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. 

Two Pretty Damn Amazing Weeks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So I Stay, and I Keep Reading

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Contacts you Never Delete

So, a couple of months in and I have not yet turned off Bride’s phone, and I am not sure when I will.  We shifted to consumer cellular a couple of years ago and it is only about 20 bucks a month to keep it active so...  We both have the same code to get into our phones and iPads.  I had never looked in her phone before she passed, and I don’t think she ever looked in mine, even though we both had the codes.  I have been checking her phone daily for calls, voicemails, text messages, Amazon activities and any other form of communications looking for anything that needed attention.  There have been a few things that needed to be addressed in those first few weeks but nothing lately.

We had recently replaced her phone with the latest iPhone Max, the big one, the $1,500 one.   Before that, her phone was older than mine, an iPhone 7 from around 2017 or so I think.  We both hang on to them until they started giving us problems, so we always tried to get the newest thing they had out.  I have the Galaxie Note 20 Ultra that I got in 2020 and I’m on my second Otter Box case.  It still answers phone calls and texts along with email, when I feel like using it for that.  I have looked through her pics and email and what not, mostly because I saw the .99 cent charge for cloud storage come in.  I am working on getting that stuff moved off her account so I can at least stop paying that 99 cents a month for storage.  

Along those lines, this morning I was reviewing her contacts to see if I needed to transfer any of those to my contacts.  I found some and sent them over to me.  One thing I was not really prepared for was finding contact info on friends no longer with us.  My Mom and Dad were there, as was Debbie, Carol, and a couple of others.  That one stopped me for a moment, and pushed me to look through my contacts to find who all I still have in there.  It was too many, and now Bride sits on the top of that list, and that fucking sucks.  So do Lyndon and Alison, my two oldest friends.  I met Alison when I was 4 and Lyndon when I was 5, she died in 2013 and he died in 2015 and I still miss them both.  If you type in Mom, Dad, Lyndon, or Alison in the little search box up in the top left corner you can read some words I wrote about them.

There was Grady, and Cary, two friends who decided this life wound up to be too hard.  I was mad at both of them for a long time, but I think with age I have learned to accept that was the choice they made.  My Mom and Dad are still in there.  There is Bob, Bishop and Brian.  Chris,  Debbie, and Don.  Doug, Eric, and Jimmy.  Ken, Larry, and Mark.  Michael, Pat, and Peter.  Randy, Roy, and Russ.  Tim, Tracy, and Wayne.

Twenty eight names in total, just sitting there in my contacts.  People that I have simply kept their contact info in my phone, even though some have been gone for decades.  It was funny because at least a few I must have transferred their contact information from an address book.  For those younger folks, that was a cardboard bound binder with places where we put people’s names, phone numbers and addresses, along with any other pertinent information.  I always picked green ones, although I cannot recall why now but there must have been a reason.

That’s when it stopped feeling like just a list. A contact list isn’t just for finding folks, it’s also an archive of the ones who shaped our lives.  Keeping someone in our contacts feels like a small act of defiance.  Kinda like we’re just not willing to let them disappear.  We spend years, in some cases a lifetime, building connections to those who end up being in our circle of humans.  We used to memorize the numbers of those closest to us, for example, I recall Lyndon’s number when we were kids being 513.663.6382. 

Now when their name pops up on our device with a text or call, we associate it with a voice, a laugh, or some memory and our heart does a little dance, especially if we have not heard from them in a while.  Deleting that name can feel like collapsing all of that history into a single, final button mash.  Leaving it in there lets the relationship breathe, exist in a different state, not active, but not erased either.  Just different.

It lines up with how memory actually works, at least for me.  Grief is not linear, and connection isn’t either.  Some days I don’t even think about them at all, other days their name pops up unexpectedly via some random trigger.  When they pop up, it can bring back a flood of memories I didn’t even realize I was carrying.  Seeing their contact does not anchor me in the past, it just keeps the electronic door open for me.  Not to stay there, but to revisit from time to time, long enough to share a laugh or even a cry with them, like what happened to me as I looked through it today.  The relationship changes, it goes from talking to them to pondering about them. 

There is something real about how our contacts list keeps growing while some of those names will never be called again, a pretty stark reality for a “contact” list.  Life keeps adding chapters but does not delete the old chapters.  Those old chapters just take on a different weight.  It almost becomes a map of all the intersections in our lives, showing where we met that first friend and how the list grew from there.  The map is also marked with the moments in time and place where folks got off our ride.  Keeping them in there acknowledges that those relationships did not end in importance to us, they ended because they ended in time.

Maybe most of all, it’s about control in a moment where so much feels out of our control.  Choosing not to delete a name is a deliberate act, as is deleting one.  I don’t think it’s denial at all, I think it is more about choosing what stays.  It is a decision they still belong in our world, even if the way they exist in it has changed.  Their name sitting there when ya scroll, as hard as it might be, shows how much that particular human meant to us when they were here.

Maybe there is a right time to remove someone, and for me I guess I learned that time is never going to be right.  Keeping them in there isn’t about reaching out, it’s just not being ready to let them go.  Who do you have in your contacts?

This is Bride's phone

Where the Ocean Takes Over the Quiet

Turns out there were a couple of things that I seem to have forgotten about sunrise at the ocean.  Maybe not as much forgot but maybe things I simply had taken for granted since I have experienced them so many times.  Either way, 55 days into my new chapter, I wanted to share some words about the ocean that I somehow had missed.  The first is that transition from the world to the beach that happens on the walk from the car to the ocean.  This stretch of ocean is not new to me, I have taken this walk more times than I can count over the 25 years Bride and I lived here, but it does not feel the same now.  

When I get out of my car, the sounds of the world exist.  Rumbling of cars driving around, the hum of air conditioners, the honking of horns, or maybe the screaming of a siren.  The pitter patter of runners, joggers and walkers and occasionally the dude who asks ya for a few bucks.  There is like a 50 foot stretch on the walk to the ocean in which the sounds of the world start to die down. They are slowly being drowned out by the sound of the ocean. 

I love that transition almost as much as the sunrise.  In those few feet, the transition is also working on my mind, my mood, and I slowly transition to the anticipation of seeing my old friend, the Atlantic.  The drowning out of the day to day of things, and the roaring up of the ocean.  It is almost like two dimmer switches operating in tandem, one going down and the other going up in perfect synchronicity.  Like an emergency generator slewing its phase to  that of the power grid before seamlessly switching back when power is restored.  I had forgotten how much I loved that short bit of the walk.

The spot I went this morning had a huge tidal pool between me and the ocean.  They are funny, and I have no idea how they form.  I am sure the google could answer that for me but sometimes I simply don’t need to know.  Sometimes they are inches deep, other times feet deep.  Today was about 18 inches, almost getting my cargo shorts wet as I walked through.  They are also very cold, I guess that is more from the overnight and the lack of connection to the warm water of the ocean.  The contrast hits harder than I remember. 

It is similar to the feeling of the sand in the morning after a rain.  The sand is cold and  mostly hardened, not the dry warm sand of the day.  I had also forgotten what a natural abrasive the beach can be.  A daily walk on the beach would not doubt save folks thousands of dollars of grinding and polishing our heels and feet before pedicures, which I am getting another one of while I am here.    

Even in winter the water here is always pretty warm, a product of the gulf stream zipping by no doubt.  The first day I was here I sat up on the dry sand, I didn’t even have a towel yet.  I resolved that by immediately buying a folding chair, like the ones at a tailgating party.  I also bought a beach towel, just in case.  Sunday and today I sat in that chair in the surf, both days the tide was coming in.  Generally I would wait until the water was deep enough to hit my butt before sliding back a bit.  Not wanting to be soaking wet, I slid back when it got half way up my calf.

There is absolute relentlessness to the tides, on the way in, it churns pebbles, sea shells and coral into sand.  On the way out, dragging seaweed, kelp and shit dumbasses leave on the beach back into the ocean.  A constant cleansing, grinding up of what was and a renewal of the beach itself by depositing new life.  And the rats with wings keeping all that in balance, I watched this morning as one snatched a small crab up and ate it.

I was surprised how different the transition from the noise of the world to the sound of the ocean hit on these first couple of days.  This beach holds more than sand and ocean for me.  Bride and I actually got remarried here at 20 years in.  There are a lot of memories here for me.  Ya can’t spend that long in a place without it holding pieces of life that ya can’t quite set down.  It was a reminder that the world has not slowed down a bit.  People are still driving too fast, worrying about meaningless things, going to meetings that feel important in the moment, and seem irrelevant five minutes later. 

And I am still in it, doing the dang things that just feel different now.  But somewhere in that walk, there is a subtle shift.  The noise fades just enough, just enough for me to actually feel what’s hidden there.  It’s not louder, just clearer.  Grief has not really shown up for me when everything is loud.  It shows up in that 50 foot window, when things finally get quiet enough that I can’t avoid it. 

And what I am realizing is that I can’t live in either place all the time.  The noise lets me function in the world, and the quiet allows the space to feel all the feels.  That short walk is where both exist at the same time.  It feels like the closest to balancing all of this I have found so far.  Not fixing anything, not escaping anything, just learning how to move between the two in a way that might become manageable.  Kinda like my own two dimmer switches trying to stay in sync, even when the system underneath is rebelling against syncing up.

I also noticed how the tidal pool this morning felt a bit like my grief.  The tidal pools are disconnected from the whole, left behind as the tide goes back to its normal place.  Some are shallow, some are deeper than we expect in the dark, and they are always colder.  That cold hits hard and lingers as we wade through.  Sure, I could have probably walked around it, maybe even picked a different spot on the beach to avoid it, but sooner or later you just have to step on in, without overthinking it.  I don’t understand why some moments hit harder than others or why the water is colder in some areas than in others.  I don’t need a clear explanation for them, how they form or why they stick around or move, I simply accept that they do.

The abrasion bit, that one is real too.  The whole thing is wearing me down in slow, almost unnoticeable ways.  Or maybe not wearing me down as much as forming me into something new. Not anything catastrophic or all at once, just a constant knocking off of the edges and maybe even a bit of polishing.  The routines, the memories, and all the little mundane things that used to be automatic now seem to take more effort than before, all the history always popping in to remind me of my loss.  In some ways I know it’s not all bad, this is a part of the ride for all of us. 

That does not mean it does not suck, and it does not mean we don’t have to keep moving forward.  The friction some days feels like 36 grit on an angle grinder, just whacking away at it all.  Other days it feels like the methodicalness of 1600 grit on a whetstone with a chisel or block plane blade.  Not sure where beach sand lives on the grit scale but I know it is my favorite of grits.  Even walking on partially crushed up shells, I keep moving forward but I am aware of every step.   

The ocean does not rush it, and I am starting to see that I don’t need to either.  The dimmers are still there, one going up and the other going down, just not moving together the way they used to.  And ya know what, Im starting to think that’s not something I need to fix.  Maybe I just need to keep writing my three things, keep taking that walk, and let it find its own rhythm. 

And, all of this sucks.

 

Today, It Feels Lighter

So we had the remembrance for Sandy yesterday, or maybe it was a celebration of life or maybe it was a service.  Whatever the official name, it was getting to say a few words in front of her Friends and Family, and four of her Siblings got that opportunity as well.  Having done it now I realize just how hard that can be, I am so proud of her siblings getting up and saying a few words about their Sister.  I am also VERY appreciative of them, and one of Sandy's friends from grade school, supporting me by being here. 

Then I got up, thanked the folks who have supported me at the funeral home and the Chaplain, as well as some words for the Navy folks who played taps and presented me a flag.  I said a few words of thanks for everyone who supported me through this and how I have been lifted up by so many amazing humans I have bumped into along the way.  I also shared my gratitude for the gift of getting to spend 38 years with my best friend. 

I also talked about refusing to be sad about any of it, Bride literally gave me the best part of my whole life.   And closed with some words about not having any idea what my next chapter looks like, and that I am certain the universe will lay it out for me when the time is right, it always has.  After that I alternated between telling my own funny stories and sharing those I collected.  I think the biggest revelation was hearing the origin story of her nickname Sam.  I never called her that but most in her family did.

It was hard to get there, I probably over anticipated that though because once I got to reading the funny stories it became easier and the further along I got the easier it got.  I also started to feel some of the burden of grief starting to ease up as well.  That was a pleasant surprise, and much welcomed.  When I was done speaking, the USN navy presented me with a flag.  I always get choked up at the playing of taps and watching the presentation of the flag.  This felt even more emotional because today I was accepting that flag as a symbol of the gratitude of the nation for her honorable and faithful service while taps was played.  It was a powerful emotional moment.

We wrapped up, some of the folks I work with came and I shared some words of appreciation for them coming, it was a bit of a blur as my brain was going 1,000 miles an hour.  Things I should have said, or something I should have said differently, a story I should have told and wondering if Sandy would have liked it.  One thing I should have said is a bit of the eulogy Jackie gave for Ned Devine, or Michael O’Sullivan and if you don’t get the reference, watch Waking Ned Devine.

It would have gone like this – The words that are spoken at a funeral are spoken too late for the person who is dead.  What a wonderful thing it would be to visit your own funeral.  To sit at the front and hear what was said, maybe say a few things yourself.   Sandy and I grew old together.  But at times, when we laughed, we grew young.  If she was here now, if she could hear what I say, I’d congratulate her on being a great woman and thank her for being my friend.  And we laughed A LOT!!!

We even laughed about maybe writing some words for our own funerals, eventually tried a couple of times but it seemed so weird.  Maybe I will do that now for me, haha, she’d think that was funny. 

When I got back home that evening, sharing space with her siblings and close friend, I started to feel a great wave of relief.  I liked it but it felt weird, a lightning of the load I was not expecting.  As the evening went along, I started feeling tired, almost exhausted.  I thought maybe because it was a day I stressed over, to the point of taking one of her Xanex on my way to the service.

I finally turned in, and I slept like a baby.  Not a single wake up to pee or even a roll over, I woke up in the exact position I was in when I laid down.  That was the first night I slept like a baby since April 20^th, my last night sleeping next to my Honey.  I woke up feeling lighter, feeling  well rested and ready for the day.  I have not woken up like that for a bit.  Not sure what any of that means but life feels a bit different today, and I fucking like it!

And maybe that is enough of an answer in this moment.  I don’t need to understand it, maybe just noticing it is enough.  The weight shifted and eased the load. the air feels a bit crisper and for the first time in a while it does not feel like I am bracing for what ever comes next.   Feels more like I’m figuring out how to carry this awkward load rather than being crushed by the weight of it.   I know I will still have days that hit me in the mouth, but today didn’t.  Today felt like a gift and I am grateful for it.

Ya know, if I am being honest, today feels like something she’d be happy about.  Not the hard, not any of the shit really but the idea that I am still getting my feet back under me, laughing a bit more, and even smiling a bit more, and trying to figure out how to be in this next version of life.  The more I sit with it the more it feels less like a moment and more like something inside me is recalibrating, to compensate for the changes, kinda like the adaptive correction circuit on TV transmitter exciter.  It ain’t fixed, but it does not feel as broken either.  And for now, that’s progress.  Not perfect, but ill take progress over perfection every damn time.

BTW, the recording of the service will be on the site tomorrow in case ya missed it. Sandra "Sandy" Smith - Roper and Sons  share a memory while your there as well.