Garth Brooks Made Me Cry in a Hy-Vee Parking Lot

Damn It, Garth Brooks.

I was driving home for lunch today and to let Dogbert out when a Garth Brooks song came on the radio.  I ended up having to pull over in to cry.

I hadn’t heard it in a long time.  “The Dance,” from his debut album.  Bride and I loved that song when it came out in 1989, and the thing was everywhere for a while.  Somewhere along the way, it became more than just a song we liked.  It was kind of a secret motto. 

She used to tell me that her Dad had said something similar to her when she was growing up.  Don’t miss the dance.  I hadn’t thought about that song in a long time.  Then Garth came through the speakers today, and suddenly I wasn’t just driving home to let the dog out.  I was thinking about Bride.  About us.  About all those years when I had absolutely no idea where our story was eventually going.  We stayed focused on the dance.  

And thank God I didn’t know. 

There is no way I would have wanted to know.  I wouldn’t have wanted a clock hanging over almost 40 years, counting down while we were busy living them.  I wouldn’t have wanted to look across the table at her over dinner and wonder how many more dinners we had left.  Or climb into bed beside her and wonder how many more nights. We just got to be gloriously ignorant of all of that.  We just got to be us, dancing our asses off.

I am glad I didn’t know how it would end.  Because I think knowing would have changed the dance we shared.  Maybe I would have held on too tightly.  Maybe I would have spent perfectly good days worrying about how many we had left.  Maybe every ordinary “love ya damn it” would have carried a little fear in it.  Maybe I would have tried to protect myself from something that was coming whether I knew about it or not.

And in trying to protect myself from the ending, I might have missed some of the good stuff.  That seems to be one of grief’s particularly cruel tricks.  Once you know how the story ends, your mind wants to go back and reread the whole damn thing with that knowledge.  I don’t wanna do that. 

The ending DOES NOT get to rewrite everything that came before it. 

There were trips.  Bad jokes.  Arguments.  Ordinary Tuesday nights.  Adventures.  Sitting beside each other doing absolutely nothing.  Plans that worked and plans that went completely to shit.  There was laughter.  There was this life we built without knowing how much time we were going get to live inside it.

And there was the dance.  I know now what I didn’t know then.  There would eventually be a last trip.  A last ordinary night.  A last laugh.  A last time I would hear her voice.  A last time I would hold her.  I am grateful that I didn’t know which ones they were.  Because fear of what might happen someday can take up an awful lot of today if ya let it.

Maybe that is what hit me so hard sitting in the Hy-vee parking lot.  Lately I have thinking a lot about what it means to keep living my life.  Not forgetting Bride.  Not moving on from her as though almost 40 years together were something to get past.  Just living the life I still have because I know, in a way never wanted to learn, that someday there won’t be another chance. 

And maybe there is something in that old advice from her Dad that I need again now.  Don’t miss the fucking dance.  Not because the dance won’t hurt someday.  Because it will.  Not because everyone we love is going to stay.  Because they won’t.  Not because we can somehow arrange our lives so nothing terrible ever happens again.  We can’t. 

We do it because today we are here and the music is playing.  Someone you love may be standing beside you.  There is something you want to learn, somewhere you want to go, someone you want to call, something ridiculous you want to try.  So dance the damn dance because you don’t know how the story ends. 

Sometimes that is terrifying.  And sometimes it is a gift. 

I had the dance.  A hell of a dance actually.  Almost 40 years of it.  And given the choice between having all of that and carrying this pain now, or protecting myself from this pain by never having had her at all, there isn’t really a choice. 

I’d take the dance.  Every. Single. Time

So, there I sat in the damn Hy-Vee parking lot crying over a song that came out in 1989.  Eventually I wiped my eyes and drove on home.  Larry still needed to be let out.  The dance, apparently, includes that too.

Here is the song - The Dance 

 

 

The First Three Sentences

If you were to walk into my bathroom, you’d see two wedding rings hanging from the mirror on a 3M Command hook.  One is Bride’s, the other is mine.  They hang together on a necklace I bought shortly after Sandy died.  I wore it with just her ring, then in August it carried just my ring.   Then, I put both our rings on it and hung it on the bathroom mirror where I could see it every morning and every night.  The surprising part wasn’t that I took it off, I knew I would eventually.  The interesting part is what taking it off meant.

Grief has a funny way of attaching itself to objects and my brain.  After Sandy died, I needed something tangible.  Something I could reach up and touch when the reality of what happened hit me all over again.   The necklace and the rings became that thing.  At first it was just her ring.  I would catch myself holding it when I was thinking about her.  I would reach for it without realizing I was doing it.  It wasn’t jewelry as much as it was a lifeline. I never intended to wear it forever.  And early on, I just couldn’t imagine the day I wouldn’t.  And then one day I took it off.  Not because of some grand decision.  Not because I was trying to prove anything.  The first time I took it off, I put it in a dish.  The second time I took it off, I hung it on the bathroom mirror.

Looking back, I think I was experimenting without realizing it.  For a while I thought the necklace was keeping me connected to Sandy.  What I eventually realized was that I wasn’t wearing it because I was afraid of losing her.  I was wearing it because I was afraid of what it would mean when I no longer needed it to remind me.  It took me much longer than I care to admit to understand what was happening.  Early on I thought the necklace was helping me hang on to Sandy.  I thought it was the thing keeping her close. 

She was in the stories I tell without even thinking about it.  I can hardly tell a story about Oregon or Florida without talking about Sandy.  Over half my best stories start out with “Bride and I”.  Sometimes I don’t even realize Ive mentioned her until someone else points it out. She was in the stories other people tell me that I’ve never heard before, like the origin story of her nickname Sam.  When you love someone for that many years, they eventually become woven into the fabric of our life.

There isn't a place to put them because they're already everywhere.  Every story I have from the last 38 years seems to start with Sandy somewhere in the first three sentences.  Sometimes it’s the first sentence.  And sometimes, she is the whole story.  Every major life decision has her fingerprints on it.  Her adventurousness was a major factor in why we moved to Oregon and Nebraska.  Every room in this house contains evidence she was here.  Every person who loved her carries a version of her that I don’t even know.

The longer she is gone, the more I realize how impossible she is to lose.  If Sandy is in every story, every room, every memory, every person who loved her, what exactly was I afraid of losing?   I took it off because at some point I realized the necklace wasn’t what was keeping her with me.  The necklace was just the reminder I needed in those early days.  I don’t need to carry the reminder anymore.

The truth is, hanging the necklace on the mirror wasn’t as peaceful as I am making it sound.  The first few mornings I would look at it and think, Really?  That’s where they fucking go now?  Part of me wanted to put it back on.  Not because I needed it around my neck or on my finger.  Because I wasn’t entirely sure what it meant that I didn’t.  I wore that ring for 36 years.  Taking it off felt a little like crossing a line I had not agreed to cross.  I didn’t feel healed.  I didn’t feel finished.  Mostly I just felt uncertain.  The same uncertainty I felt when I took off my wedding ring.  The same uncertainty that has followed me through every meaningful step I’ve taken since Sandy died.  It felt suspiciously like moving forward.  Grief however   has a way of making every step forward feel a little like disloyalty.

These days the rings and necklace hang from my bathroom mirror.  Every morning I see them while I’m getting ready for the day.  Every night I see them before I go to bed.  I thought taking them off might feel like letting go.  Instead, it felt like acknowledging something that had always been true.  Sandy was always everywhere.

 

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

The Day I Took Off the Necklace

For those who don’t know, two days after Bride passed, I went to a pawn shop and bought a necklace.  For those who know me, you know I am not a jewelry type dude, I don’t even wear a watch.  The only thing I have worn, every day, was my wedding ring.  It might seem weird, like it did for me, to buy one.  I needed a place to keep her rings, somewhere close.  I have not taken those rings off, not for sleeping, not for working on the Galaxie, or showering, not once.

We always started at pawn shops when looking for jewelry, one of her sets was from a pawn shop.  She wore only that for a very long time.  When we were in Oregon, I had another one made for her.  She wanted a wide band with a square diamond.  I found the ring, a wider man’s gold band, and I liked the look of it.  Then I found a pair of solitaire earrings that looked perfect, setting and all.  The jeweler made them for a customer who never came back.  I convinced him to break up the pair, snip off the post, and solder one directly on the band, and voila, a ring for Bride.  

It helped me a lot in the days since then.  Without really thinking about it, touching those rings became part of how I moved through my grief.  First thing I touched when I woke up.  The last thing I touched before going to sleep.  And a hundred times in between.  In meetings, driving down the road, sitting alone in the house when it was quiet.  When my fingers found those rings, somehow everything felt a bit steadier.

After a while I stopped paying attention to how often I touched them.  Reaching for them had become automatic.  For 87 days my hand found them without thinking about it.  First thing in the morning, last thing at night and a hundred times between.  If you had asked me when I bought that necklace if there would ever be a day when I didn’t need to reach for those rings, I’d have said there wasn’t a snowballs chance in hell. 

Sometime this afternoon it occurred to me that I hadn’t touched the rings all day.  It felt a little strange.   For the last 87 days my hand found them without even thinking.  My first reaction was something was wrong.  Not with the necklace.  With me.  Had I just been too busy to notice?  Too distracted?  Was I getting used to grief the same way you stop noticing  a wedding ring after wearing it for years?   I wasn’t sure I liked any of those answers.  I reached up and touched them, and they were exactly where they’ve been.  Same necklace, same rings, same bit of comfort that carried me through some very hard days.

But something was different.  I shifted over to one of my ponder chairs and spent some ponder time on that thought.  The longer I sat with it, the harder it was to believe something was wrong.  Then it occurred to me that maybe I had been looking at this backwards.  The necklace was never carrying Bride.  It was carrying her rings.  Bride was in a thousand other places.  She was in the stories I tell.  The habits we built together over nearly 40 years.  The little phrases I still catch myself saying because she used them so often.  The way I see the world.  The way I show love.  And the way I go through my days, trying to spool more good into the universe than I do negative.  Those things defined who we were.

She is in every room of this house, not because her things are here, but because our life was happening here.  She is in the Galaxie because every decision I make on that car was shaped by something we dreamed about or planned together.  She is baked into my routines.  Hell, she is in some of the sentences I write without even realizing it.

The necklace has done exactly what I needed it to do.

In those first days, when the loss felt so overwhelming that I needed something tangible to hold on to, something to anchor me, and it gave me that.  Every time my fingers found those rings, it reminded me that what we had was real.  That she was real.  That nearly four decades together actually happened.  Today I realized that I didn’t need a tangible thing to remind me of her.  Not because I miss her less.  Not because I loved her less.  And certainly not because I had forgotten her.    

The truth was exactly the opposite.  Somewhere between day one and day 87 since she passed, I think I finally understood something I probably should have known all along.  Bride was never hanging around my neck.  She had already worked her way into every part of who I am. 

The necklace was carrying her rings.  I will be carrying her for the rest of my days.  So, this evening, I took it off.  It now sits in a small dish, made by a friend after she passed, on my nightstand. 

Somehow, Bride doesn’t feel any farther away.