let her go into the place we loved.  I don’t know if there are words for that moment that actually do it justice, I had nothing but tears then, and now as I type this.  It did not feel like closure.  It did not fix anything.  But it felt right, the kind of right that comes with absolute certainty.  It felt like one small way to honor the story we had, in a place that knew us well when we were still a we.   I stayed long enough to feel it.  Then I walked away without really knowing how to feel about it.  

Somewhere out there is a version of me who has already read the whole book and knows how it ends.  I don’t get to flip ahead to that part though, I have to read it the way it’s written, page by agonizing page.  Regardless of how many times I reread a page, I am just trying to make it all make sense.  Not every page lands, not every chapter is fair, and it’s still my book to read.  Fair, that reminds me of something she used to say, fair is what ya pay to get on a bus and where ya go to get a funnel cake or corndog.  So I will just keep turning pages, trusting that something will shift along the way and trusting that when I finally reach the end of this chapter, I will understand why I had to read it in the first place.  So I stay, and I keep reading.