Who Am I When Nobody Calls Me Husband?

I recently heard an old song by Clint Black called “Something That We Do” and before it ended I was bawling like a baby.   I remember distinctly when that song came out dancing with Bride to it.  It was one like Lacey J. Dalton’s Sixteenth Ave in that way.  We just danced every single time we heard either one.  We both thought something that we do perfectly described our relationship.  That remained true from that day through our last, we adopted it as our anthem.  Love’s not just something that we were in, it’s something that we did, he was singing about us in that song.  We did love, and we did the hell out of it.   

I listened to that song probably 100 times on repeat, in some ways torturing myself, in others letting my pain out through my eyeballs.  A number of lines kept popping for me, the first was, the way we work together is what sets our love apart, so closely that we can’t tell where I end and where you start.  That is as good a description of our marriage as I ever heard.  I think that’s why we both loved the song so much.

Looking back now, I realize how much started with what Clint Black called a simple vow.  It cracks me up, I mean it almost seems ridiculous, that a couple of kids could stand in front of chosen and actual family and promise forever.  We had absolutely no idea what forever might actually look like. We didn’t know anything about anything really.  Nothing about our careers, about cross country moves, financial struggles, health scares, celebrations, disappointments or all the ordinary Tuesdays watching Star Trek.  No idea that all of those woven together would eventually make up a life, and a hell a life at that.  We just both said yes, and then started putting one foot in front of the other.  All the while looking for what our next adventure would be.   Somewhere along the way, being her husband stopped being something that I did and became who I was.   

Not because either one of us lost ourselves in the other one.  With nearly 40 years, our lives became so intertwined.  Looking  back, separating them seems impossible.   Our stories, our memories, our traditions, our dreams for the future, all got knotted together into the tapestry that was our lives.  If someone asked either one of us where the other one’s story ends and theirs begins, I am not sure either of us could have answered that question.

I find myself still wondering where losing her has left me.  So much of who I was existed in relation to her, it made me wonder, who exactly am I now?   Husband wasn’t just a word on a tax return or relationship status.  It was a big part of how I understood myself and how I showed up in the world.  It shaped the way I made decisions, the way I looked at the future, even the way I told stories.  Nowadays I catch myself starting a sentence with “Bride and I…” and then realize there is no “and I” story without her somewhere in it.   

I’ll be standing around at work, telling a story about a road trip, a concert, a restaurant or some dumb thing that happened years ago, and before I know it, there she is in the middle of the story.  Not because I am trying to force her into the conversation, but because after nearly 40 years she was already there.  Maybe that’s what grief has been asking me all along.  Somewhere underneath husband, widower, and all the other labels, there is still just Smitty.  I just haven’t fully figured out who that dude is by himself yet.

When you’ve spend almost 40 years building a life with someone, nobody tells ya that when they die, you don’t just lose them.  You lose a big part of the dude the mirror reflects back at you every time you look in there.  No one asks how Bride is doing anymore.  No one addresses cards to both of us anymore.  No one introduces me as Sandy’s Husband.  Nobody calls me Gorgeous Groom anymore either.  That was a title that only my Beautiful Bride used, and she took it with her.  No one sees the version of me that existed alongside her anymore, because that version was only visible when she was standing there with me.   I guess that must be true for all of us.  People who love us don’t just share our lives, they help create versions of us that wouldn’t exist otherwise.   

Maybe that’s why this has been harder than I expected.  Not because I don’t know she was, I know exactly who she was.  Not because I don’t know what we were, we built a hell of life together and when ya do that, you know each other in ways that can only be felt, not described.  The question that now sneaks up on me from behind is simpler than that.  If no one calls me husband anymore, am I still one?  The paperwork says no, the world mostly says no, but my heart, it has refused to even accept that fucking memo, let alone open it.

Maybe the answer started showing up in another lyric I’d overlooked for years, we can find our strength and inspiration independently.  That’s one I never really paid much attention to back in the day.  Back then the focus was always on the together part.  Those words hit harder now, I hear something completely different than back then.  Sure, we built a hell of a life together.  That’s the funny thing.  We became inseparable without every becoming the same person.  We encouraged each other, we challenged each other, and we helped each other grow, but neither one of us took a back seat to the other.  Haha, like she would take a back seat to anyone.  As funny as that sounds, that’s actually an important distinction. Our time together shaped both of us, and at the same time did not erase either one of us.   And that was just fucking magic to me.  

Since Sandy died, I’ve learned that grief is a constant exercise in what the song calls holding tight, lettin’ go.  Every freaking step forward feels like both, damn it!  Taking off my wedding ring?  Both.  Wearing it on the chain?  Both.  Talking about her keeps me connected to the life we built, while learning to live without her asks me to loosen my grip on the future we were supposed to have together.  Grief does not seem interested in choosing one or the other.  Most days, it simply demands both at the same time, the duality in that just sucks

Maybe that’s why another lyric won’t leave me alone, each day we begin again.  That might be the truest thing I learned in the last few months.  There is no finish line waiting for me out there where grief suddenly makes sense.  There isn’t a morning when I wake up and have it all figured out.  There is just today.  Today I learn something new.  Today I miss her in a different way.  Today, I take another step forward.  And tomorrow, those same three things will be on my list of things to do today again. 

Maybe that’s why I talk about Bride all the time.  Maybe that’s why I feel married to a life we built together.  Not the house, the cars or any of the things.  The life.  The stories, the habits, the traditions.  The thousands of tiny pieces that became who we were.  Maybe that’s why I still catch myself looking for her opinion when something good happens, or when life throws me a curveball and I wish I could hug her tight, hear what she thinks, and know everything will be ok.  No one calls me husband anymore, and that fucking hurts.  But after nearly 40 years of doing love together, I don’t think that part of me simply disappears.  I think it is going to be a big part of the person I carry forward.  I think it just keeps traveling with me, on a road that has no end.

 

 

Tiny Islands of Certainty

So, an unexpected thing happened yesterday morning at 5am, I took off my wedding ring.  I wish I could tell ya there was some grand reason behind it.  That maybe I woke up with clarity, arrived at some profound realization, or finally crossed some invisible milestone in my grief journey.  The truth of it is much less dramatic.  When I got out of the shower, I looked at my ring, gave it a couple of spins, like I’ve done most every day for as long as I can remember. 

Then I slipped it off and rolled it around in my hand, something I have not really done before.  There wasn’t any intent behind it.  No deep meaning, just a mindless motion.  I wandered into the bedroom and grabbed the chain with Sandy’s rings out of the dish on my nightstand.  I slide her rings off and sat them back in the dish, and slipped my ring onto the chain.  

I stood there for a minute or two looking at it.  Not really thinking, just staring at it.  Just doing, not thinking.  Then I said out loud, fuck it and slipped the chain over my head and went about my day.  I caught myself several times that day playing with it without even realizing it.  Running my fingers over the ring while I worked, while I was in meetings, and while I drove home, all the while my mind wandered around between a forest of meaningless thoughts. 

That night I laid in bed staring at her rings sitting in the dish on my nightstand while I rolled mine around my neck.  All I could think was fuck, fuck, fuckity, fuck, fuck.  Not because her rings were in the dish.  Not because mine was hanging around my neck on a chain.  It was because for the first time since Sandy died, I wasn’t sure where either of them belonged.  And I can tell ya, that realization fucking sucked. 

To be clear, the rings weren’t really at the heart of it.  The issue was that they represented one of the few things in my life that still felt clear.  After she died, so much of my world became a gigantic question mark.  Who am I now?  What does the future look like?  Which  parts of my old life do I let go of, which parts do I hang on to, and which parts to I just learn to carry differently?  And somehow the rings remained simple.  

For months I knew exactly where they belonged, even when I had no idea where I belonged.  Her rings were on the chain, mine was on my finger. 

Tiny islands of certainty in an ocean of uncertainty.  Until they weren’t. 

And lying there in the dark, I realized I wasn't just asking where the rings belonged. I was questioning where I belonged on this leg of my journey.

As strange as it sounds, the next thing that popped into my head was the last cigarette I smoked, which was in 2004.  Most folks just assume when someone stops smoking there must have been some grand turning point or dramatic event.  But for me, there just wasn’t.  One day I was a smoker, the next day I wasn’t.  there was no ceremony, no strategy, no countdown.  Just a quiet decision that came out of nowhere one morning that I didn’t want to smoke anymore, so I didn’t.

The truth is, I don’t suspect it came out of nowhere at all.  I suspect that decision had been growing beneath the surface without me even realizing it.  And then one morning, I simply woke up and discovered what I used to feel was necessary, was not any more.  Laying there in bed staring at Sandy’s rings and absentmindedly rolling mine around the chain, I couldn’t help but wonder if grief works the same way. 

No because I am done grieving, I am not.  Not because I’m letting go of her, I never will.  Maybe I didn’t wake up yesterday and decide to take a step forward.  Maybe I simply discovered I already had.  Maybe sometimes all that works quietly in our subconscious, taking root while we are too busy surviving to notice. And then one day, we just find ourselves doing something unexpected and realize we’ve taken a step we never planned to take.  And If I am being honest, that realization is both comforting and terrifying at the same time. 

For months after Sandy died, the rings felt important because they were tangible.  Something I could touch.  Something I could hold onto when everything felt so damn intangible.  But lying there that night, I found myself wondering of the rings were ever really the evidence of our marriage in the first place.  Symbolic yes, evidence, maybe not.  After 38 years together, the evidence is everywhere, in stories, in memories, and in the habits we gave each other over the years.  It’s in the way I still talk to her sometimes.  It’s in the things that make me laugh.  Its in the way I still call her Bride without thinking about it. 

The truth is, I have no idea how long I’ll wear the chain with my ring.  Maybe this is where my ring belongs, and then again maybe it’s supposed to be just for right now.   What strikes me is that for the first time since Sandy died, I am willing to sit with the discomfort of not knowing.   Not knowing how long the ring will stay on the chain.  Not knowing if someday it ends up in the dish with Sandys rings, or maybe not.  Not knowing what any of it ultimately means.  And that is uncomfortable. 

If I am being completely honest with myself, I think what bothered me the most wasn’t the ring itself.  It was the realization that life keeps right on moving along, even when part of me wants to plant my feet, lean in and refuse to move along.  Every step forward in grief feels like a tiny betrayal, or a letting go of something ya don’t want to let go of.  Intellectually I know that is not true.  Loving Sandy and continuing to live are not mutually exclusive.  But as I have said before, my emotional self does not much care about my intellectual side, especially when it comes to the grieving process. The same damn dichotomy that still fucking sucks.   

For today, the ring hangs on a chain around my neck and that is enough.  I have no idea what the chain means yet, maybe that’s why I am writing this.  And maybe, maybe it means nothing.  Grief is a lot like life in that regard, you get the test before you get the lesson.  Things are revealed to us long before we can understand them.  My journey has been full of moments that I did not recognize were important until I was standing on the other side of it. 

Grief has a way of working behind the scenes.  It quietly rearranges things while were busy trying to survive another day.  Then without warning, it reveals results.  Maybe that is what happened here.  Maybe the ring was never the story.  Maybe the story is realizing that grief keeps changing us long after we think it has done its worst to us.  Maybe the story is discovering that some part of me has already begun adapting to this reality before the rest of me is ready to admit it. 

So here I am, not really moving on, not really letting go.  Just learning.  Taking one uncomfortable step at a time, trying to figure out how to carry 38 years of love into a future I never planned on living. 

The Loss of Intimacy Has Sucked

I don’t know if can finish writing this one, I’ve started it three times already and then deleted it.  Part of me isn’t sure I want to admit any of this out loud.  The other part is exhausted from just carrying it around.  Over the last few days, I have listened to a song more times than I can count, and one line keeps settling in my chest, they say real healing starts when the truth gets told.  So, this is me trying to tell my truth.  I hope I make it to the end.  I hope I have the courage to post it if I do.

One of the strange things about grief is that folks tend to assume they know what hurts.  They know I miss her.  They know I miss the conversations, and they know I miss the future I thought we would have together.  And they’re right, I miss all of those things. What folks don’t always see are the things that quietly disappear underneath all of that.  The things that are harder to talk about.  The things that are even harder to admit.  The things we carry in silence because once they are spoken out loud, they are impossible to ignore.   The hell of it is silence has a hunger.  It feeds on what we hide, and somehow the things we refuse to talk about just seem to get bigger and heavier.   

One of the truths I’ve been avoiding, the loss of intimacy has fucking sucked.  Even typing that sentence makes me very uncomfortable.  Not because it isn’t true, but because it is.  Over the 115 days since I lost her, I have built a rehearsed reply for whenever someone asks how I’m doing.  Most of the time it isn’t even dishonest.  I’m working, I’m writing, I’m rebuilding the Galaxie, and I’m moving forward.  If I am being honest with myself, some days I do those things in an attempt to outrun my thoughts.  But there are still parts of this loss that have settled in my chest and are slowly weighing me down.  This is one of them.

Intimacy for me was never just one thing.  It was closeness, familiarity, trust, vulnerability, and being known.  I mean truly known by another person.  In many ways, I think she knew me better than I knew myself.  It was shared thoughts, shared history, shared understanding.  It was emotional, physical, and woven into the fabric of our daily lives.  I rarely stopped to think about it because it felt so natural.  It was the most stabilizing part of our relationship for me.  And when Sandy died, I lost every version of it all at once.

When most folks hear the word intimacy, they immediately think about sex.  That’s a part of it but it is not really what I have been struggling with.  What I miss are the things that happened a hundred times a week and never seemed important because they were just part of who we were.  Holding hands when we walked, a good hug when one of us had a shitty day.  A kiss every time one of us left the house, and another when we got home.  Sitting together, sometimes talking, sometimes reading, and sometimes just dicking around on the interwebs. 

Then reaching over, touching her hand without even really thinking about it. The casual physical connection that said, I’m here and you’re not alone.  She did that for me as much as I did for her.  Just a gentle reminder that I was not alone.  Those moments were so normal, so automatic that I never once stopped to appreciate how much they grounded me in love.  Those little moments were never the headline, but they were masterfully woven into the fabric of our lives.  Looking back, all those little touches were a constant reminder we belonged to each other.  And there were two people in the world who kept choosing each other.   I didn’t realize how much security, comfort and connection were hidden inside of something as simple as holding her hand or hugging each other.

We were deliberate about holding at least one hug every day for at least 30 seconds.  It was so long ago, I don’t remember which one of us read an article about the health and relationship benefit of doing that.  It is enough time for your breathing to align.  I used to believe our heartbeats did too.  Those hugs were moments when everything in the world faded and we both felt safe, secure and loved in ways that are hard to describe.  If you have never done that, do it today, and again tomorrow and the day after that, it is the most amazing feeling.      

And that daily dose of love is no more.   I think what surprised me the most is how lonely the loss of physical connection can feel.  I wasn’t prepared for just how lonely that would be.  The loneliness created by that loss is unlike anything I have ever experienced.  I mean, I have family, chosen and real, coworkers, and people who love me.  But there is a difference between being surrounded by those who love me and having my person.  There is a difference between being cared about and having someone reach over and reflexively squeeze my hand as a silent reminder that I am not carrying the weight of the world alone.  That kind of loneliness is really hard to describe and even harder to live with in the day to day of things. 

Maybe that is why this post has been so hard to write.  For 115 days I’ve carried this heavy ass thing by myself.  The truth is, some of the words I never say have started to feel like a prison wall of my own making.  It is easier to tell folks I miss Sandy than it is to admit how much I miss the intimacy of our life together.  It’s easier to talk about grief in general terms than it is to talk about specific things that sometimes leave me feeling completely lost.  Maybe that’s why I have those rehearsed answers at the ready.  Maybe that’s why I started this post three times already and deleted it each time.  Because saying this out loud makes it real, really real, and that really hurts.  And maybe admitting how much I miss all of it feels like admitting that part of me is still carrying a shattered heart, and there is a finality that I am not sure I am ready for.

Ya know, as I type this I am realizing maybe what I’ve been avoiding isn’t talking about intimacy at all.  Maybe what I’ve been avoiding is admitting what it means.  Maybe I’ve been avoiding admitting that in some ways I am still a little lost.  Because once I say these things out loud, I have to acknowledge something I have been trying very hard not to face.   Those hugs aren’t coming back.  That hand will never reach for mine again.  There won’t be another kiss when I leave the house, or when I get home.  The finality of that just fucking sucks.  It aches all the way down to my soul.  I guess that is probably why I deleted this post three times already.  Because some truths hurt more when they are spoken.  I have learned though, that they hurt just as much when carried in silence.  The only difference is one moves me forward and one keeps me stuck.  I have carried this heavy fucker long enough and I’m putting it down.

Truth be told, I don’t know if writing this helps.  I don’t know if posting it helps.  I don’t know if tomorrow will feel any different than today.  What I do know is that after 115 days, this truth is finally out in the open.  Maybe that is all this post was supposed to do, not solve anything, not heal anything, just telling the truth about where I am.

And today, that feels like enough.

She Really Was Something!

So, a bit of the mechanics behind these blogs.  Most of the time an idea pops into my head and I write one sentence for each paragraph, then build the story.  Sometimes all of the original sentences get revised so much they are unrecognizable.   Other times it’s just a stream of consciousness that I then refine and edit down.   Most of what I have written over the last 17 years has started in one of those two ways. 

Today’s story is different, today’s story started with only the title.  I was talking to one of Bride’s best friends recently and she said, “she really was something”.  That hit me like a ton of bricks, mostly because she really was something.  I am still stunned she picked me for the journey.  That alone really is something.    

So, I tell you all of that because this one may feel different than the others.  Who knows though, by the time I am done, maybe it will feel just like all the other ones.  I’ve got more examples of how she really was something, so there might be another one or two of these posts.  Maybe not, maybe I will have satisfied my itch to share why she really was something special.

She was something else.  She had a fierce kind of love, the kind ya don’t learn, the kind you’re born carrying.  That means a lot of things, active protection of those she loved, yes.  Radical honesty, yes.  Unwavering commitment to those she loved, she was all in.  Her kind of love was not passive, it was not purely a romantic feeling either, although it had that in spades.  She would not allow anyone to disrespect me, ever.  It was like you could see the hairs on her neck stand up and her stance shift to fighting mode if someone did, even a little. 

I remember we were out to eat and the server made some attitude based comment to me about my order.  It was probably because I am a terminal smart ass and said something stupid.  Their comment slid right off me.  She was on that dude like white on rice, and he eventually apologized.  Didn’t matter, we left but not before she had some words to the manager.  For me, it was a small slight and I was hungry and I would have been more forgiving about it.  She took offense and took action.  That was a long time ago, I don’t even remember where we were at, or where we went next. 

She was something else.  She worked harder than I do to keep relationships working, especially when they are contentious. She held family tight, and worked hard at curating those relationships.  She did the same thing with all her friends as well.  She somehow figured out how to set aside differences, egos and pretty much any obstacle that stood between her and a relationship she held dear.  She was much better at that than me by a country mile.

She was something else.  She was as fearless a human as I have ever known.  There are so many examples that it is sometimes hard to pick one specifically.  She wore that fearlessness like an oversized T-shirt and it permeated who she was.  It showed up always and forever in large and small ways.  From detoxing in bootcamp, to admitting herself into rehab and telling them don’t let me out until you feel I am better, 34 days later she came home.  Through being Baker Acted by her doctors, which was hard on her. 

She came out the other side of that stronger than before, learned a lot of lessons and did not let that slow her down.  She started a blog, SoSaysSandy.com, where she started telling her stories to the world.  Something that a lesser human would have been embarrassed by, she wore as a badge of courage.  After a few months, she stopped and had me delete the posts.  I just unpublished the blog and those couple of posts are equally powerful and I may end up posting them here.

She was something else.  She would call me on my bullshit, in a lickety split sort of way.  That fierce loyalty didn’t mean blind agreement.  If I was being a stubborn ass, she would tell me to knock it off.  If I was being an idiot, which happens a lot with me, she would definitely call that out for me.  Sometimes immediately and often very firmly.  Looking back a lot of my better decisions happened because she was willing to tell me something I didn’t particularly want to hear.  That kind of honesty is a gift, even when it arrived wrapped up in 80 grit sandpaper.       

When I think about our shared bit of the journey, I feel so fortunate that I was the human she picked.  We tried hard not to take any bit of our ride for for granite, that was not a misspelling, that is what she called it.  Looking back, I wonder how well I held up my part of that bargain.  I refuse to beat myself up over that, but I can see spots where I could have been a better husband and partner for her.  I guess that is the advantage of hindsight.  Maybe it’s not advantage, maybe it is closer to torture, at least that is how I am viewing it at this moment.

The funny thing is, I started writing this one because someone said, “she really was something.”  By the time I got there, I realized I hadn’t even scratched the surface.  Every example I type out reminds me of three more.  I finish one thought and think, yeah, but there was also that time…

That’s the problem, trying to explain someone who filled up every room the way she did is a fools errand.  Every moment feels important, but every memory feels incomplete.  No single story can hold the whole person, especially her. 

Maybe that’s why that simple sentence hit me so hard.  “She really was something.”  Not simply brilliant, not simply fearless, not simply stubborn, not simply resilient.  

Something.

Somehow that single word manages to carry all of it.  Fierce love.  The fights she was willing to fight.  The relationships she refused to give up on. The courage it took to stand back up after life knocked her flat on her ass.

All of it somehow fits inside that one little word.  She really was something.  

And man, was I lucky she picked me

Living in Two Time Zones

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

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

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

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

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

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

Damn it, I miss that Gurl.

An Unexpected Reunion

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

The typed page had a simple title, A FRIEND. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our Marriage Worked on Leverage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The First 100 Days

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Damn, I miss that Gurl

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

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

A Tough Few Days, A Wonderful Life

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Grief is Love with Nowhere to Go

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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