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.

Smitty’s Technology Free Zone

You probably would not expect the average Chief Technology Officer to have a place called the Technology Free Zone.  Truth be told, I have always had a complicated relationship with average and normal.  If you have known me for more than 10 minutes, you already know that I have never really done normal in any aspect of my life. 

The Technology Free Zone isn’t complicated.  It’s just my garage.  It is a place where the only thing asking for my attention is whatever old assed thing I happen to be tinkering with.     There are no software compatibility questions, no firmware updates, and no Docker servers.  Just an old tube radio providing the soundtrack while I work. 

In a world that seems determined to demand my attention every few seconds, the garage asks only one thing of me.  When I walk out there, it asks me to be absolutely present.  It does not matter if I am building a table, restoring an old drill press, or wrenching on a car.  It is one of my Zen spots for sure.

These days, the thing dominating the garage is a 1963 Galaxie Convertible.  Bride and I had agreed to do a bunch of work to improve reliability, even setting aside the funds to do it.  I’ve gotten the rear suspension and drive train removed.  I have most of the new parts and most of the ones staying are cleaned up.  That comes with a tediousness that I find relaxing.  Scraping off decades of mung, and I am not talking about the small green legume.  This work takes zero brain power, it just takes doing the dang thing. 

This work is quite the opposite of my job.  That revolves around solving problems with knowledge.  My Galaxie cares little about how smart I am.  And as a certain small green Jedi once taught an entire generation, there are moments in life when less thinking and more doing is exactly what is required.  That is the way of things in my garage.

Bride’s opinion of this kind of work was pretty straightforward.  “Why do you even like doing this?” she’d ask.  “It looks like a giant pain in the ass.” And if I were only looking at a pile of greasy road caked suspension parts on the bench, it was hard to argue with her assessment.  The best answer I ever came up with was that this kind of work doesn’t ask me anything other than being present. 

The Jalopy parts don’t care about my title.  They don’t care about strategy documents, budgets, or technology roadmaps.  The only thing the parts care about is whether I am willing to spend the time to clean them up and put them back together correctly.  If I am being honest, I don’t really enjoy the cleaning parts, nobody does.  What I do enjoy is the space just doing the dang thing creates.  It gives my brain a place to land.  Mindlessness.  There isn’t much room for worrying about tomorrow when you’re focused on a wire brush defunkifying a part that has been collecting crud since John F. Kennedy was in office.

I have done this kind of work on cars for a long time and have come to love it in an odd Smitty kinda way.  But this time feels different.  Somewhere in the methodicalness, between the scraping, cleaning and painting of all the bits, it occurred to me that the Galaxie wasn’t the only thing being repaired and restored. 

I don’t mean restored in any sort of Hollywood ending kinda way, we all know real life doesn’t work like that.  And there is no replacement part for losing someone you love.  What I mean is simpler.  Somewhere along the way I had lost track of how much I enjoy the process of making something better with my own two hands.  The Galaxie wasn’t fixing my grief, it wasn’t fixing my loneliness, and it wasn’t going to bring Bride back.  Maybe that’s why I keep showing up.  I believe both of us still have a few miles left in us.

The other night I was sitting in the garage ponder chair waiting on paint to dry on a couple of parts.  Just me, sitting and staring.  Not because they were particularly impressive, they weren’t.  I was staring and pondering on their transformation.  From a grungy old funkified part a week ago to now a shiny freshly painted part, actually it was matte paint but you get the idea.  No one but me will probably ever see them once I reinstalled them under the car, but I know what they look like.  Nobody restores a car for what it is today.  We do it because we know it can become tomorrow.  Every part cleaned, every bushing replaced, every hour spent in the garage is a small vote for a future that does not yet exist.  Maybe that’s what the Technology Free Zone has really been giving me all along.  Not an escape from technology, but a place quite enough to notice I was changing too.  

I can almost hear Bride asking the question again.  “You spent how many hours cleaning that up?”  She never understood the appeal.  Then again, I guess she didn’t have to.  She understood me, and that was enough.  Well, that and she loved riding around in this convertible. 

There is still a long way to go on the old Girl.  There are boxes of parts yet to be opened, even more yet to be ordered.  I am sure there will be a few surprises around the corner, that is just how it works with old cars.  So, it is with life as well, more boxes, more surprises.  For now, I am content to spend a few hours in the garage, listening to an oldies station on my old tube radio and working on whatever bit is next in line to be worked on.

The goal started as improving the reliability of a 1963 Galaxie 500 convertible.  These days, I am not entirely sure that is the only thing being restored.  I just know that every part cleaned, every bolt turned, and every evening spent in my Technology Free Zone leaves something a little better tomorrow than it was today. 

The Galaxie isn’t finished.  Neither am I.

Through My Eyes

There was always one gift I was not able to give to Bride, one that I wanted to give her more than anything else.  It wasn’t about more money, a bigger house, better health or oddly enough, more time.  I would have given anything to give her the ability to see herself through my eyes, even if only for a few minutes.  Because if she could have seen that, she would have understood what the rest of us knew, that she was a beautifully amazing human in every way that could be measured.

There were times when she would say something about herself that absolutely broke my heart.  Not because it was true, but because it wasn’t even close to being true.  There were times that she would talk about her self worth, her appearance, or whether she still mattered.  I would sit there wondering how in the world could this woman I love sit there describing herself as something completely different than the woman in front of me.  Sometimes the stories we tell ourselves in our head are quite different than reality, it can be an absolutely vicious cycle.

What she sometimes struggled to understand was that nobody else saw the perceived flaws she worried about.  We both dealt with social anxiety but hers often turned excitement into worry, even when we were headed to spend time with friends.  While she focused on everything she thought was wrong with herself, the rest of us saw something entirely different.  

There were thousands of times when I tried to convince her otherwise.  I told her she was beautiful every morning, actually each morning I kissed her and said morning beautiful.  I reminded her of all the people who loved her for who she was.  I pointed out things she did for others without a second thought.  I would share bits of the conversations that happened when she stepped away or out of the room.  Everyone knew how kind she was, how funny she was, and how much they enjoyed being around her.  No one cared much about the length of her hair, or the color.  No one cared about how much she did or didn’t weigh or the wrinkles on her face.  And somehow, my words never seemed to carry the weight I wanted them to, nor were they able sneak past her wall in those moments. 

We would be getting ready to go to see dear friends and she would stand there criticizing herself from head to toe.  Hair won’t do what it’s supposed to do, shoes don’t match the outfit or the outfit was just not flattering, or this thing or the other.  Meanwhile I just stood there reminding her that she was an absolute knockout.  And then I would remind her these were some of our best friends and they will not give a shit about any of those things, they will be happy to see ya, get to hug your neck and hang out. 

Every single time it was the same story.  We get home or everyone leaves and she would tell me how much fun she had.  She would talk about the conversations, the laughter, and how good it felt to spend time with folks she cared deeply about.  And for a moment, the doubts would be quiet.  And for a time, the woman everyone saw would step forward.  Pure Bride, funny, kind, and completely herself.

The hardest part for me wasn’t trying to understand why she felt that way. 

The hardest part was knowing there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to fix it. 

Even after 38 years together, this was one battle I could never win.  Not because she didn’t trust me or because she didn’t believe I loved her.  She knew both of those things beyond any shred of doubt.  It was simple, I was trying to compete with a voice that had lived in her head longer than I had.  

Looking back now, I still find myself wishing for the impossible.  I wish I could have handed her my eyes for just five minutes.  Not forever, not even for a day.  Just long enough for her to see what we all saw.  The woman whose friends adored her.  The woman who made people laugh when they needed it the most.  The woman who somehow made everyone around her feel welcome, accepted and loved.  The woman who mattered far more than she ever gave herself credit for. 

If there is one gift I still wish I could have given Bride, it would have been the chance to see herself through my eyes, just once. 

I honestly think she would have been surprised by what she saw.

POLIO!!

Well, I suspect that got your attention, at least those that know what that is.  Before anyone gets their dander up, this post is not about the disease, for us it was one of those funny little things married folks say.  For the record, neither of us ever used it to make fun of anyone who had actually been touched by that horrific disease.  It was just one of those absurd phrases that somehow became part of the Smith family vocabulary.  In our house, calling polio first was a legally binding declaration that the person who called it didn’t have to do shit, and the other one had to do anything and everything they wanted.

I have no idea how we came to play that game or even when, but we did for as long as I can remember. There were no boundaries that were out of bounds.  No time of day that it couldn’t be called.  No situation or location that it couldn’t be called.  It was a universal thing, calling Polio meant you were done doing any damn thing else.  The statute of limitations lasted until the following day.  When one of us called Polio, that was it, no discussion, no arguments, it was full stop.

There were times when Polio was the very first word I heard when I woke up.  We were not allowed to call pre-polio though, meaning you could not call polio for the next day.  It was a game of strategy, the earlier ya called it, the better your odds were of having a day of luxurious laziness, in whatever form you wanted that to happen.  It could be having your ass glued to the couch, having the other fetch snacks, drinks, Dairy Queen runs or whatever else your suddenly important ass might require from the other.

In other situations, it was deployed as an emergency measure.  One of us might have spent the morning doing chores, mowing the grass, cleaning, running errands, doing laundry or any of the other shit adults are supposed to be doing.  When one of us hit a wall, we’d look at the other and quickly say polio!!  And just like that, the quickest draw determined how much better their day was about to become.  Cleaning the pool could wait.  Dishes could wait.  The world would somehow continue to rotate without our participation.

Bride was a Billy the Kid kinda polio caller, dangerously quick and deadly accurate.  It could be first thing in the morning, could be while we were at breakfast, could be while we were in the pool and she wanted a bullfrog, that’s a drink.  I don’t want ya to think I was a pokey butt about it, I was more Marshal Dillon speed.  Still quick enough to survive and thrive but Billy the Kid I was not.  I suspect over time it was pretty equal in who worked for who for the rest of the day, her probably with a slight edge. 

The best polio days, if there could be such a thing, were those days neither of us had a damn thing that absolutely needed doing.  We’d spend the day taking turns having polio while we were watching movies, taking naps or making unnecessary Dairy Queen runs.  Basically, being slugs and completely unproductive members of society.  Once when we both had polio, our niece made that run for us from across town.  She was like one or two people who knew the game because they lived with us for a while.  I read that story at Bride’s celebration of life, Niece had shared it with me to read.  Looking back, I am pretty sure we were better at doing nothing than most other people are, I’d go as far as saying we were world champion polio players.

Polio was but one little corner of the ecosystem of hilarity that the two of us created for ourselves.  I guess every couple that lasts long enough develops their own secret language.  Not a real one, their own personal shorthand.  The little phrases, private jokes, nicknames for each other (and body parts), references no one else gets, and rules that make no sense to anyone outside the relationship.  Somewhere along the way, calling polio, became one of ours.  I honestly don’t remember the origin story of it.  I just remember it existed, for as long as I can remember.

Polio was never really about getting out of chores.  We both worked hard.  We went to work, we paid the bills, fixed the broken things, took the trash out and worried about all the things adults worry about in their day to day of doing the dang thing.  Polio was about permission.  Permission to stop down.  Permission to be lazy for a bit.  Permission to laugh at the thought that every minute of every day needed to be productive.  It was permission to choose another movie, a nap, a DQ Oreo blizzard or just each other.

I never once considered that one day, our entire language would go extinct or at least become orphaned.  The one we spent decades building.  The construction materials were inside jokes, nicknames, shared references, and ridiculous words like polio.  It feels weird, all the words are still here.  All the jokes are still here.  It is just me now that understands what they mean.  It is like being the keeper of the stories that no one else knows, I have written about that before, but this feels different. The stories are still here, but the language they were written in has disappeared.   

I have caught myself, on weekends mostly, thinking about it.   There seems to be more things to do than I can keep up with, and somehow, I find myself thinking this would be a perfect polio day.  Something stupid on TV to look at, a nap perhaps or a chocolate malt from dairy queen.  That familiar thought, everything can wait until tomorrow.  Then it hits me, Bride isn’t here for the quickdraw.

I guess that is going to be a big part of the ride grief has in store for me.  It isn’t just that Bride is gone, it’s the thousands of tiny things that only existed between us.  Traditions, shared jokes, secret languages.  Probably no one will ever call polio around here again, it is a cherished part of our story.   For all the years we spent doing the dang thing, we made sure we had time for silliness and dumbassedness.  I mean, we created our own damn language.  We made our own rules and lived by them.  We built our own little world, and we loved every minute of living in it.  

And it makes me laugh to think if somehow Bride were reading this, she’d beat me one last time – POLIO