Living in Two Time Zones

So, I was painting some brake parts metallic purple and they looked amazing.  My very first thought was, “I can’t wait to show bride these things.”  Most everything I restore or build ends up with some purple in it.  Partly because purple is the coolest color.  Partly because Bride thought so too.  She would have appreciated purple brake parts that no one would see.  And on this car, she wanted to keep it pure from an observer perspective so hidden purple was the answer. 

And at that moment it hit me.  For just a moment I wasn’t living in August of 2026.  I was living in a past version of my life, one where I would walk in the house holding a freshly painted car part and she’d immediately understand why I was grinning.  This still happens a lot to me.  Random little things.  Letting her know I Venmo’d the lawn dude for another 12 weeks.  Scheduling HVAC maintenance.  Seeing some dumbass doing dumbassed things in traffic.  Nothing important.  In fact, mostly the exact opposite.  Just the ordinary stuff in the day to day of life that we spent years laughing about together.

My brain’s first instinct is to tell her about it.  It’s like my brain is in two places.  One knows she is gone, and the other still expects her to be there.  It’s like my brain is living in two different time zones.  One time zone knows she is gone.  One still expects her to answer her phone, which I have left on.  One knows I am doing this project by myself.  One still thinks she’ll be sitting in the garage ponder chair giving me grief about something.

For those few seconds, time folds in on itself, in some twisted sort of time paradox.  I wasn’t standing in the garage in August of 2026.  I was standing in one of the hundreds of ordinary days from the times before.  The kind of day where I‘d walk in with some car part she didn’t really care about, and she’d smile anyway because she knew I was proud of it.

What I have realized is how often this happens.  It is a great reminder of how our day to day together was, it was pretty damn good!  It still has a random feel sometimes and catches me off guard.  Like when I pick a steak and always look at the filet mignon, her favorite cut.  Sometimes those moments are comforting, sometimes they hurt and as I have talked about here, sometimes both at the same time.  I guess this is what 38 years of marriage looks like after losing our partner in crime.  Not because I haven’t moved forward.  I feel I have, at least a little bit.  Not because I don’t know she’s gone, I very much do.  But because over those 38 years, I built a lot of habits and instincts.  The instinct to share, to call and to show my honey purple brake parts, because who in the hell does that.

And for a few seconds every now and then, my heart still hasn’t quite updated to the right time zone.  

Damn it, I miss that Gurl.

An Unexpected Reunion

Over the last few months, I have spent a lot of time digging through old memories, in my head, in boxes and all the usual places we keep the artifacts of our life.  Recently I found two pieces of paper from 1982, one was covered with my scribbling and the other was a cleanly typed copy of those scribblings carefully transferred onto paper one letter at a time.  No word processor.  No spell checker.  No delete key.  Just a teenager sitting in front of what I am pretty sure was an IBM Selectric typewriter, trying to get his thoughts in order before committing them to paper.

The typed page had a simple title, A FRIEND. 

As I have worked my way through boxes of my childhood, I have found all sorts of things.  Embarrassing pictures, yeah I had a perm once.  Yearbooks with words from childhood friends, some that endure to this day.  Old report cards that did not show my potential.  Notes, good and bad, from teachers, and administrators.  Pictures of Grandparents who have been gone many years now.  A few things made me smile. A few things made me cringe.  Some things simply did not age well.  That is probably true of all of us if we have been on this journey long enough.

When I bumped into that typed page, I was expecting more of the same.  I could not have been more wrong.  It was quite a surprise.  As I read through it I was not struck by the writing itself.  What struck me was the person who wrote it.  I came face to face with the man I am today.  The page was my attempt, at 17 years old, to define who I should be as a friend, and what I needed a friend to be for me.  Buried there in the yellowing piece of paper were lines like, “someone who listens to what you’re really saying” and “someone who will consider your different beliefs, without judgment”, and “someone you can depend on, anywhere, anytime, for anything”.

What really caught me off guard was realizing those ideas didn’t come from experience, I didn’t have any.  I had not served in the Navy, I had not built a career, I had not led teams.  I had not loved and lost, I had not accumulated the life lessons that usually get credit for shaping who we are.  Yet there they were, sitting on the page in black ink.   A teenager writing about trust, without calling it trust, acceptance without calling it acceptance, and dependability without calling it dependability.  Somehow those values were already present long before I had enough life under my belt to explain where they came from.

The older I get, the less certain I am that life creates our values.  Life most assuredly tests the shit out of them.  It also challenges and beats them pretty hard.  Eventually life refines them, a polishing maybe.  But looking at that page, I found myself wondering if some of our most important values arrive earlier than we realize.  Maybe life doesn’t build them as much as simply revealing them to you over time.

I have been writing a lot about memories lately.  Most of the things I have uncovered have reminded me of Sandy.  Pictures, notes, little reminders of the life we cobbled together.  This find was different.  This one reminded me of me.  Reading that page felt a little like opening a time capsule.  Not because it showed me who I used to be, but because it showed me how long these values have been riding along with me.    

I am undeniably different from the 17 year old who typed those words.  Between then and now there was the Navy, a career in broadcasting, leadership roles, marriage, loss, success, mistakes, lessons, and experiences that that kid could never have imagined in his wildest dreams.  I am different in countless ways, but apparently, not in every way. 

There are values that have endured through every version of Smitty that has existed over my life.  They showed up as a young sailor.  They showed up as a small business owner.  They showed up when I was learning to be a broadcast engineer.  They showed up during my years with Bride.  They show up today in my role as Chief Technology Officer.  They show up in my friendships and they show up in my writing.  That is a lot of different versions of Smitty. 

Don’t get me wrong, 17 year old Smitty was fully capable of making bad decisions, I’d even say I was quite adept at it.  Those report cards from the same boxes can testify to that.  He had PLENTY to learn and more than a few rough edges.  Mostly it was the dumbassedness that comes with youth. Looking back now though, I can see that he already had a pretty clear idea of what kind of person he wanted to become.  Life added experience, success, failure, heartbreak, responsibility and a few more grey hairs than I want, but the compass heading was spot on.

Turns out, they have all been running on a firmware version that was installed a long time ago.  Many of us spend our lives wondering who we used to be.  This week, I got an unexpected answer to that question, and a realization that the firmware is at the root of who I am.  I found a handwritten draft and a typed page from 1982.  For a few minutes, across forty four years, I got to meet that young man again, and that was pretty damn cool. 

Turns out I was not reading something written by a teenager.  I was reading the first documented version of the firmware that I’m still running. 

And I keep coming back to the same question - if 17 year old me already knew trust, acceptance, listening, and dependability were that important, how much of who I am today was already there, in the black ink on a piece of paper from 1982. 

Our Marriage Worked on Leverage

Looking back, our marriage wasn’t built on grand romantic gestures, we had them but we weren’t built on them.  Our marriage was built on hundreds of points of leverage.  Sounds funny doesn’t it?  It sounds a little like the opposite of how a marriage should work. 

It was more like the way two people spend their days making deposits into each other’s lives, without ever really keeping score.  It was about doing something small now that makes life easier for the other person, either now or later.  Where one person spends 30 seconds doing something that saves the other person 10 minutes later.  Or doing something today so the other person doesn’t have to worry about it tomorrow.  Or even noticing a need before it became a problem. 

We mostly fell into a traditional separation of household duties, not in any conscience sort of way but by the things we did not like to do, or the things we didn’t care if we were doing.  I was the trash man, and she was laundry lady.  Although that one came after she told me I’d never have to do laundry if I built her an indoor laundry room in our first house, which did not have one.  She never once ran a mower, weed eater or blower, she had it done when I was deployed and later when we could actually afford it got a service, so I didn’t have to spend two or three hours each weekend futzing with the yard, I enjoyed not having to do it.

Bride rarely had to put gas in her car, and I rarely had to go grocery shopping.  She always made sure coffee was made the night before, and I always made sure we had plenty of paper products.  She keep my underwear rotated and I would tumble her robe on a cold day so when she got out of the shower she would get the prize of a warm robe.  I would bring her favorite treats home and she would do the same with mine.  I have painted every room in every house, except this house, to some of the coolest colors.  She picked colors, I slapped it on the walls and did the fancy trim work.  She designed the coolest pantry ever, and I built it.  It was floor to ceiling shelves that were only wide enough for one thing, no more lost cans of soup behind all the other stuff.  It was brilliant. 

I think we were so good at leveraging the leverage that it became one of those things we probably both took a little bit for granted.  It became a habit, and then almost thoughtlessly invisible.  They were things we just did, on autopilot evidently.  We just stopped noticing, the trash was always gone, the coffee was always made.  The bills were just paid, that was her and her OCD on that contributed to us always have an outstanding credit score.  Dogberts medication was just there, the doctor appointment that just popped onto my calendar.  My laundry laid out, pull my shirts everyday from the right, she would ensure they were arranged.  We didn’t notice because someone we loved was just quietly carrying a bit of weight.  Maybe that’s what successful leverage looked like.   The work disappears and all we are left with is the benefit. 

The funny thing about leverage is that it worked because we weren’t talking about what it really was.  If we were actually keeping score, it would have been something totally different, almost transactional.  Somewhere along the way, those little deposits became part of the landscape of our marriage.  We didn’t thank each other every day for the coffee, clean laundry, full tanks of gas, stocked pantries or warm robes.  We weren’t ignoring them either.  They simply became part of the rhythm of our marriage.  Neither of us woke up thinking, how can I create leverage today?  We just spent years learning where the friction lived in each other’s lives and then got out the emery cloth and smoothed it out best we could.

Then came the day when all that leverage stopped working.  Not because the systems failed, but because the person behind that leverage was gone.  My leverage had nowhere to be applied and hers simply vanished.  The difference was that I could no longer do things for her.  I was only beginning to discover all the things she had been doing for me.  I realized how hard she must have worked to make my life easier.   Things still feel a bit discombobulated.  Trying to remember what order to hang my shirts in after washing them.  For example, since we were dating I never once picked a frame for my glasses.  Mostly because I don’t have to look at them, so I just let her pick ones she liked since she was the one looking.  I have done that now, I think she’d like the ones I picked, but it felt really weird doing it without her.

I keep finding fulcrums with no lever everywhere.  I have to pay attention to ensure the bills are paid on time.  I coordinate and make all my own appointments now and make sure I get them on the calendar.  And yes, I have botched several of those.  Shirts just hanging in the closet in the order in which I should wear them.  Socks knotted together, not rolled together because that stretches out the band.  She always folded my underwear, but not her own.  I stopped folding mine, no one to impress with my wrinkle free underwear.  None of those things happened magically.  They happened because she loved me enough to keep paying attention.

Leverage was all about our love for each other and our attempts to make each other’s day a tiny bit easier.  We joked about leverage a lot but at the end of the day, leverage was about the countless little acts that took a tiny bit of effort from one of us that removed a little bit of friction from the other one’s day.  We spent nearly forty years learning where friction existed in each other’s lives and working it smooth whenever we could.  We called it leverage.  Looking back now, the little acts were the lever, but the fulcrum was love.  It turns out love looked a lot like leverage.  And for nearly 40 years, we got to be each other’s.   

The First 100 Days

People like milestones.  The first 100 days of a Presidency.  The first 100 days of a new CEO.  The first 100 days of a major project.   Me being me, I like to count things so as of today, I’ve been a widower for 100 days.  It still feels very weird to call myself that, and I think that is the first time I have typed it.  WEIRD!  Anyway, I can’t say I’d recommend the role or the title. 

A hundred days feels like it should be enough time to have some answers.  Long enough to figure out a few things.  But the one thing I have learned is that grief does not give a shit about 100 days, or any calendar dates either.  Some days feel normal.  Other days a song, a picture, and old text message have knocked me to my knees.  I’ve spent 100 days laughing at memories, crying over memories and doing both at the same time.  That’s what a widower does I guess, see aforementioned comment on not recommending it. 

Over the last hundred days I’ve sifted through thousands of pictures, electronic and printed.  I’ve listened to songs that have become time machines and others that have become anthems.  I’ve told Bride stories and I’ve heard new Bride stories and rediscovered a few stories I had forgotten all together.  I thought I was looking for comfort.  What I found was something else, I found proof.  Proof we had a great marriage.  Proof we laughed a lot at a lot of different things.  Proof we had far more adventures than I remembered.  Proof that the years together we were blessed with were even richer than they felt while we were living it.  We started as friends in what we called the anti relationship.  Looking back I think that lack of pressure became one of the foundations of our success as partners.  

The thing about evidence is that it lives in the details.  Somewhere in the thousands of pictures was another picture of Bride making a face at the camera because she hated posed pictures.  And then there were text exchanges that would make absolutely no sense to anyone else but had me laughing out loud anyway.  Tiny moments that, when woven together, told a bigger story.  The puppy love from those early days eventually became much deeper.  We wore our marriage like an old shirt.  Soft, comfortable and known in ways we can’t know new shirts.  We knew the story behind each stain, every loose thread and every hole.  The knowing was what made it so comfortable.

The second thing I learned is that grief doesn’t move in a straight line.  Finding all of that proof didn’t make the hurt smaller.  That surprised me.  I think I expected memories to provide comfort.  Instead, they sharpened the loss.  The more evidence I found of how wonderful our life was, the more obvious her absence became.  Every picture I found of us laughing carried another message right behind it.  You don’t get to do this anymore Smitty.  And that fucking sucks.  Early on I think I was expecting this grief journey to be like a recovery journey.  Where ya start in a bad place and gradually move towards a better one.   Grief has not worked that way. 

It feels less like a straight line and more like the tide.  Some days are calm, some days it feels like a rip tide carrying me out into water I don’t recognize.  What I started to realize is that the hard days don’t mean I’m moving backwards.  Most of the time they mean I’ve stumbled across something important.  A memory, a picture, a story, or some other piece of evidence of the life we built together.  One hundred days in, I have stopped measuring success by whether a day hurts.  The hurt comes on its own schedule, and I don’t have access to change the cadence.  What matters is what comes with the hurt.  More often than not, it brings a memory worth keeping. 

Which leads me to the third thing I’ve learned.  Memories are both medicine and salt.  I used to think memories were just something we held onto.  A collection of stories and moments we can take out and enjoy whenever we need them.  What I’ve learned is that memories are far more powerful than that.  They can heal and hurt at exactly the same time.  Through all the photos, text messages emails, social posts and all the other little breadcrumbs of our life, I have laughed so hard I couldn’t see straight.  Others hit me like a train on a mission and others managed to do both within moments of each other.

A picture of us on Canon Beach when we came out for my interview for the OPB gig reminds me of how much fun we had.  It also reminds me there won’t be any more new adventures with her.  A recording of her from when dear friends visited lets me hear her voice, and her laugh.  It also reminds me how long it has been since I heard that in real life.  Stories from friends let me see her through someone else’s eyes, and that is just as beautiful.  It also hurts.  The gift and cost arrive together, damn it.  I am starting to understand why memories can feel so confusing.  We tend to think happiness and sadness are opposites.  In grief they are more like roommates. 

For most of my life I have assumed the goal was to make sadness smaller.   What I am slowly learning is that sadness isn’t crowding out happiness.   The sadness exists because of the happiness.  One turns out to be evidence of the other.   There are days it would be easier not to look.  Easier to not open the photo album.  Easier to not play the song.  Easier to not revisit the conversation.  But every time I do, I discover something waiting for me on the other side.  A laugh I needed, a story I forgot, another piece of proof. 

Looking back I finally understood why I kept digging.  I told myself I was looking for memories because I was afraid of losing them.  Afraid if I didn’t gather up every picture, every text message, every story, some piece of Bride might slowly fade away.  I think part of me was afraid time would sand off the edges.  That years from now I’d remember the outline of our life together and lose the details.

What I discovered was that the details were everywhere.  In pictures, in text messages, in stories, in thousands of ordinary moments I had completely forgotten.  The evidence wasn’t fragile, it was overwhelming.  And maybe this is the biggest thing the first 100 days have taught me.  Grief doesn’t move in a straight line.  Memories can heal and hurt at the exact same moment.  And love leaves an evidence behind.  When I started digging through our life together in pictures, I thought I was looking for memories.  What I found was proof.  Proof what we had was real.  Proof that it mattered, and proof I was luckier than most. 

A hundred days wasn’t enough to find the answers, but it was enough to remind me how damn lucky I was and how grateful I am.

Damn, I miss that Gurl

This was from when we said our vows again at 20 years in.  Here is a link to what I wrote about that then.  I hadn't read that for a while, it made me cry.

https://mroatmealsoratories.blogspot.com/2010/09/i-recently-experienced-most-special-day.html

A Tough Few Days, A Wonderful Life

Sometimes a single picture is all it takes to ruin your day.   On Thursday morning I saw a picture come up in the Facebook memories thing of Bride.  She of course was beautiful but also was very happy in the picture.  Not sure what were doing or where we were going but she was happy about it.  That was the start of a spiral for me and I took the day off.  I spent all day perusing digital photos in my phone and hers.  We shared so many memories and so many experiences and so many adventures together.  Then on Friday I remembered that I had set both our phones up years and years ago to automatically upload our photos to a drop box account.  Pretty much every picture either one of us took since 2007/2008 was there.

Friday, I spent the day digging through even more memories in digital format.  I found so many pictures, or her, of us, and of us with family and friends.  I sent out a few to folks who were in them, I laughed and cried and did a lot of both.  One of the things that made me laugh was how many selfies she took of herself.  One of two things was happening, I’m pretty sure.  I’m pretty sure she was using her phone as a mirror and just hit the button.  The other one is, and this makes me laugh, is that she would take pictures to send to her friends or sisters to get their opinion on a new hair style, or new earrings or blouse. 

Hahaha, she had a face she made when she took those pictures, I’m not sharing em but for those who got them, you know what I’m talking about.  What struck me rummaging through our life in pictures wasn’t the pictures themselves.  It was that each one represented a tiny moment in her day that she thought was worth sharing with someone she loved.  There must have been hundreds of them.  Looking through them felt less like looking at selfies and more like seeing little glimpses of her personality scattered across the years.  The overwhelming takeaway was how much fun she was having, whether trying on earrings, showing off a new haircut or taking a picture for no reason at all.  Bride just looked happy in all of them. 

We watched the sunset a lot together, our favorite place was a park with a boat ramp that was close to our home in Jax.  We watched sunrises together but not as much, she was less a morning person than me.  So many moments where she’d be wearing that beautiful smile.  I swear I can hear that laughter coming from her, the laughter that was so contagious, and that I loved.  Looking at picture after picture I realized we spent an awful lot of time just sitting next to each other watching the sun go down and dumbasses trying to get their boats loaded up.  We enjoyed those things, of course, but at the end of the day, we just liked hanging with each other.

I had also completely forgotten how many tiaras she owned.  Apparently, it was a shocking number.  I even got her one that spelled out Bride that was bedazzled.  I remember once we were out to dinner and she had a pretty festive one on, the waitress asked what the occasion was.  With a straight face, and a tiara on her head, she says “why would you ask that?”  That created an awkward moment, and she never acknowledged it was anything but normal for her to have it on.  Looking through all those pictures, I realized the tiaras were probably not about the tiaras.  They were just another example of Bride being Bride.  If she thought something was fun, or cool, she did it.  She wasn’t one for waiting for permission or worrying about whether anyone might think it was silly, she just enjoyed it.

I found one picture of when we redid our bathroom and were hanging a big mirror up.  Well before we did, we decided to sign and date the wall for someone in the future to find.  She signed hers with Ham, a nickname she ended up with when we were still dating that stuck all the way through.  I think I have written about her being called Sam by her family.  I learned from her older sister the origin story of that at her celebration of life.  Anyway, I called her honey a lot, and one time I couldn’t get Sam or Honey out and voila, the first Ham was born.  That eventually turned into Hamster.  

Those were a couple of my pet names I had for her.  We’d say Ham and Kins, together again any time we got back to together after being apart.  I got a Tee shirt made at a shop in the mall that said “Smittykins little Hamster”.  Looking at that picture just reinforced how much of our marriage existed in a language that probably sounded ridiculous to everyone else.  Nicknames, phrases, inside jokes, little traditions that developed over the years we spent together.  We built an entire vocabulary that only we knew.  At the time it felt completely normal to us.  Looking back, those little things were a big part of what made our relationship uniquely ours.

Looking back, I realized the nose ring was a lot like the tiaras.  Just one more example of Bride being Bride.  Most people spend their lives worrying about what others think about them, not Sandy.  She instead spent her time deciding what sounded fun and doing that instead.  Looking at those pictures reminded me that Bride was never done becoming herself.  She gave herself permission to enjoy her life in a way that I always admired and tried to emulate.

Saturday, I dug out some boxes of actual pictures from dating back to before we got married.  Pictures of us when we all lived in the barracks and spent time at the rec center, playing pool, cooking on the pit and playing one handed volley ball.  I also remember making some pretty big breakfasts over there as well.  Two kids, with no idea where life would take us.  We often wondered about the folks we were stationed with, if any of them could have predicted we would have made it.  Looking at those pictures now, I am not sure we could have imagined all the places we would go, all the people we’d meet or all the memories we would make together. 

This picture stood out more than most for a few reasons.   

First, this was her burfday in 2025 and it was one of the ones we were not together.  She of course had a taira on.  And she was also in the hospital in Texas, she had fallen and bonked her head, I went when that happened but because they had to drill holes in head to relieve the pressure, it was scary.  She also could not could fly back with me to Oregon right away, and I had to work. 

None of that is what caught my eye in this picture though.  What jumps out to me is her face.  She was getting a present, or as she called them prizes.  She loved prizes.  There was something wonderfully childlike about the way she reacted when she got a prize, regardless of what it was.  For a little while she’d light up like a kid on Christmas morning.  Looking at that picture now, I can still see that joy.  I loved that about her.  And if I am being honest, the thought of never experiencing that again makes my heart hurt. 

I went on a scavenger hunt looking for memories because I was missing her.  What I ended up finding was overwhelming evidence that we had a wonderful, ridiculous and joyful life together.  Not a perfect life, not a storybook life.  It was simply just our real life.  A life filled with laughter, adventures, love, family, friends, and countless little moments that seemed ordinary at the time, but now mean everything.  I guess that’s the price of admission, missing them when we loved them so much.  But after spending a few days wandering through our memories, I can honestly say it was worth every penny and I would gladly pay it again.  Because the truth is, I am so grateful for the time we got together.

Damn it, I miss her.  Man did we have a hell of an adventure.    

Grief is Love with Nowhere to Go

I always have music going, and lately I have ventured out from my normal playlists a bit.   A couple of songs in particular have been swirling around in my head.  They are very different songs, but they all seem to speak to the same truth.  Eventually life strips away everything that doesn’t matter.  

The “Last Phone Call” by Buster Michaels tells the story about a man who knows he is dying and gets one last chance to call the people he loves.  For me, I didn’t really get that.   I did speak to Bride somewhere between a few minutes and 3 hours before she passed.  Neither of us knew it would be our last phone call.  Neither of us knew that our last words to each other would be “I love ya damn it”.  It wasn’t a dramatic conversation.  There were no profound declarations or final goodbyes.  It was an ordinary day filled with ordinary words about ordinary life. 

If I had a dime for every time since April that I have thought, I can’t wait to tell Bride about this, I could probably retire.  Not because anything major happened.  Mostly it was about the mundanity of the day to day of our lives.  A picture going through the car wash.  A ridiculous billboard on the side of the road.  Some dumb shit Larry did or progress on the Galaxie.  Some success, some stumble, or just a funny story at work.  Nothing that mattered would have made the evening news.  Every one of them mattered enough that I wanted to share it with her. 

I find myself reaching for my phone a lot thinking about a quick text or call.  Haha, she would also include a weird looking clown emoji in texts.  That of course was in addition to hearts and emojis of love.  My first instinct when seeing a dumbass doing dumbass things is to call her or at least get a picture for her.  The love still needs somewhere to go, and my reflex is to share it with her.   In many ways, I hope that reflex to share with her never goes away.

“Grief Is Only Love” by Stephen Wilson is another one that keeps getting stuck in my head lately.  The title alone hits me hard, because it strips away all the bullshit and condenses grief down to its simplest form.  I have heard grief described as a separate emotion.  I am not sure that’s right.  Maybe grief is just love after love loses its address.    

All the things that come to mind that are connected to my loss aren’t the big things.  They are the places that love used to go, every day.  Text messages, phone calls, and random stories.  The constant stream of little obscure moments that made up our life together.  Love is still here, the need to share it is still here.  The only thing different is the person I spent a lifetime sharing those moments with isn’t here to receive them.

Maybe that's why grief can feel so strange. Nothing is wrong with the love. The love is doing exactly what it has always done. It's reaching outward. It's looking for the person who has been on the other end of the conversation for years.  On April 21^st, the conversation ended.  The love didn’t.  It still shows up every day looking for somewhere to go.  The love is still expecting someone to be on the other end laughing at the punchline.

All of this reminded me of the funeral scene in Waking Ned Devine.   Jackie said that the words that are spoken at a funeral are spoken too late for the man who is dead. What a wonderful thing it would be to visit your own funeral. To sit at the very front and hear what was said, maybe even have a little cry yourself.  She would have had a lot more funny stories than I shared at the service.  And truth be told, she probably would have told them better.   

He spoke about growing old together, and when they laughed, they were young again.  He wrapped that up by saying his friend was a great man and thanked him for being his friend.  Sandy and I grew old together, and we were young again when we laughed, which we did a lot.  If she could hear me now, I wanna say you were a great, friend, lover, partner in crime, and I wanna thank ya for picking me as your life partner.

The funny thing is, I still find myself wanting to tell her all of that, and more.  Grief hasn’t changed the message, it has only changed where I send it.  Maybe Stephen Wilson Jr. has it right.  Maybe grief really is just love.  Love that still expects somebody to be on the other end of the conversation. 

On April 21^st the conversation ended.  The love did not - Damn it!!  

The Day I Took Off the Necklace

For those who don’t know, two days after Bride passed, I went to a pawn shop and bought a necklace.  For those who know me, you know I am not a jewelry type dude, I don’t even wear a watch.  The only thing I have worn, every day, was my wedding ring.  It might seem weird, like it did for me, to buy one.  I needed a place to keep her rings, somewhere close.  I have not taken those rings off, not for sleeping, not for working on the Galaxie, or showering, not once.

We always started at pawn shops when looking for jewelry, one of her sets was from a pawn shop.  She wore only that for a very long time.  When we were in Oregon, I had another one made for her.  She wanted a wide band with a square diamond.  I found the ring, a wider man’s gold band, and I liked the look of it.  Then I found a pair of solitaire earrings that looked perfect, setting and all.  The jeweler made them for a customer who never came back.  I convinced him to break up the pair, snip off the post, and solder one directly on the band, and voila, a ring for Bride.  

It helped me a lot in the days since then.  Without really thinking about it, touching those rings became part of how I moved through my grief.  First thing I touched when I woke up.  The last thing I touched before going to sleep.  And a hundred times in between.  In meetings, driving down the road, sitting alone in the house when it was quiet.  When my fingers found those rings, somehow everything felt a bit steadier.

After a while I stopped paying attention to how often I touched them.  Reaching for them had become automatic.  For 87 days my hand found them without thinking about it.  First thing in the morning, last thing at night and a hundred times between.  If you had asked me when I bought that necklace if there would ever be a day when I didn’t need to reach for those rings, I’d have said there wasn’t a snowballs chance in hell. 

Sometime this afternoon it occurred to me that I hadn’t touched the rings all day.  It felt a little strange.   For the last 87 days my hand found them without even thinking.  My first reaction was something was wrong.  Not with the necklace.  With me.  Had I just been too busy to notice?  Too distracted?  Was I getting used to grief the same way you stop noticing  a wedding ring after wearing it for years?   I wasn’t sure I liked any of those answers.  I reached up and touched them, and they were exactly where they’ve been.  Same necklace, same rings, same bit of comfort that carried me through some very hard days.

But something was different.  I shifted over to one of my ponder chairs and spent some ponder time on that thought.  The longer I sat with it, the harder it was to believe something was wrong.  Then it occurred to me that maybe I had been looking at this backwards.  The necklace was never carrying Bride.  It was carrying her rings.  Bride was in a thousand other places.  She was in the stories I tell.  The habits we built together over nearly 40 years.  The little phrases I still catch myself saying because she used them so often.  The way I see the world.  The way I show love.  And the way I go through my days, trying to spool more good into the universe than I do negative.  Those things defined who we were.

She is in every room of this house, not because her things are here, but because our life was happening here.  She is in the Galaxie because every decision I make on that car was shaped by something we dreamed about or planned together.  She is baked into my routines.  Hell, she is in some of the sentences I write without even realizing it.

The necklace has done exactly what I needed it to do.

In those first days, when the loss felt so overwhelming that I needed something tangible to hold on to, something to anchor me, and it gave me that.  Every time my fingers found those rings, it reminded me that what we had was real.  That she was real.  That nearly four decades together actually happened.  Today I realized that I didn’t need a tangible thing to remind me of her.  Not because I miss her less.  Not because I loved her less.  And certainly not because I had forgotten her.    

The truth was exactly the opposite.  Somewhere between day one and day 87 since she passed, I think I finally understood something I probably should have known all along.  Bride was never hanging around my neck.  She had already worked her way into every part of who I am. 

The necklace was carrying her rings.  I will be carrying her for the rest of my days.  So, this evening, I took it off.  It now sits in a small dish, made by a friend after she passed, on my nightstand. 

Somehow, Bride doesn’t feel any farther away.