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

Knowing Everything I Knew, I Would Still Choose Bride

Even now, knowing how the story ends, it would still be her that I chose, EVERY SINGLE TIME!  The older we got, the more we knew life wasn’t about choosing someone once.  Love for us was about choosing each other again, and again and again.  Anyone can choose someone when they’re dating.  The real choosing starts after the puppy love, when we have seen each other tired, stubborn, scared shitless, imperfect, hurt, frustrated, grieving, aging, and just the unvarnished humans we were.  The funny thing is that the more I learned about Bride, the easier the choosing got. 

I got to thinking about this after listening to a song sung by Chris Stapleton and P!nk called “I will choose you a thousand times”.   I felt like during Bride and my time together this song could have been one of our anthems.   When we started seeing each other we were convinced this was nothing more than a fling.  We agreed that we would just be fuck buddies, her term, until we stopped having fun, and we never did.  When she got out of the Navy, she was going back to Texas, and that was that.  I learned much later that in the beginning she was afraid of us.  She had had her heart broken and she was afraid I would end up with the power to do that to her, and she did not want anyone to have that again, ever again.

We had our share of pain over the years.  We buried parents, and friends.  We worried about money at times.  We bickered about things that felt important in the moment but turned out to be ridiculously stupid minutes later.  We celebrated victories, banged through the potholes of life as we watched each other become more fully ourselves than the ones who started that “fling” all those years ago.  Through all of that journey, neither of us woke up one day and decided to stop choosing.   We used to joke that no one else would have either one of us, so it had to be us.    

The longer we were together, the less effort either of us spent putting up the façade we thought the other one wanted, or needed.  The filters went away.  The rough edges were exposed, like the opposite of how sanding a big ass chunk of walnut works.  The habits became the rhythm of our lives, and that included all the quirky, idiosyncratic nonsense we both carried.  Along the way, I stopped falling in love with the version of Bride I met, and simply fell in love with her, all of her. 

One of the things I learned was that Bride didn’t need saving from any of it.  She was more than capable of taking care of herself, and usually that is how that worked.  She was strong, courageous, independent, and stubborn as hell when she needed to be, and absolutely certain when she thought she was right, even if she wasn’t.  The funny thing was that the longer I knew her, the more those things became the very reason I chose her instead of reasons not to.

That stubborn bit, I bumped into that just a bit before she passed.  It had been a while, so it surprised me.  We had talked about putting a pool in our back yard, to the point of setting aside some cash to do it.  When the quotes came in and plans were sketched out, I started getting cold feet.  She wanted a pool back there.  I talked about the investment never being recouped, as is the way with pools, I talked about the economy, the length of time we might live here and how long we would use it.  All the logical things to think about, she didn’t care.

At the end of our last discussion, we were both exasperated and were probably talking past each other.  I went downstairs for a bit and when I came up, she was nowhere to be found.  We have an app on our iPad that tracks the locations of our phones.  I had never used it before and just tried calling her, but there was no answer each time.  I texted her and finally she texted back, she had gotten a hotel room and was going to stay there that night. I called until she answered, and she had the Terri Clark song, “I just wanna be mad” song playing in the background.  She was mad for a while, then I went up and we talked and then laughed and then came home.  We paid for a hotel room she was in for less than an hour. 

Looking back on that night now, it makes me smile.  Today what I remember most about that night, that right thar was Bride being Bride.  Determined, stubborn, certain and unwilling to back down when she believed in something.  It is silly little things like that that made choosing her so freaking easy.    

We always remembered that in situations like that, it was not me against her, or her against me.  It was us against the problem.  Some days we were better at remembering that than others.  But each and every time, one of us would play the “I just wanna be mad” card for the other one.  The goal was never to win an argument.  The goal, above all else, was preserving our relationship, making it easy to keep on choosing the other one.

Looking back now, I think one of the things I loved the most about Bride was that she never really became someone different.  She simply became more authentically herself over the years.  The directness that felt abrupt at the beginning became one of the things I admired most about her, the zero bullshit game was strong with this one.  The funny thing is that the things that surprised me about Bride in the beginning eventually became the things I treasured most.  Her stubborn streak, her orneriness, and her zero bullshit approach to life, that is what made the choosing easy.

Even now, knowing everything I know, the joy, the pain, the victories, the losses and yes even knowing how the story ends. 

It would still be her.

EVERY SINGLE TIME.

Today, I am Unapologetically Mad as Hell

And maybe that’s exactly where grief decided to take me today, damn it!   After months of sadness, loneliness, and learning how to find the new balance of me, myself, and I.  I did not expect anger to come casually strolling in with boxing gloves on and start throwing punches like Mike fucking Tyson, but here we are, damn it! 

I am not angry at Sandy, at all.  I am not necessarily angry at anyone.  I am angry at the universe for fucking up our plans without consulting us first.  I am angry the world only stopped for a femtosecond.  I am angry that life moves on for everyone else.  I am angry that our lives are so fragile.  Today, isn’t a day for a lesson, or gratitude, or looking for silver linings.  Today is a day for being mad as hell.  Not because I miss her, I miss Bride everyday.  I am mad as hell because there are days when the unfairness of it all hits me like a train and I have no way to deflect and no fucking place to put it.  

Maybe part of what fuels this anger is that I have spent my life fixing things.  Give me a broken machine, struggling system, a worn out engine, a 63 year old car, and I always seem to find a path forward.  This though, is a problem I cannot diagnose, repair, rebuild, or improve, and that pisses me off.  I’m angry that a future we spent decades building vanished before we got to experience it.

I am not angry that Bride is gone, I am angry because she mattered to me.  I am angry because a love like ours deserved more time than we got.  I am angry because a person doesn’t get that kind of love and then simply shrug it off when their human is gone.  Fuck, fuck, fuckity, fuck, FUCK!!

Maybe tomorrow I’ll wake up and feel something different.  Maybe grief will decide to take me somewhere else for a bit.  I am learning not to argue with it, it doesn’t care about no stinking schedule anyway, damn it!!   What I do know is that my Beautiful Bride was worth loving, she was worth planning a future with, and she was damn sure worth being mad as hell about losing that future together.  The anger is there because of the love we had, and that’s what I miss. 

She is supposed to be right there universe.  Damn you!  

So today, I am unapologetically mad as hell.  And that, as Forrest Gump would say, is all I have to say about that!  

Murphy's Maintenance Schedule

As a CTO and a mechanic, I fully understand the importance of preventative maintenance.  Generally speaking, it prevents a lot of corrective maintenance.  The math is pretty simple, whether talking about a TV transmitter, a old Jalopy, a house, a lawn, a table saw, or even ourselves.  When we ignore the maintenance schedules, it never ends well and on top of that, that fucker Murphy will ensure things will happen at the absolute worst moment.  Grief has taught me something I wasn’t expecting.  You can't run yourself indefinitely while deferring maintenance activities.

The funny thing is that I know a lot of people who don’t flush their water heater annually.  At the same time, I know a lot of folks who are pretty disciplined when it comes to their equipment.  Changing the oil when they are supposed to, swapping out the air filter in the HVAC and keeping the yard mowed and wilderness trimmed up.  Those maintenance activities allow us to see worn parts before they fail, keeping Murphy from getting a point in their column.  Inherently we know every piece of machinery keeps score, deferred maintenance always comes due at some point.

For some weird reason, we are terrible at applying that same logic to ourselves, for the most part.  Sure, we get our hair trimmed and keep our fingernails trimmed but it is so easy to ignore various aches and pains.  It’s so easy to postpone that doctor’s appointment.  We convince ourselves that we are simply too busy to deal with those little things because there are bigger things demanding our attention.  And then one day, BAM, one of those little things all of the sudden becomes a big thing.  And all the sudden, were dealing with corrective maintenance instead of just preventing it.

The last few months have given me plenty of opportunities to learn that lesson.  Between grief, work, the Galaxie, the house, and everything else life has thrown my way, Ive become pretty good at focusing on what needs fixed next.  What I haven't been nearly as good at is maintenance activities.  Sure, the truck has had its oil changed, the yard is getting mowed, the wilderness is getting beaten back.  But it feels very reactive, not responsive. 

Which is exactly how I found myself sitting in a message chair getting the Blossom Pedicure this afternoon.  Now if you had told 25 year old Smitty that one day I’d be getting pedicures, driving a convertible, writing about grief and spending evenings talking to a dog named Larry, he’d a laughed you right out of the room.  Hell, he ain’t much better at 61 so… 

It started with some pink stuff applied to my legs.  I have no idea what it was, but in automotive terms I’m fairly certain it was either a cleaner, a lubricant or some sort of surface preparation compound.  No explanation was offered and I wasn’t about to ask, at that point I was committed to the process.  Then came the nail work.  Trimming, cleaning, and what not.  Going barefooted a lot produces what some may call pretty funky dogs.  Then came scrubbing the toes with orange slices, yeah, an actual orange.  Apparently, fruit plays a larger role in modern podiatric maintenance than I’d previously understood.  Then she broke out what could only be called a cordless micro angle grinder.  She inspected my heels and selected an appropriate grit and got to work.  I felt simultaneously judged and professionally respected. 

Then came some purple stuff she messaged into my legs from the knee down.  It has the consistency of wheel bearing grease, with a medium grade abrasive.  If I had to guess, I swear it contained carborundum.  The fact it smelled of lavender suggests my assessment may not be entirely accurate.   Next my feet were sealed inside plastic bags containing orange colored wax.  Oddly enough, this seemed perfectly normal considering the sequence of events that proceeded it.  More message followed, then a bit of color on the big ones, a dark blue and metal flake blue.  An hour and 21 minutes after the process began, my dogs had been cleaned, ground, polished, lubricated, exfoliated, waxed, detailed and possibly ceramic coated.  I paid, tipped in cash and walked out the door feeling like I just visited the coolest service center ever. 

As I walked out to my truck, I found myself laughing at the whole experience.  Not because of the ridiculousness of it.  Not because my dogs looked and felt better than they had any right to.  But for an hour and twenty one minutes, somebody else’s job was to take care of the maintenance.  They may not sound like much, but this is my second ever maintenance of this type and it felt strangely unfamiliar.

The last few months have been filled with fixing things.  Solving problems and making all the decisions that need to be made when your human is no longer with ya.  The wheels keep right on turning.  There is always something that needs attention.  Something broken, something overdue, something demanding to be moved to the top of the list.  Somewhere in there I let myself get worked to the bottom of the list.  Intellectually, it is funny to me.  I would never treat a transmitter that way.  I would not ignore a bearing that is grumbling.  I would not skip an oil change, and I would not look at an obvious maintenance items and say, “I’ll get to that someday.”

Yet in many cases, that is exactly how we treat ourselves, how I was treating myself.  Greif has a way of narrowing our focus.  At first surviving the day is enough.  Later it becomes surviving the week, then the month.  Before ya know it, you’ve become pretty good at enduring and pretty lousy at maintenance.  Maybe that is why the pedicure surprised me.  not because of the orange slices, the wax bags or the miniature angle grinder.  Because for the first time in a while, I was actually performing some maintenance instead of waiting for corrective action.

Early on, Bride would ask why I spent so much time and money maintaining things.  The cars, the tools, the house, the yard, the tractor.  My answer was always the same.  Things last longer when ya take good care of them.  Murphy is still out there.  The Galaxie still needs a lot of work, and my hot water heater needs flushed.  My life did not suddenly become simpler because a nice lady attacked my heels with a cordless angle grinder.   But for once since all of this started, I put myself back on top of the maintenance schedule.

Bride would have found this whole experience hilarious, because it is.  Things last longer when ya take good care of them, period and all stop.  Apparently, that includes old mechanics, widowers and guys with metal flake blue toenails. 

Finding Out What the Words Meant

250 years ago today some folks didn’t just jot down some words, they wrote something bold enough to get them killed, and then they signed it anyway.  It was not a plan, it was not a policy, it was a belief and they would spend the next 8 years of war finding out what those words really meant.  Or as Thomas Paine put it at the time, "these are times that try men’s souls."   Words like “All men are created equal”, “endowed with certain unalienable rights”, and “life liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.  And right alongside them, “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”, and “right to alter or abolish”.  And they needed to explain why, “long train of abuses and usurpations”, and “design to reduce them under absolute despotism”.  And then, at the end when words weren’t enough, “we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor”.

The Declaration of Independence is a hell of document, and I would encourage you to take the time to go and read it again, or for the first time if you never have.   It was a break from the status quo… a refusal to go back.  It was an absolute refusal to continue to accept the inherited systems, we were no longer willing to do things the way things had always been done.  A declaration, with a metaphorical exclamation point that power comes from the people, not the rulers.   The declaration did not build anything.  It simply said that we believe in something different about how power should work. 

And then we had to figure out how to live with it.  Because believing in something is one thing, but once the shooting stops and dust settles, belief does not actually run anything, let alone a country.  It does not resolve conflict, it doesn’t balance power, and it damn sure does not account for the fact that people are well, people.  And people come in good flavors, bad flavors and indifferent flavors.  

Belief can inspire folks, it can unify them around a cause and it can even win a war.  But belief cannot govern anything.  And John Adams understood that too, writing to Abigail after independence day was approved, "I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure, that it will cost us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these states."  The ideas were inspiring.  Living with them will be expensive.

So, they were left with the much harder problem.  Not just defending the idea, but building something that could survive, something that was durable over time.  Something that could take all of that inspirational language about equality, rights and consent and turn it into a system of government that could hold together over time, under pressure and in the hands of imperfect people.  

And here’s the thing, that work did not end in 1787.  The Constitution was not the finish line.  The Constitution was really just the starting gun for a new argument about what those words in the Declaration actually meant.  Over the last 250 years we have debated them, tested them, expanded them, ignored them, defending them and on way more than on occasion, we have fallen short, well short, of the inspiration.  While the words remained the same, we the people were the variable, the wild card in this grand experiment we call a country.  Any old school engineer will tell ya the same thing, the system diagram is usually the easy part.  The unpredictable variable is almost always the human standing next to it.

Time is funny that way.  It has no interest in what sounds good on paper.  Give an idea enough years and enough real world pressure, and it eventually reveals itself, kind of like a diamond – time and pressure.   Every generation gets handed the same box of parts.  The names change, the technology changes, the fashions definitely change.  The questions, however, stay remarkably similar.  What does freedom mean?  Who gets included?  How much power is too much power?  What do we owe one another?  None of us get to skip those questions, not if we are serious about searching for that more perfect union.  We just inherit them, wrestle with them for a while and then hand them off to those in the next generation who they themselves are seeking that more perfect union. 

I’ve spent a lot of time this year pondering on the difference between understanding something and carrying that thing.  Some lessons come from books, some from teachers or mentors, and others that just show up, whether invited or not.  Losing my Beautiful Bride taught me that.  There are words I used my whole life, love, commitment, partnership, grief and loss.  I thought I understood those words.  Then one day I found myself carrying them instead of defining them.  It turns out there is a tremendous difference between understanding a thing intellectually and actually living it.

The more I think about it, the more I wonder if that is what happened between the Declaration and the Constitution.  A group of folks wrote down the words they believed in, then spent years finding out those words actually come with a cost.  Not admiring them, not quoting them, not celebrating them on anniversaries.  Living into them, carrying them.  There is a gulch between simply believing in a thing and waking up every morning being responsible for it. 

One of the harder lessons from this year is realizing that some things are never really finished.  Grief isn’t.  Healing isn’t.  Learning how to live a life you didn’t plan for isn’t.  every day requires a little adjustment, a little recalibration, a little acceptance and a little hope.  The work doesn’t end because we wish it would.  We simply keep showing up and doing the next right thing, and then the next and repeat.  

It seems the American experiment works the same way.  The Declaration wasn’t finished in 1776.  The constitution wasn’t finished in 1787.  The project wasn’t finished after the civil war, the civil rights movement, or even today as we celebrate 250 years.  Each new generation inherits the work, leaves its fingerprints on it, makes a few repairs, and hopefully improves a few things on the journey on our way to that more perfect union.  The project was never the document, the project has always been us.  

250 years later, we’re still in that gap.  We still wrestle with questions about freedom, equality, fairness, opportunity and responsibility.  We have built an extraordinary country, but like the people who came before us, we are still trying to align our attitudes, systems and structures with our ideals.

And if I am being honest, this is the part of that experiment that worries me the most right now.  We have never lacked disagreement in our country.  In fact, disagreement was baked right into the system.  The founders have famously argued with each other constantly, how could we get those amazing founding documents without the tension of debate.  They debated, they compromised, they fought over ideas and occasionally drive each other crazy.  What they seemed to understand was that the person on the other side of the argument was still a key part of the grand experiment.  Lately it feels like we have lost a big chunk of that understanding.  We've become quicker to assume the worst, quicker to question motives, quicker to start with why we can’t instead of how we can.  And much slower to extend empathy to folks who simply see the world differently than we do.

Some days it almost seems against the rules to do that now, at least from my perspective.  It seems like we just talk past or around each other rather than simply listening to understand and speaking our truth responsibly.  We have divided ourselves into various teams, we have subdivided ourselves into groups based on any possible difference.  It seems like we may have forgotten that one of the earliest rallying cries from the American experiment wasn’t about winning an argument.  Above all else, it was about preserving the union, I seem to recall some words about that, united we stand, divided we fall, or something like that.

It feels like we have become very good at identifying what is wrong with everyone else and considerably less interested in examining ourselves.  The declaration speaks of equality, rights, consent and human dignity.  Those ideas require more than laws and institutions.  They require, above anything else, a willingness to see the humanity in one another, even when it feels the gap is too far, especially then.

We have built machines that can answer questions in seconds, we carry supercomputers in our pockets and can communicate with anyone on earth at the mash of a button on our device.  And yet somehow, we still struggle with the same human problems that a bunch of colonists wrestled with 250 years ago.  There are still days when it feels like we are drifting farther away from the simple ideals that formed the foundation of this whole thing.  We are in this together Y’all, that is the only way it works.  That does not mean we have to think alike.  That does not mean we have to vote alike.  We do not have to agree on every issue, that would scary anyway.  The thing it does mean is that we understand that we share ownership on this project.  Self- government only works when the people doing the governing believe that everyone deserves a spot at the table too.

So maybe on our 250^th Burfday, the question isn’t whether we know the words, most of us at least know some of them.  Maybe the better question is whether we are still committed to the dream that literally formed our great union.  Are we still committed to doing the dang thing that comes after the words.  Whether we are still willing to examine where we have succeeded, where we have failed, utterly and otherwise and where there is still work to do.  What parts of that original promise have we fulfilled?  What parts are we still building?  What parts are we tearing down or ignoring?   Truth be told, I am not sure how to answer all those questions.  Some days I think we’re closer than we’ve ever been.  Other days I wonder if we are drifting so slowly into the mirror universe so slowly, we don’t even see it happening. 

Maybe that is what’s been on my mind lately.  Not whether America is perfect, it’s not.  Not whether we’ve succeeded, we haven’t.  not whether we have failed, we haven’t.  The pressing question seems to be whether we are still willing to do difficult things together.  Because 250 years ago a group of folks bet an entire future on the idea, we should also be able to.  And I for one, believe we owe it to them to do our absolute fucking best to ensure the next 250 years are spent chasing that more perfect union.

So, let's go to the workbench and keep chiseling away at it.

Wearing My Years Like an Old Carhartt Jacket

For quite some time I have framed getting older through the deterioration of my body.  The stiffness, the soreness, the slower recovery, and lack of stamina.  I realized on my recent beach time something else about growing older.  Not everyone gets the opportunity to do so,  and bitching about this malady or that one is probably focusing on the wrong bits.  The world spins fast, faster than we want it to most days.  But we keep chasing the things we think are important.  Y’all, not everything needs chasing, there is meaning in the mundane parts of the day to day of our lives.

I am starting to see part of me more clearly than I used to, and I thought I saw it all.  Some of it stuck, some of it didn’t, and some was just noise I carried around longer than I needed to.  I feel like I need to start wearing my years a little more these days.  Not like a weight or burden, but like something that finally fits.  Kinda like that old Carhartt jacket Bride bought for me a hundred years ago.

We often played the game of talking about what we’d be doing had we never met.  Kinda like making up stories about other people when we were people watching, only with our own lives.  That game always made me realize the beauty in the things I missed.  The roads I did not take, the decisions I did not make, they all led to a life that never happened, and I was glad they didn’t.  Playing that game cemented for both of us that a completely random set of lived experiences led us to each other, and we would not trade any of the pain of the journey, because the journey led us to us.

Key bits of our lives, especially the mundane, drive our journey, and so do the big things.  Sometimes it’s the smallest, dumbest moments that end up mattering the most.  For example, had either one of us not ended up in the Navy, our paths would have never crossed.  For me, I skipped school that day in 1982 when I was a junior in high school.  Me and a couple of my buddies were sitting in the front yard smoking pot and drinking Old English 800 through a straw.  Up pulled a little K-car with “US Government” stenciled on the side.  Turns out he was lost and asked how to get to Springfield from here.  My drunk and stoned dumbass said “ya can’t get there from here”.  He jumped out, I thought I was about to get my ass kicked but instead I got talked into joining up.  How fucking random is that?

For Bride, the most courageous woman I have ever met, at the age of 28 she decided the best way to detox from cocaine was to join up and detox in boot camp.  First of all, going to boot camp is hard at any age, but doing it at 28 is really hard.  Layer on detoxing at the same time, holy shitballs Batman, that is courage and perseverance in action.  That is how she lived her whole life though, so looking at it now all I can say is “of course that’s how she detoxed”, there could be no other way for her.  And sometimes I have to stop right there and think about what kind of courage looks like over a lifetime, it was quintessentially her.  And somehow those two random things, 4 years apart, are what allowed us to meet.  That is just nuts.  

That younger version of me still shows up sometimes, cocky and filled with false confidence.  Maybe it was reckless hope, cocksure when I had no cred to back it up.  It’s funny to think back on that kid, and later the man I became.  He still shows up sometimes with his bullshit.  I still listen to him, but I don’t let him drive anymore, mostly cause he was a dumbass.  Don’t get me wrong, I am forever grateful he was the dumbass he was, it led to a life well lived with the most amazing woman ever.  

Time hasn’t taken anything from me, not really.  Not in the ways that matter most.  Time, it’s been refining me.  Softening the edges, slowing me down just enough to finally see clearly.  Finding peace in those places I never stopped in, or simply walked on by on my way to somewhere else.  There was a time when I didn’t know myself nearly as well as I thought I did, I guess that is probably still true now.

My Beautiful Bride saw the loud parts, and the quiet ones.  She said to me on more than one occasion she wished she could know that younger and wilder version of me.  She also appreciated the man I was, the confident version of me and the one still trying to figure my shit out and she was always there to help.  She knew me better than I knew myself, and rest assured better than anyone else knew me, and somehow that never felt like a bad thing.

Ya start to realize something after living a bit of life.  Looking back, it lines up in ways I didn’t see while I was in it. The mess, the dumb decisions, the wrong turns, they all ended up pointing me to here and I would not trade a moment of it.

And yeah, there’s a price that comes with understanding all that.  When you’ve been known the way I was known, when someone really saw you, all of you, and stayed anyway… that does not just disappear, it sticks around.  It shows up at the oddest times, middle of the day, nothing special happening, and it just hits.  Not as loud, not quite as overwhelming, just this quiet steady knowing that we had something real.  

It’s different now, but not gone.  Not really. 

And here is what took me a bit to understand in the fog of grief, our love story doesn’t empty me out.  It fills my heart with love and warmth, even with her absence and I like that. 

New rule, Smitty is going to be wasting a lot less time on things that don’t matter.  Just don’t have the energy or desire to do it anymore.

She was a hottie in white polyester.  She was receiving her Navy Achievement Medal here. 

Turned Up Too Loud

So, I flew back home to Lincoln Friday, and I have been struggling with a lot of different feels.  Some tied to that, others just showing up like they got something to say.   That’s probably not random at all.  Just part of the process.  Either way, they are here and they are loud.  This is by far the most intense the feels have felt since my Beautiful Bride passed.  Today, everything got cranked up to 11, I’m old and don’t like music that loud anymore.

I want to say this first, I felt incredibly supported and loved over those two weeks.  The kind of love and support that only old friends can give.  Some of these folks go back to the early 90’s, Navy days.  I remember their kids being born, and now those kids are grown ass adults.  One day we were smoking ribs, hanging out and I had to go sit on another room.  Just overwhelmed from sharing space with so many folks I love. 

Sharing space like that, chosen family all in one place, is something I haven’t found yet in Lincoln.  And this time it hit different, because it was just me.  No Beautiful Bride.  She was always the life of the party at those sorts of events and that showed up hard.  She loved a great party.  Always quick with a story, or even quicker with the most amazing laugh when other stories were told.  It just felt weird and I feel lonely in a way I hadn’t felt before.   

That led something I wasn’t expecting, guilt.  Which is weird because I don’t really feel guilt, never have, and she figured that out early.  Guilt is an emotion I don’t have much experience with, so it is hitting harder and sticking around longer than other ones I have been cycling through since her death.  I caught myself feeling weird about how long it took for it to show up this strong.

I know grief is a fickle bitch, but I was not expecting it to show up and punch as hard as it has.  It is almost like it picked the one emotion I have the least experience with and decided that was my weak point.  This isn’t to say this hasn’t been hard.  I am only saying I have more experience processing almost every other emotion or feeling.  So maybe it is just an opportunity to practice, which pissed me off because I don’t want to practice on that one, I have lived the better part of my life not feeling guilt and I am not sure I want to start now. 

I also started feeling some guilt about these blog posts.  So much about me and not about her.  Seems silly to think about but that is what is going on in my head.  And one thing I have learned through my time on the journey, we cannot control how we feel.  Best we can do is control our reaction to those feelings.  I also felt a bit of guilt about writing so much about how I am feeling, it sorta feels like I am wallowing around in it.  Intellectual Smitty knows that is not the case, but emotional Smitty ain’t so sure right now.  I know this is part of the process but damn it Jim, I am not a guilt dude!

It’s a funny thing, our feelings and the emotions that are connected to them.  In my brain, the intellectual part, I know this is part of this journey.  The emotional side of my brain cares little, that dichotomy is a cruel joke the universe plays.  It isn’t just grief either, it has been around for a long time, at least with me.  Like guilt I guess, it is the universe saying here is something to test you, to test your mettle.  Like all things in life, we get the test first and the lesson later.  Seems backwards to what it oughta be but that’s what it is, at least for me.

Aside from the guilt bit, I also came away with an awful lot of uncertainty about what the next chapter is.  I am super fortunate to be in a position that I can really do anything I want to, well within reason.  I just don’t know what it wants to be yet and if I follow the lessons from the rest of my life, the universe will put something in front of me when its time.  In some ways I just wanna get on with it, and in others I know forcing things never produces good outcomes, at least in my lived experiences.  So, in addition to everything else that seems to be swirling around me, there is that quandary too.

Whether I like it or not, this thing does not come in a straight line.  That whole turned it up to 11 feeling, as much as I hate it, it doesn’t feel like going backwards as much as it does something new showing up.  It might just be the next layer deciding it’s time for you to deal with me now.  This seems to be the part where it stops being something I understand in my head and turns into something I must feel and experience.

Being around folks, folks who knew us when we were all still trying to figure life out, that was different.  It wasn’t just missing her, it was missing us.  Who we were together in those spaces.  That version of me is still in there somewhere, but it is just off balance and unable to get firm footing.  It’s kinda feels like I’m carrying half of something that used to be whole, and I just don’t know what to do with that.  And that uncertainty sits heavy on me.  I know this next chapter, whenever it arrives, will probably have something to do with figuring out how to hold onto that part of us without getting stuck in it.  All that while I am also learning how to be half of what I once was.

And maybe, even the parts I don’t like, especially the guilt, aren’t wrong.  I don’t have to like all the parts, but I also don’t think any of them are mistakes.  They are just part of the system that is Smitty trying to reset after the most massive overhaul to date.  I damn sure don’t feel ready for any of it, I don’t even like the test first, lesson later arrangement, never have.  But most likely this isn’t about doing it right or even doing it fast.  Maybe just doing the dang thing is the thing to do, whatever the hell the dang thing is.  That intellectual side of my brain knows this, the emotion side… yeah, that bastard is still telling me something very different.  Damn it.

And I keep coming back to the same thought.  It’s not just that she is gone.  It’s that the version of me that existed with her does not have a place to stand anymore.  And I don’t think I know how to build that footing back yet.  At some point I am guessing this settles down a bit.  Or maybe I just get a little better at carrying it.  Either way, today wore me slap out.  So yeah, everything still feels turned up too loud.  And the knob just spins when I try to turn it down.