Another Weird Thing - A New Mattress

So just a bit over a month without Bride and everything still seems weird.  Weird to think about, weird to talk about, weird to type about, weird to adjust to my new norm and weird to go through the days without her by my side.

My new mattress was finally delivered this week.  It was hard watching them carrying away the last mattress we would ever pick together.  And then, in came my new mattress, smaller and softer than she ever would have liked.  I also realized, this is the very first new mattress I have ever bought by myself in my lifetime.  My parents bought them when I was a kid, the Navy bought those and we met while I was there so there was no mattress buying for me.

We had just ordered a new set of sheets for our bed to more closely match the room color.  I ended up sending those back and getting the same color in queen size.  I did not get a new comforter yet, she liked the more poofy fancy ones and I like the simply cotton quilt type.  We always thought comforters were too small, ours was a California king.  I wanted to see what a king sized one would look like on there before buying one.  Our old ones were transitioned to paint tarps and stored in the garage.  I pulled one out, washed it and tried it on, now I know that is the size I will get and the color will be like the one she picked.

I tipped the men who delivered the new mattress and took away the old one to carry that bedframe out to the garage.  As I was sitting in my garage ponder chair staring at that thing I remembered how much she loved that bed frame.  It was a massive four-poster bed that was our first full bedroom set purchased at the same time, it even had the rails connecting them so one could hang frilly stuff on.  It was also the tallest bed we every had, I made her a custom little step to help her crawl in.  Before that, we always had an eclectic mix of things.  Mostly random pieces we liked or that I built from a picture or drawing of what she saw in her head. 

It was funny when we moved to Smithlandia the ceilings were a bit low and had giant cedar beams and the posts looked weird and forced us to offset the bed from the center of the wall, her OCD was not happy about that misalignment, haha. 

So, one day when she was out, I literally took my old Milwaukee Sawzall and lopped them off.  I replaced them with a cheap white plastic cap made for a 6x6 fence post.  I had sprayed ceiling texture on them and then painted them black and glued them on.  I had all that prepped ahead so when she got home it was done, posts gone, decorative cap installed.    

Her initial reaction was shock I think but then seeing how the room looked she ended up loving it.  When we moved in here she did say she thought the posts would have looked good.  I laughed and reminded her we used them as firewood in the stove that first winter at Smithlandia, we had a good laugh.

So after pondering on it, I am going to cut that bedframe down from King size to a Queen size, which is what my new bed is.  Well, I am either doing that or I will be simply making some saw dust.  Basically that entails cutting a 16 inch chunk out of the middle and cobbling it back together without being able to tell.  At least King and queen are the same length so no adjustments in that direction, although that would be a lot easier to accomplish.  No Sawzall for this work, not sure on the how yet other than I know it will take some sort of jig to hold everything in place.

All of that was hard and I cried a lot.  That seems to be a trend of late, the water works popping on and off again just as fast.  The valve does not seem to care much about timing or any sort of regular cadence.  It meeting, crank it on, driving, crank it on, sitting back porch, sitting in my office, watering the wildflowers growing along the fence, the location matters little to whatever valves are controlling that flow.   Truth be told, I don’t mind at all.  It feels better than the first week or so when tears were harder, I think due to shock. 

I feel like I am starting to accept that this is just going to be part of my new path, at least for bit.  Along with all the other things that I have, and will continue to accept into what my new norm is going to end up being.  Still no idea what that looks like so it is still three things on a list every morning and one foot in front of the other. I know with certainty that it will start taking shape at some point along the way.  I have been starting to wonder what that shape will end up looking like.  I have also been careful not to force things.  I know it will present itself as I take those steps forward.  Bride and I tried hard to not force things, and I think the universe has a way of pushing back when you do.  

So, I am on the journey, can’t say I know where I am heading yet but I feel a tiny bit more like a willing participant vs trying to stay in this place simply because the love of my life is there.  Realizing she will be with me on the journey, even if just in my heart, she is with me and that is a comforting thought.  I feel like an infant, just learning to walk again without the parts of me that used to be her.  I just miss her and it all just sucks!!     

My Nervous System Is Getting Its Ass Kicked

So 28 days in, everything feels like too it's much, happening too fast.  It’s all too loud and too soon.  It feels a bit overwhelming and that fucking sucks!!  My poor nervous system can’t seem to decide between fight, flight, or freeze.  I did not have any words for any of that. 

Recently though I was talking with a Sister from another Mother who is a retired Veteran, and among other things, is a grief counselor, and she introduced to a word I had never heard before - titration.  It is a term borrowed by trauma therapists from the chemistry discipline – gotta love science.  It’s basically a way of adding something slowly, in controlled drops, to figure out what you’re dealing with. 

In therapy, the methodology works the same way.  You break down overwhelming experiences into tiny, tolerable drops.  Instead of letting the whole thing hit ya at once, you take it in pieces.  It keeps the emotional flood from wiping ya out and gives your nervous system a chance to catch up.

She shared that with me after I told her about something that happened on my first day back to work.  On my drive home, I hit a bump.  Not a real one, but one that left me pulled over to the side of the road crying my eyeballs out.

I always called Bride on my way home from work, to hear about her day and share about mine.  When we were in Oregon that drive was 50 minutes or so, here it is closer to 8, but we still did it every day.  My routine was simple, pull out of the parking lot, turn right and make an immediate left and mash the call Beautiful Bride button. 

On my first day back, I did it without thinking.  Turned right, made the left and mashed the button.  And that’s when it hit me like a ton of bricks.

The water works kicked on full blast.  I had to pull over and let all that come out.  After a few minutes, and a pile of tissues later, and eventually I made my way home.

After that first day back, I drove home a different way.  It took longer but I did not feel like I could go that way.  Truth is, I didn’t want to.  

That, apparently, was a microdose of pain.  I hit the memory, felt it, and then had to move on.  I literally had to keep driving.  I couldn’t stay there.  That was titration, whether I knew it in that moment or not.  This week I am going to start driving home that way again, on purpose.

I know I may still have to pull over.  I know I may still burn through the puffs plus.  But I also know that it won’t hit quite the same way every time.  So now, with this new word, this new understanding, I’m going to try to be more deliberate about how I do this.

Not avoiding it anymore.  Just learning how to walk into it without getting totally wiped out - controlling the drops best I can.   

Bride and Her Control Chair

Bride had what she called the control chair.  If you have ever watched The Big Bang Theory, think Sheldon’s spot, only he was an amateur at it compared to Sandy. 

I got to laughing today about it, which felt nice to do, so I thought I would write about it.  IT felt good, unexpectedly good.  I think the funniest thing I learned over the last few weeks about it was that none of her friends even knew about it.  This was evidently something only shared with me, but it has been a thing since we lived together in the barracks rooms at the Naval Radio Transmitter Facility, or NRTF in acronym or NavRadTransFac.  Our call sign was NSS9 and we were  right across the Severn River from the Naval Academy.

I will admit now that I am not sure I know all the rules that went into determining how a control chair was selected, but I can share what I do know.   So, every place had one, in our home she had four of them, each selected with purpose, I say purpose because room layout and décor were oft times selected based on the location of the control chair, I never did fully understand the full matrix.   

They existed in other people’s homes, and on back porches.  They existed in hotel rooms, and in beach chairs and they existed on airplanes.  She even had one in our front yard at Smithlandia, hahaha, in the middle of the wilderness that one always made me laugh.

One thing I did notice, although it was not a hard and fast rule, is that she was mostly to my right, we could hold hands and we’d thumb wrestle if something needed to be settled.  Which seemed odd because she was always on my left when walking because we deliberately decided those hands felt better than the other ones when being held.  We had reasons for all sorts of silly things.

She also slept on my left side, even in that barracks bunk bed we started out in.  Yeah, we snuck into each other’s rooms in the barracks pretty much every night, me at the top of the stairs and her at the bottom, boys upstairs and girls downstairs.  Hahaha.  I guess in some ways that was a control spot as well.

The control chair at the dining room table was always the one closest to the kitchen.  She even had control chairs in restaurants.  She would not have a view of the kitchen or the bathrooms.  I would not even be able to count the number of times we swapped tables.  Hahaha, she had high standards and did not budge on them. 

I have been spending time in her control chairs, and Larry seems to like that and it makes me smile thinking about what her reaction would be.  I do know it would include a look like this one, a look I’d do about anything to see again.  

       

I Did a Thing Today, It was Hard

I took the step today of donating Bride’s car to Southeast Community College for their auto body program.  Here is some more about the place and its auto body program auto body program.    

It is the 4^th vehicle donation we have made over the years.  Well, three we did together.  My   66 GMC pickup she donated, and I found out about that when I got home from work and she asked for my keys and title.  It was a program that was to train inner city kids as auto mechanics as a trade.  We did establish a new house rule after that, no donating vehicles without speaking to each other first.

That new rule led us to start to think more deliberately about what we each wanted long term.  That eventually led to documenting those wishes, and that led to thinking about way more than just talking about cars.  All of that eventually led to wills, power of attorneys, both medical and general, living wills, health care directives, as well as estate planning.  We both knew what the other one’s wishes were, both conversationally and legally. 

Having sorted out all that ahead of time has made this bit of my journey much easier, including donating her car.  That was not my decision, that was our decision and it aligns with our wishes.

I will say this, no matter what age you happen to be, do those things now!!  It’s even simpler now with online services.  Life is so fragile and we just don’t know when we are going to come home on some random day and find our loved one deceased.  TRUST me, you will have so many other things going on in your head and life that you will find it a blessing to not have to think or worry about any of those hard decisions.  Depending, it can also eliminate any issues or disagreements with family who may have other thoughts on their wishes. 

To be clear, that was not the case with Bride but I have seen that happen before.  DO. IT. NOW!!! If ya need, I’ll pay for the fee for one of those online services for ya and that is a good start.  

I cannot recall if I mentioned that she had a fender bender not long after the Title issues we had getting it registered here in Nebraska, story here Oregon DMV story.    She loved that car, it was small and was pretty peppy as she said.  That came from the V6 in it.  She felt safe in it and enjoyed being up higher than other folks.  I don’t remember what year it was but she wanted a back up camera and better Bluetooth.  She was pondering buying something newer, and the engineer in me simply said let’s put a new radio in it that has all that stuff.  She cracked me up when she asked, “you can do that”.   I told her between being a technologist, a car dude and pretty much all around handy guy I was pretty sure I could handle that. So did that, including a 10” screen for the camera and interface, she liked that size for the Google Maps.

It has been a great car, aside from brakes and batteries and tires and routine things like that the only repair I had to do was when the AC quit working.  I was expecting the worst but when my mechanic called I was relieved it just a bad O ring in the system, I told him to just go ahead and replace every single O ring in the system, which he did. It was cream puff, we bought it in 2013, it was a 2011.  It had 58k on it, it belonged to a sales dude who meticulously maintained it and most of that was highway miles.  Today it had just a bit over 100k.  So in the 13 years she had it she only put about 42k on it.  The dude at the school was amazed at the shape it was in as well.

When I got home and went in the garage, it felt so empty with the Escape not sitting there, that was harder than dropping it off.  That is something that I suspect will feel that way for a while.  I think when I am done writing this, I am going to go move the Galaxie 500 over to that spot.  It is the Girl Jalopy so maybe that will help me get past that empty spot.  That spot holds a story now, just not with a car in it.  

I will add this tag to the collection of tags I have from every car I have owned.

 

A Life Well Lived is Truly Built on the Small and Mostly Mindless Moments we Mostly Take for Granted

There have been many big things in my way since the 21^st of April.  They have been front and center, right there, rigidly resting on bedrock and firmly in my way.  They are known, most are hard, and very solvable with time and effort because they are the obstacle in my way.  To quote Marcus Aurelius, “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way."  So, I am advancing through the action of doing those things.  They have been hard and many but mostly it has been a task driven list.   

The thing I have noticed the most over the last three weeks is how many small, unexpected little things I have been tripping over.  Tripping because they are not big enough to be an obstacle in my way.  I feel that even the cumulative effect of tripping, falling, and getting back up again is still not an obstacle.  It is just something we all do in our lives, stumble, gain footing, and continue on the journey without giving the cause much thought. 

The things I am tripping over now are much more than just a stumble, they feel like harsh reminders of how many silly little things I have taken for granted.  The things that never really made a list, the things that just lived in the corners, in the mundanity of life we rarely even notice, until they are gone.  Now they are gone for me, I am surprised when I trip over them and wonder how I could have not been cherishing those moments more.

Things like adjusting the air or heat before going to bed, she had a narrow comfort range.  Or making sure we always had plenty of supplies so she would never run out of soap, trash bags, razor blades, body wash, and a million other things.  OK, I will probably continue that, the Navy baked that into my DNA so…  Or texting her a picture from the car wash that simply said “current state” in either my car or hers.  Always making sure her car had gas, that she had Coke, sugar free.

Sending pictures I did a lot.  Sometimes of her, once in the place where Larry gets groomed, I went around and hid behind things and texted her a picture of herself, having already moved to the next spot, hahaha.  She texted back “stop that ya dumbass”.   I sent her pictures of sunrise all the time.  She loved sunrise but hated getting up early more so she got plenty of pictures. 

Seeing someone that just needed to have a life story built for them and then subsequently be judged for the life we made up about them.  I saw a dude the other day on O street, I was sure he got his ass whooped in 6^th grade and would have enjoyed building out his life up to the point I saw him with her.

I am still making sure the shower curtains are just so when I get out and I am finding that I am closing the door to the pantry and cabinet doors.  That was something that drove her crazy when I didn’t.  I am washing my clothes in cold water, even though I never thought that made any difference anyway.  There are still a number of things she wanted to do to the house, I will go ahead and do those, even though I am not sure I will even stay in this house.  I have committed to not making any big decisions for at least six months so I got a bit of time.

Being in the house is hard, because of all the small things.  In case you did not know, I was not the picker in our lives.  Not of colors on the walls, not of furniture, not of stuff hanging on the walls, and not the way any of the décor was arranged or anything else.  I would do the work, painting, hanging things, moving furniture, swapping doors or installing new moldings but was not the picker.   Every room in this house has a 100 reminders of her, and that is hard.  My only reprieve from that is here in my office, that is the one place I did get to choose.   I have done nothing, except hang a picture and the story of H.O. Studley’s toolbox, and yes I built that frame.  I first read about that in Fine Woodworking magazine and was simply amazed by his talent.  Here is a bit about that H.O. Studley tool box.

That is also where I am right now, pecking away on a keyboard typing about my Honey.  All the small things feel like death by a thousand cuts.  I am a woodworker and old car mechanic so I have experience with that, but these cut a bit deeper and seem to not be closing up as fast. 

I go to my first grief session Sunday that focuses on the loss of a spouse.  I am both terrified and hopeful at the same time.  As I have said, I recognize I am on a new path, and I have no idea where its heading, no idea of the terrain, no idea of how long the path is or where it will end up, so one step a time, three things on a list every day is helping.  I am trying to make sure at least one a day includes forward motion and not just motion. 

Fuckity fuck fuck!!  I sure do miss ya BB

 

 

The Power of a Box

This is a repost from something I put on FB on May 4th over to here.

Last night I received the text and picture below from a Brother from another Mother, we talked afterwards. Damn dude, thanks for the cry and I love ya!  ❤️❤️

The Power of a Box

It is not only the label on a box that describes what is in it, it is also the quality of the box that represents the importance of what is contained within.

This is a beautiful box inside and out.

Outside the craftsmanship is up to the Smitty standard.

Inside the box is pure beauty, dreams, memories, great times, kindness, courage, boldness, love, laughs and beyond the Smitty standard.

The Power of this Box is beyond words.

Sandy Smith, The Most Amazing Woman Ever

I posted this on FB, I wanted to include this in the story of my loss.  I wrote this the day after and I did not edit it for posting here.

Sandy, my Beautiful Bride, passed away Tuesday afternoon.  She was the most amazing and courageous woman I have ever known, and she was the ABSOLUTE love of my life.

From the moment anyone met Sandy, they noticed the light, the spark, the thing that was immediately noticeable and unmistakably her.  She showed up in the world to play, fully herself and without pretense or filters.  As she loved to say, she would tell anyone exactly “how the cow ate the cabbage,” If they needed it, and at the same time she could do it with honesty, warmth, and always with a twinkle in her eye.

Sandy loved deeply and without limits.  She loved spending time with me, with family and friends, and with all the people she held closest.  She adored her seven siblings with her whole heart.  She embraced life as an adventure, whether that meant moving to Oregon for a Pacific Northwest chapter or heading to Nebraska for what she simply said “A Midwest adventure, we don’t have one of those yet.”

She lived life full blast, pedal to the metal all the time.  Sandy never held back, never let obstacles slow her down, and never installed a governor on any aspect of her life.  She laughed easily, especially at the chaos and absurdities of life, at smart‑aleck humor, and at the simple happiness that dumb ass Larry O brought her.   We loved people watching, building a whole life story for each person, then passing judgement on that made up life, based on nothing more than a glance as someone walked by.

Sandy was the bravest and most courageous human I have ever known.  She faced immense challenges with strength and determination, overcoming addiction born from prescription pain medication after back surgery, battling bipolar disorder with the constant chasing for the right cocktail of medicines to make life work for her, and enduring a series of serious health issues in recent years.  Every day, she got up, faced what was in front of her, pushed back the demons, and refused to let anything stop her, or even slow her down, from living her life on her terms.  Her perseverance was equal parts quiet determination, loud obstinance and relentlessness.  And it was all inspiring to those who knew her.

We met while stationed at a small Navy base in Annapolis, Maryland.  From there we built a life together that spanned 38 years, a life full of movement, laughter, and love. I spent every one of those years doing my best to keep her on a pedestal, where she belonged.  To me, she was beautiful inside and out, my Beautiful Bride in every sense of the word.

Sandy made rooms brighter just by being in them. She made people feel seen, told the truth with heart, and loved without reservation. Her life was a reminder to live boldly, love fiercely, tell the truth, and keep going, even when the road is hard as hell.

She leaves behind a love that was expansive, an absence that is immense, and a legacy of authenticity, courage, and joy that will continue to ripple through everyone who was lucky enough to know her.  She made me a better man, husband and friend

I will miss ya BB, till my last breath

Sandra Schwab Smith 4/29/1957 - 4/21/2026