Thirty Days of Mo(u)rning

Category: music

• Happy New Year!… blah, blah, blah.

  Posted at 7:18 pm by Darren Lidstrom, on January 6, 2022

  So… I’m sitting in front of the woodstove on the little green rocking chair with the wicker seat as I get a fire going and figure out what it is I wanna write about. It’s been something like a month and a half since my last post and quite frankly… I just haven’t set aside the time to get on here…! (Stoopid Time!… Why are you so god damn fleeting?!) I mean, I’ve had plenty of experiences in the past month and a half that I would consider significant enough for me to sit and think upon… and then half hazardly try to capture in words, but I didn’t.

  For the last month and a half, I just kinda feel like I haven’t been able to “balance” everything. One thing takes up time and energy, so the other thing gets pushed off. I’m not just talkin’ about the whole work/life balance thing, it’s more of a work/life/life/shitty life stuff/emotions/mental shit/awesome life shit/life balance thing. As of today… I feel like I’m getting a little bit more… “balanced”… and have decided to cut out sleeping from my life, which should free up some of that oh so precious Time. Think of all the things I’ll be able to get to and do!… and all of the space I’ll gain since I won’t need to have beds in bedrooms! (Before anyone mentions how A. I can’t possibly just choose to not sleep, and B. There are other things that beds can be useful for other than just sleeping… such as eating ice cream, jumping on, and pillow fights… don’t take it so literally! (And yes… whoopee. Beds are useful when making whoopee.))

  

  

  Well, after that introduction, I realized the amount of time it’ll take for me to write about my 46th Birthday, Thanksgiving, visiting my mom and family in Idaho… and my girlfriend going with me, Christmas Time attachments and Cancer Anniversaries I have with Kateri (Dec. 19th… when they found the mass in her brain.), Christmas Time in my “New Life”, the New Year and New Year’s Day… when my girlfriend met a few of my in-laws, or about the past week with it’s ups and downs and range of emotions instigated by the actions of other people. Nope… no time to get into any of that! Instead, I’m simply gonna wish you a “Happy New Year!” and hope that you are stepping into 2022 with good intentions and an understanding heart. I pray that you and your loved ones are well (sorry, I don’t actually pray… it just sounded good… but I still hope you’re well and I’ll think about ya if that helps!). I’ll tell those friends and family of mine who read this that I love them, miss them, and wish I was better at getting in touch and letting them know how much they mean to me. And I’ll post this little video I made of me “playing” the guitar last night (On Insurrection Eve… fucking assholes.) when I had the intentions of it being the only part of this post! Word.

  ps… Not to toot my own horn, but I think I’m still kicking my neighbor’s ass in the ol’ One-Sided Woodpile Decorating Contest…!

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  Posted in Christmas, music, New Years, videos, widower, widowhood | 8 Comments | Tagged Christmas2021, NewYear2022, playingguitar, thirtydaysofmorning, widower

• I Moved the Piano… to make room for the stove.

  Posted at 11:17 am by Darren Lidstrom, on August 8, 2021

  One thing always leads to another. Years and years ago, my parents were going through their stuff and were looking to get rid of the piano that they had been carting around… for at least all of my life… and wondered if I was interested in having it. I had told them that I would love to have the piano that I remember taking Yamaha Piano Lessons on when I was just knee high to a grasshopper (I’m not much taller now!), so my mom said that whenever Kateri and I buy our first home they would drive it out to us… and they did… five years ago… with my sister and her family (which I guess is also my family!). It was a wonderful visit filled with sitting on the porch, swimming holes, BBQ’s, fire pit building, going to the beach, eating seafood… and then one of those family members puking up that seafood into a brand new hat while sitting in the back seat of our Volvo on the drive home… it was a pretty special time. But that’s not the point. The point is… my family lugged this piano (that none of us know how to play) from Idaho to Vermont, unloaded it into the garage, and then there it sat… for five years… getting more and more swollen as the layer of sawdust (from cutting two inches of wood off of each log I burnt for two years after I got my new wood stove) got thicker and thicker. From the day Kateri and I acquired the piano we talked about how to get it into the house!… and we never did.

  

  In the three years since Kateri died, I kept telling myself that I need to get the piano into the house, but it seemed like such a big endeavor for one person and there have just been a million other things I’ve been needing to deal with, learning to deal with, and simply… dealing with… so it hasn’t happened. That was until a couple of weeks ago when my brother in-law informed me that they were moving from one corner of Vermont to the other and asked if I was still interested in the stove (and a couple of other things) that my Father In-law had given to Kateri and myself. Like the piano, we didn’t have a home to store it at… or to install it in! So Moose said he could hold onto it for us in his garage!… where it sat for years and years!… until last Sunday.

  Although I was super excited to be in possession of the stove for the first time… (it’s pretty frickin’ awesome)… I realized I didn’t have anywhere to really store it in the garage… unless I moved the piano! You know, swap one big ass heavy object that’s been sitting stationary for years… for another! As I was hemming and hawing on what to do about the situation, my Lady Friend suggested that we… WE!… simply move the piano into the house! Yup, so after buying a furniture dolly from The Home Depot we removed a door, built some ramps, disconnected and moved a washer so that we could shimmy the dryer… and the two of us got the piano into the dining room!… which coincidently made the dining room a whole bunch smaller. (funny how that works!) It was an awesome feeling!… and one of those times where you’re standing there with a piano in the middle of your dining room thinking to yourself, “Well, that went much smoother than I expected!”.

  

  

  

  

  I can’t tell you the sense of accomplishment it provided me… and us. I have some pretty strong attachments and memories of Kateri with that piano. I learned the one song I sorta know how to play on that piano. The song that I got to play for Kateri at the hospital when we went for her first immunotherapy treatment. It felt good to finally get it into the house so that it could start it’s own healing process after being neglected for years as it weathered the summer heat and humidity, the winter’s brutal cold, and the continual mist of… sawdust. For now… it’s resting. It’s slowly acclimating to it’s new environment. I’ve given it a once over, did an initial cleaning, but there’s still some sawdust in the cracks and crannies that I’ll get to in time. For now… I’ll just keep hitting a key or two every time I walk past it (because you can’t help yourself!) to see if they are still sticky or not… and wait for the time I can play the one song I learned… again.

  Once the piano was in the house, the next step was getting the stove! I rented a U-Haul because Kateri’s truck is no longer running and kinda just rotting away in my driveway. I figured I could use the U-Haul to move the stove, along with a chest and sink that was at Moose’s, and then use it to move my firewood from across the driveway to the garage! Unfortunately it was getting late and raining like the dickens when I finally got back to The Schoolhouse, so this year’s wood is still sitting where next year’s wood is supposed go, but I’ve decided not to worry too much about that… yet. For the time being, I’m just gonna enjoy the fact that whenever I get the money and time to sorta remodel the kitchen… I’ve got a 1940’s (?) stove to make meals on and to remember all those Hopes n Dreams Kateri and I had… when we bought our first home. (Man… she was soooo excited about that stove! We… were so excited about our future.)

  

  

  

  

  

  

  Widower Notes n Thought:

  • I love listening to the sound water creates in the woods as it makes it’s way from the tops of the trees to the bottom, jumping from leaf to leaf, after a night of rain.
  • Yup… I found a perfectly preserved mouse skeleton when I was cleaning the stove. It was kinda cool and gross at the same time. And yes… I threw away the moving blanket it had been wrapped in (the stove… not the mouse skeleton) for the last however many years.
  • Moose also gave/lent me their riding lawnmower since they didn’t have a place to use it yet. In my day to day life… this is huge. Trying to take care of everything after going from a two person household to one has been quite challenging. Cutting down the time it takes to simply mow my yard every week or two is super helpful!
  • For the record, Todd (who’s like 6’5″ and could probably do it himself!) offered to help move the piano a few years ago… but it wasn’t the right time.
  • I’m sorry I haven’t been very participatory with my blog, but I appreciate everyone who still visits and checks in. Please know that you help make my life… better.
  • I hope you have a good day!

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  Posted in grief, loss, music, Widow, widower, widowhood | 4 Comments | Tagged movingthestove, oldassMagicChef, pianointhegarge, thirtydaysofmorning, widower, widows

• Aloes, an Orchid, and a Song

  Posted at 11:50 am by Darren Lidstrom, on July 25, 2021

  It’s raining. It’s a little windy. It’s Sunday. It’s nice…. cuz I’m comfy n cozy and still in bed… with coffee.

  I’ve been pretty busy the last few months, but last weekend I took some time and replanted Kateri’s aloe plant, a couple of brugmansia cuttings which had been living on the window sill in the kitchen, and some leafy thing living in bark that I had been watering without knowing what the heck it was… but figured the leaves were still green so they would probably enjoy some agua. (I’ve been told that those leaves are actually an orchid. Soooooo… I guess I have an orchid. Yup… I’m tropical!) I’ve also had this piece of Christmas Cactus hanging out in a small old timey glass bottle for the last three years… haven’t done anything with it in those last three years… no dirt, no direct sun, not even a lick of water… but threw that in a new pot with some soil and placed it in one of the big ol’ schoolhouse windows to see if it would catch. The fact that it is still a… shade of green…… gives me hope! And why not?! What’s the worse that could happen?… all those people who come hang out at my house (which is pretty much just one other person… My Lady friend) would see that I planted a dead cactus thing?!… I can live with that.

  To cut to the chase… repotting Kateri’s plants is an extremely personal experience for me in terms of the attachments I have put on them in relation to her, to my memories of her, my love for her, and to the last twenty years where I got to see how much joy plants… these plants… gave my Wife. To do it with my Lady Friend was a wonderful exercise for me as I learn to live in this state where I feel as though I’m living… in-between lives. Yay!… widowhood.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  Widower Notes n Thoughts:

  • I’ve had what some have described as a “Heavy couple of months”. And I guess I have. But I’m getting through. Life is simply a mish mash (mosh?) of experiences and encounters that play their parts to get us… Here. There are things that bring us joy… and things that do not. My guitar is one of those things that brings me joy, but also provides me with a little balance. Although it can be frustrating (considering I don’t know really know what I’m doing!), it will always push the world outside the windows aside and allow me to simply sit on our little green rocking chair… in our Little Red Schoolhouse… and get lost for a minute or two.

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  Posted in music, Uncategorized, Widow, widower, widowervideos, widowhood | 1 Comment | Tagged plants, video, widower, widowervideos, widowhood

• Widower Day 22 months… on 2-22-2020… that’s sorta funny.

  Posted at 10:19 am by Darren Lidstrom, on February 23, 2020

  Today I’m writing what I was gonna write tomorrow about yesterday, but I realized the date and the whole “Widower Day” was kind of a funny run of two’s so I thought why not tonight?! (I don’t know why… I just happen to like numbers. Yup, as Kateri would say… I suffer from O.D.D…. it spells odd.)

  At work yesterday, I made the comment that if I didn’t love my house as much as I do, if Kateri and I had just bought some random home in the burbs instead of our cute ass and drafty little red schoolhouse… well, I probably would’ve sold it and hit the open road! But that’s not the case, so I’m still here at my little red schoolhouse home and on the drive home yesterday I had an experience that simply made me happy about my current living condition.

  It was getting dark when I turned at the lake. Not like dark dark… just kinda dark. About three minutes in, I saw two dimly lit red lights moving at a slower rate than I was moving. I couldn’t really make out the shape of the car, but I could tell the lights were the taillights of on old Volvo station wagon… and then made the assumption that it was John plugging along in front of me. This is where I felt a little bit of the warmth that “community” and “neighbors” provide once in a while. I loved the fact that before I could actually see any of the particulars, I could tell who it was. It made me feel like I was driving “Home”. After literally saying how I would’ve “Hit the open road” just a couple of hours earlier, it made me realize that I do still really love where I live… and the fact that I know my neighbors. I don’t know most of them very well, but each of them have come into my (or our) life at one point or the other. Some I wish we (I) got to spend more time with… I guess I still can. Some, I’m fine with just a wave here and there. Either way, it’s comforting knowing the people on my Home Road. It eases the loneliness… and that little experience helped fill a tiny bit of the emptiness I feel every time I head back north. It was a little thing. It was random. It was moment specific. But it was significant to me on an insignificant drive back to the schoolhouse.

  When I pulled into the driveway, pulled up to the garage, put the car in park and set the parking break.. I just sat there for a moment. I have this thing where sometimes I can’t get out of the car right away… usually because I see those big ass schoolhouse windows to my left and it just reminds me of all of the “Hopes and Dreams” Kateri and I had with our lives and our home… this was one of those times. I was starting to get a little emotional when the song Dance Monkey by Tones and I came on. I had heard this song quite a few times and have just always really enjoyed it. I’d like to think that I’m sorta up on current music, but I don’t have TV and am not on the internet too much so I don’t really know about any of the artists… or what they even look like! This song, however, has just been growing on me so I decided to sit and listen… in my driveway.

  It made me really think about Kateri for a couple of reasons. I thought of her dancing in the passenger seat as we would drive down the highway… or be sitting in our driveway. I thought about how she would’ve really enjoyed movin’ to this particular song. It made me think about how Kateri faced the news and fucked up reality that she had cancer… in her brain… and her plan was to dance the cancer away. She always described it as her “Dance” with cancer… and she danced beautifully with the asshole partner who unexpectedly cut in.

  As I thought about these things and others, I wondered if I could maybe play this song on the guitar…? So, as I sat there in the driveway… in my “cute” little Jeep… I pulled out my phone and searched guitar chords for the song that was currently vibrating loose change in the cup holder. I saw that it was basically four chords and when the song ended, I went inside, rolled a joint, turned on Youtube to check out the official video, lit a fire, lit the joint… and just enjoyed the song for the second time in 15 minutes.

  I couldn’t really tell anything about the artist from the official video, so I started searching live performances. This is where I need to insert the “Oh my God!”… because what I saw was simply amazing. The first video I found was her U.S. debut when she played on Jimmy Fallon… and I couldn’t get enough of it… of her!  I’m not gonna get too much into it except to say that I found her to be absolutely inspiring… which then turned into another two hours filled with nothing but Tones and I… and Dance Monkey being played over and over again as I searched for more and more live performances. It was such a “not what I thought” experience that I couldn’t get over it! As I watched her perform… it made me wanna root for her! Of course, seeing her perform gave me the feeling that she is gonna have a shit ton of people who are gonna wanna listen to her music, learn about her story, and support her! It was just one of those pleasant surprises that come along once in a while. Check her out!

  Yup, it was just one of those days. And, in all honesty… I finished writing this today… because I didn’t finish it yesterday. Instead, I fell asleep on the couch.

  Widower Notes n Thoughts:

  • When your wife dies, make sure to change your W-4 from “Married” to “Single”. Your employer won’t do it for you… and it sucks when you find out 22 months later that you never made the change and you’ve been “under reporting”…?… and all that shit. Just a friendly Widower PSA.
  • Wedding ring status: still off.
  • Hope you have an inspiring day!.. or at least a good one!
  • I have no idea if this is kosher, but this is what started my infatuation with Tones and I:

  https://youtu.be/4iQxG8ZjYO8

  ps… you can follow the blog by email or WordPress if you hit the little button. Then I wouldn’t need to keep throwing these up on Facebook to feel good about myself! (don’t worry… I’ll feel ok about myself even if you don’t!)

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  Posted in grief, loss, music, Widow, widower | 3 Comments | Tagged grief, loss, music, thirtydaysofmorning, TonesandI, Widow, widower, widowernotesnthoughts

• Widower Day 581… my birthday!

  Posted at 1:16 pm by Darren Lidstrom, on November 24, 2019

  I wanted to do a bloggery at some point this weekend because Friday the 22nd was Kateri’s monthly death date anniversary… and today is my birthday… yay! I took yesterday off and it’s been a good couple of days so far… a lot of thinking, relaxing, and remembering. But I don’t feel like throwing myself into an emotional three hours of writing about crap, so this morning… I made a video on the way back to bed from getting my Birthday Morning Coffee… and never got back into bed.

  Widower Notes n Thoughts:

  • It’s been heartwarming receiving little messages and phone calls from friends and family wishing me a Happy Birthday! You…. are awesome!… and thank-you!

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  Posted in loss, music, videos, Widow, widower | 11 Comments | Tagged birthday, grieving, guitar, mourning, music, sunday morning, thirtydaysofmorning, videos, widower, widower thoughts, widowerbirthday, widows

• Vibrations Filling the Silence

  Posted at 8:16 pm by Darren Lidstrom, on August 1, 2018

  Music has always been a prevelant thing in our life.  Whether it be Kateri putting on the B-52’s for cleaning music, some Steely Dan on a rainy day (who I never cared for up till the last 5 years, I would say), or some classic 90’s gangster rap in the kitchen as we were using tilt skillets for fryers or getting out stations ready for service.  I will forever associate Warren G’s “Regulate” remix featuring Michael McDonald with our time at The Barn Door.  If you haven’t come home to a message on the machine from Luke and Will after they held their phones up to the speakers that were perched on top of the ice machine, so as to capture that classic tune off of Pandora, because that was their top priority at the moment and not the pounds of lima beans that needed to get shucked or the natural disaster that just happened in the dish pit… well, you don’t know friendship.

  I haven’t been able to sit, walk, drive, exist in silence for any length of time since the passing of Kateri.  The mind starts to wander and when you can’t get past the cancer times, when you can’t get past that crushing feeling of “unfairness” for that person you held above everyone else… silence isn’t always the best thing for ya.  My thoughts always take me back to specific moments within this experience.  First to our last words to each other while Kateri was in Palliative Care where she told me, “I love you.” in that hoarse, weak voice, eyes struggling to open but fixed on me and I responded with the only thing I could… “I love you too, so much.” The second memory that has been somewhat consuming is when we had to go back to the ER in February two days after being discharged from when her colon gave out.  We were in one of the ER rooms, Kateri wrapped in hospital blankets, the lights dim because they hurt her head, and as the Doc was trying to get her some relief she looked at him and said, “I don’t want to die”… and started crying. Living a life where those two thoughts pop in your head over and over again, hours and days on end, makes it hard to focus on other things like cleaning the house, work, mowing the lawn, feeding yourself, feeding your chickens, watering plants… your future… or the past 20 years. So for me, I  need vibrations to hit my head with the hope of drowning out some of the pain… or at least to push it off to another time when I can deal with it, to spread out the discomfort as much as possible, to try and “regulate” it.  (I’m so sorry for the “regulate”  bit… cheesy, but gives me a chance to also mention that Nate Dogg’s sexy slide into verses just adds dimensions to the song.  Nate Dogg AND Michael McDonald… well, that’s what I think silk sounds like in heaven)

  I’ve been picking up the guitar much more lately.  Although I have had one in my life for the last couple of decades, I really haven’t played it much.  One of those start fooling around with it because you thought it was cool… and because you had friends that you found simply amazing on the instrument you thought anyone could just pick it up and make sounds that would entertain the ear.  Ya… it doesn’t happen that way.  It takes work.  And I’m one of those people who got to a certain point with the guitar and then became interested in so many other things that would take up time… some not so noble as making music, but still fun. Basically, I could play a couple (literally) of songs, wrote a few because it was easier than learning someone else’s, and I could slightly impress friends for about 12 minutes… 15 years ago.  Once in a while I would pull it off the wall and play a few things, Kateri would ask me to play “that one song that sounds middle eastern”, and it would go back up.  As of recently I have found myself turning to it almost every day for an escape from all the bullshit.  For hours I play the same six to eight songs that I have been playing for years. Songs that I never really tried to do anything with, never “worked” on my skills, never fully listened to the relationship my head and hands had with the guitar, the pick (I mainly use picks, sorry Brad), the strings, or the vibrations that would fill the air with sounds that kinda went together.

  Nowadays, I get lost in the experience. There are points I find myself almost hunched over the guitar trying to get my ear as close to the sound as possible… to have it be the one thing filling my space. It’s the closest I have come to what I believe would be meditating.  (People ask if I have tried meditating during this process, but I don’t have any real desire to “Om” it out right now so I’m gonna stick with the strings).  Sometimes I find myself playing the same two or three chords over and over again, slight changes to strum patterns, or beat, or intensity.  I try to be deliberate in my actions to make the sound that I want to hear, to make this or that a little different, or maybe even subjectively better.  I think the main reason I am trying to improve my playing is that I am tired of the stagnation, of the same old songs, of the same old tune.  Right now… I need more.  And whether I want it or not, I have the time and space to see what more I can do… even at 1:38a.m… because there isn’t anyone else around except chickens… and they don’t seem very interested in my music.

  Ya, so… music… it helps and you should have it in your life.  It could be studying an instrument at some fancy pants music school… or in your bedroom.  It could be seeing Gillian Welch in Hanover with your wife’s dermatologist or reggae on Coney Island with people who understand what “One Love” is all about.  Sometimes it’s blaring Today’s Hits with the windows down and sunroof open while driving through the green hills and valleys of Vermont. Other times it could be Lady Gaga being funneled out of your garage door while you wonder if your neighbors over yonder can hear it… but you don’t care if they do. And when you can be pleasantly surprised by revisiting a song or an album from another time and place in your life… it can be nostalgic, therapeutic, and beautiful.  For me currently,  that would be Uncle Tupelo.  Moonshiner is still one of my favorite songs ever… fucking depressing, but fantastic. (FYI-I’m on the Jay Farrar/Son Volt side… not the Tweedy/Wilco side).

  I feel fortunate that I am one of those people who enjoys it all… well, most of it. Just like in life, there is a fair amount of crap out there, too. Hopefully, we just find the right song at the right time to give us what we need.

  Widower Day 100.

   

   

   

   

   

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  Posted in cancer, inspirational, loss, music, Uncategorized, widower | 1 Comment | Tagged cancer, grief, grieving, loss, melanoma, mourning, music, widower

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• 

  Chicken and Lil’ Bitch

  

  Tracy’s Mad Hatter Retirement Party 2017

  

  Home

  
  

  

  An Evening Fire

  

  CHICKS!… 2016

  

  Coney Island 2018

  
  

  

  Tea Cups at Disneyland… a while ago.

  

  Yup.

  
  

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