Just over ten years ago… in the spring of 2010… it hit me like a ton of feathers that I needed to ask Kateri for her hand in marriage… after being together for nine years before that… and friends (sometimes with benefits) for two/three years before that! I used to say that I wish I had asked earlier. I mean… our first anniversary was our tenth year together!… but those are just numbers. Nowadays, I simply view her as my wife and like to remember the twenty years I was fortunate enough to spend with my best friend… my Dearest Kateri… and not just the time we were married.
I’ll be honest… I don’t really know what to say. My Anniversary makes me think about those twenty years together, filled with the good and not so good times taking place in Wyoming, Colorado… and Vermont… our home… Kateri’s home. There were plenty of other places with good and not so good times all over this country… and in the Dominican… and that other tropical paradise… Canada, but that’s a lot of shit to write down! So, I decided to focus on our wedding, think about why I loved it so much (It was pretty awesome… you should’ve been there!), and simply make a list throughout the morning… and maybe into afternoon… of things that I kinda hold on to about that day.
Kateri and Darren’s Wednesday Wedding
September 28th, 2011
- The fact that it was on a Wednesday… and the invitation said “4…ish”!
- A huge portion of our friends are in the food industry… Wednesday would make it easier for them to come and party with us!
- We smoked a pig… at a vegetarian summer camp… there was pig juice and fat everywhere!
- Ya… the smoker went up in flames when we first started it… that was fun, too.
- We didn’t have Bridesmaids or Groomsmen… only Men of Honor.
- There wasn’t a person there we didn’t want to be there… right down to the people helping “work” it… they were all friends.
- We did everything ourselves… with the help of friends. Luminaries with Dom while watching Glee, smoked pig, steamed buns, pickles, hanging lights, terrariums, flowers that Keith and Michelle picked at the farm down the road, Kateri brewed our wedding beer, her sisters helped with photo booth decorations, invitations, guest books… and we even made our own “Church” by gathering old windows, attaching stakes to them, and sticking them in a field in the shape of rectangle… Insta-Church!
- We had friends from different parts of the country sitting in Luke and Braedy’s dining room peeling apples and baking off crisps… while watching football.
- I love that it was beautiful weather the days leading up to our wedding… and then was rainy the day after. The clouds and coolness provided the perfect, somewhat lazy atmosphere to soak in the experience we just went through.
- I like that we rented a summer camp… before summer camps in Vermont realized they could charge happy couples a shitload of money to get hitched in a tick infested field.
- Mike puked in the path… yup.
- We had a wonderful evening a few nights before with our Men of Honor and their significant others, talking about friendship and life, on top of Jake’s building down by the train tracks overlooking Lake Champlain.
- I smile when I remember how we referred to Nina as a Golden Bowling Ball… she was pretty pregnant.
- John made Kateri’s wedding dress… he had never done something like that before… it was gorgeous.
- We bought the fabric by cashing in the coins we had saved in mason jars!
- I love that MPH wrote a song and played it for us… he’s so dreamy.
- Watching Scottie in our shacky little cabin roll joint after joint for the festivities… he doesn’t smoke weed.
- We danced. Kateri loved to dance. I loved to dance… with Kateri.
- Our “Song” was Forever in Blue Jeans by Neil Diamond. Of course, I got married in Carhartt’s.
- Side note-I also proposed to Kateri under a HUGE pair of Carhartt’s in a hardware store! She loved hardware stores… and that hardware store in particular.
- We didn’t have plans for a honeymoon. We figured the day after our wedding we would go through the cards, see how much money was there, and then determine where we could go! We went to Maine… where I ate bad clams… not on purpose.
- I love that we wrote our vows two hours before the ceremony… and this morning, I found the scratch paper that Kateri wrote hers on.
- We took time right after the ceremony to be alone… together… as husband and wife.
- Wow… I could just keep going on and on! Basically, our wedding was… perfect… for us.
Yup, my third Wedding Anniversary without Kateri is an emotional roller coaster type of day. Today is the anniversary of the best day of my life, but it’s also a pretty big reminder of the worst day of my life… and that’s one of the challenges I face as a widower. When you live a life where you can pin point, right down to the date and time, the best day of your life and the worst… your world gets a little muddled and muted. For example, I know the colors of Autumn surrounding the Schoolhouse and blanketing the hills of Vermont are currently absolutely stunning, vibrant, and beautiful… but it’s just not the same. Although… this year they seem to be a bit more… colorful.
It’s been a year and a half since Kateri passed away… that just seems all sorts of fucked up to me. It’s weird because at some points it seems like it has been that long (whatever that means)… and at other times it seems like yesterday. Actually, anytime I think about Kateri it seems like yesterday… which is hard… and the main reason why I have to try and manage my emotions much of the time. I can function in society without breaking down in the grocery store or coffee shop… but I still don’t care if I do. Although I haven’t become comfortable living my life without Kateri (I just want her back)… I have become more comfortable with my situation… and all the bullshit that comes along with it. Mourning the loss of a spouse is one of those “Big Life” experiences that happens to be somewhat complicated and I realize I am just settling into this whole grieving process… because it’s gonna be around for a while! Oh, it’s gonna change here and there… maybe it’ll even take a break once in a while… but it’s not going anywhere. I’m just learning to live with it.
So yeah, I’m just gonna say it… my body hurts!… but all my winter wood is neatly stacked and tucked away in the lean-to keeping it safe from the rain… and snow… and out of site! I’ve been looking at the piles on the other side of the driveway for about two months now. I was just never motivated enough or had the time to stack it, so I made it The Agenda for this weekend. My plan was to get out there just after the sun came up and have it done by early afternoon, but sometimes things don’t go as planned. However, I’m happy with how the day went… besides being reminded that I’m getting older and that I haven’t taken care of my body in the last year and a half or so! Oh well, that’s why I did it yesterday… so that I could recover today.
And… we got older. Out priorities… changed. We slowed down a bit as we were settling into the rest of our lives. Even though I believe Kateri was happy with her life and with me… I know… KNOW… that Kateri wanted more excitement in her life… more adventures… more passion!… and I was happy with how things were. As a widower you can take that type of reflection and put the information to use by living every day like it’s the last!… or some other homogenized cliché saying… and I do most the time. But tonight… reflecting on life also showed me that I do… in fact… have regrets.
I’m just gonna preface this with my Wedding Anniversary was actually yesterday, I’ve been horrible at planning things lately, and at 10:08 in the morning… I’m still in the same comfy clothes as last night because I fell asleep on the couch! (I like to think of it as me being efficient… this way I don’t have to get undressed just to put them back on for a Sunday morning!) Long story short… well, abbreviated… this is what I did.
It was a beautiful drive… cloudy… cool. I took the dirt roads for the first bit and just got in the right frame of mind. When I hit Montpelier I thought, “I should probably eat breakfast…?!” and then Penny Cluse in Burlington instantly came to mind… because I love it there. As I got a little further down the road, another thought popped into my head that put a smile on my face… we cooked a majority of the food for our wedding in the Penny Cluse kitchen!… how fitting that I would be eating there!… today! It’s that whole attachment to experiences thing that I seem to keep trying to do, but it worked for this! So I got to Burlington, ate my Mama Cruz’s Huevos Rancheros, caught up with a couple of people, gave and got a hug from Charles, and moved on to the next phase of the journey.
Well, yesterday was a Saturday… and even though we got married on a Wednesday, most people get married on Saturdays… so the thought was, “I wonder if there is gonna be a wedding going on when I pull up?!”… there was. At least, that’s what I’m assuming… because there were people milling about as if they were getting ready for a wedding!
I’ll make this short n sweet since I had no plans on opening up the computer in bed when I woke up this morning! It was a Facebook post that sorta hit me… and I subsequently sorta lost it. It was from my sister and she was talking about how you don’t just marry your spouse… you become part of a family. She posted this because my brother-in-law’s mother passed away… her mother-in-law… and it just made me think about how death touches us all the time… from all sorts of different angles.
I’ve been kinda freaking out about losing pictures and videos… memories… as the time keeps piling up so I started going through them in an attempt to organize them… it’s a slow process. I realized we all get a YouTube account with our google account so I figured I would at least throw the videos I have hanging out on my phone on there so that they are consolidated, I could expand the sharing of this experience, and I could learn a bit more about this technology stuff. Again… slow process.
I took three days off of work last week… I felt that I needed to. I’ve been trying to take some time off during the summer, but it just didn’t really happen until this week. I’ve been feeling like I need a bit of time to address some of the obstacles this new life has put in front of me. It’s strange for me to think that it has 497 days… because I face it every single day. So at points it still feels like it literally just happened… and other times I can feel the space growing between points in the timeline. Either way, at the beginning of my Mini Vacation I had no plans on painting my bedroom… but I’m glad I did.
I left work an hour early on Thursday to unexpectedly drive up to B-Town for something. Work was fine, kind of a normal Thursday for me… did some ordering, sent off invoices, had a talk or two… but it wasn’t until I got up north and was sitting at my friend’s that it hit me… 16 months… since the death of Kateri.
cool that he was the one I was with when I realized the date. It’s stoopid little things like that that I have come to absolutely love… the cool little memories some situations have given me since the passing of Kateri. They provide me comfort… when those things happen. It makes me feel good. Whether it’s accurate or not… it gives me another reason to think, “It’ll all be ok.”. Sometimes life takes away the things we think we can’t live without. When it does, sometimes it gives us back tiny little things that help us keep going… we just need to make sure we are paying attention.
I guess this is just me giving an example of why some people compare the effects of traumatic experiences to roller coaster rides. My last blog post was pretty darn positive… the good shit in this new life! I’m actually trying to be a pretty darn positive person… but sometimes things pop into my head on the 40 minute drive home through the vibrant green hills. Like memories. I’m gonna keep this short.
needed the space to try and be comfortable. Somewhere in the last of month of her life, I was tucking her into bed when she said, “You can sleep in here if you want?”…. but by the time I was done trying to figure out hospital stuff, insurance stuff, cancer stuff, life stuff… she was asleep, looking as comfortable as she could be, and I didn’t want to do anything that would ruin that. So I laid on the bed above the covers, held her for a bit, and simply kissed her goodnight.
Well… as of today it has been a year since I started jotting some thoughts down pertaining to this whole widower thing on this little bloggery I have called Thirty Days of Mo(u)ring. Yup… a year. I have published 74 (75 now!) posts, learned a bit about how these things work, learned a bit about myself, have gotten some lovely words of encouragement, and have had strangers come into my world that I would now consider my friends… ish. I had absolutely no idea what I was gonna be doing with this blog, how I was gonna do it, or really even why (still don’t), but a few people have reached out to me to say “thanks for sharing… it has helped me get through my shit.”… and I can’t tell you how much that warms my innards.
Well, currently sitting in my garage because it’s cooler than the front porch right now and I don’t wanna be inside. I just let the chickens out so that they could feel the grass between their toes… and eat all the ticks. Today is one of those days that I’m willing to risk having to deal with death so that the chickens can enjoy being chickens. (when you live in the woods… there are creatures that rather enjoy eating chicken for dinner… hopefully not tonight, though!) Yup, today I’m just going with the flow. It’s kind of what I’ve been doing for the last week or two… which has been both good and… well… aggravating on some fronts.
Independence Day was fantastic. A friend and I had a wonderfully Vermonty 4th of July with parades (well… a parade), swimming holes, creamies, grilled burgers, macaroni salad, homemade key lime pie (not my home), fireworks and all! It kinda sucked getting a flat tire on the way down to the fireworks… and having the wheel decide it didn’t wanna come off for a bit even though the lug nuts were on the asphalt… but the spare made it on and we made it in time to watch shit explode! Personally, I love the fact that we both sorta rolled with it. We tried something with the tire… didn’t work… I tried it again! Oh hey, my AAA is non-existent…?… let’s try yours! Once we actually got to the point that a tow truck was coming, I just started to kick one side of the tire and it popped off! So we canceled the wrecker, threw on the full size spare (thank God… or something… that it was full size), drove to the town just south of the parking lot we were in, and enjoyed the rest of the evening! Rolling with it!… until it cost me $303 to throw 4 old tires on the Jeep and to replace the sensor that the flat tire destroyed. (Actually still rolling with it at that point… just reluctantly)
The other evening I was going through videos on my phone that I had made last summer… when I was trying to figure out what the effe just happened to my world… and I came across this picture that I had taken on July 1st, 2018. Sooooo, that would’ve been Widower Day 70… and it’s weird to think I’m at 436 now partly because much of the last 14 and whatever months are in some ways a blur… and foggy. But I remember taking this picture because of the significance of what the date on the newspaper reminded me of… April 22nd… the day Kateri died… 70 days earlier.
a chicken that week… Taco. Although she wasn’t my favorite, I thought she was the most beautiful. She just looked like a picture perfect Silver Laced Wyandotte. Bright white and black with the really red comb thing… like the ones you see in the movies! (really… I have no idea what a good looking Silver Laced Wyandotte looks like… but she sure was a purdy chicken. And… the chicken in the picture is Lil’ Bitch… she’s my favorite) Yup, poor Taco. I opened up the door to the coop… and BLAM!… dead chicken… mostly in the nesting box… little head hanging over the edge……….. it was hot. I felt pretty bad there for a bit, and then just thought… it’s a chicken… and had to move on.
Yup, the ol’ Adirondack Chairs that Kateri and I had bought 15 years ago from The Christmas Tree Shop finally bit the dust. Well, one of them had a run in with a chunk of snow that jumped off the roof this winter… I probably should have moved it before then… oops. In all honesty, they lasted ten years longer than we expected them to! Of course, we treated them pretty well. In the beginning we would bring them into the house as our “winter furniture”. We didn’t have anything else besides a papasan and the stool (our first piece of “furniture” which I still use by the woodstove) and if you add a cushion to an Adirondack Chair… they are quite comfy to sit back in and watch a movie!
It’s 7:35 in the morning… I’ve been up for about 47 minutes… and I don’t know what the fuck to say. I do know that the first text of the day came in a bit ago… and I’ve been crying those good ol’ crocodile tears ever since. Although I don’t really care if people see or hear me being emotional, I am sorta glad that I don’t have people walking past my house on their way to work or school hearing me as I sob uncontrollably while making odd noises through my mouth because my nose is so plugged up with snot! Kateri always said, “Trees make better neighbors!”… and right now I’m glad they are the ones right outside my window listening to me cope and come to terms with the fact that I haven’t been able to hear her laugh, hold her hand while walking down the dirt road, or kiss her goodnight… like I did every… single… night. It has been a year since Kateri has not been on this earth. For 365 days I have come home to an empty house filled with memories of a life that life decided to take away from me… from all of us. It hurts. It’s painful. It’s something I don’t want… but it’s what I’ve got… and I’m glad life didn’t take away the memories.
In the winter of 1998/99… December… Wyoming… I watched Kateri walk from The Chalet (female employee housing) down to the lodge, from the window of The Stables (male employee housing). She had on her blue snow pants, her white winter coat with the god awful neon patch work, and her funky hat from Nepal or some place (I should remember where she got it… she told me… it’s just not coming to me!) keeping her head warm. Kateri would sometimes tilt her head as she walked. I found the image to be calming. We didn’t really know each other at the time… we had just met. At the time, there weren’t any romantic inclining’s yet… she was just someone I found to be interesting. She was unique. There was something different about her. Thankfully, we got along and became friends!
For the last 365 days… and for the four months and three days before that… I have been consumed with either the experience of watching and being a part of cancer ravish Kateri’s body and brain, the loss of Kateri, or trying to figure out how to survive without her. It’s been a struggle. I don’t eat, I find it a challenge to put myself to bed, I’m stressed out worrying about my future, my job, my home. I’m sad, I’m confused, and I hurt… this process physically hurts… but I’m here. I’m here surrounded by the memories that Kateri and I made with each other as we built our life together. She gave me twenty years of memories to draw upon when I feel the need to be close to her. She filled our home with relics which are attached to experiences over those twenty years which I can hold in my hand, I can feel, I can smell… I can touch. Kateri will always be with me… a part of me. That’s just what happens. This last year has sucked balls, but the great things that Kateri brought into this world… into my world… are still here… even if she isn’t. That is how we hold on… to the people we love more than ourselves. That is how I hold on to Kateri… because I miss her… I love her… and I always will.
Last year, Easter fell on the 1st. It was actually three weeks before Kateri passed. It’s weird to think about… she wasn’t in Palliative Care yet. Heck, we hadn’t even received the bad news of no more options yet. Maria had just gotten to our house the day or two before… I think. She came to help… and to be with her sister. It was the three of us for the last three weeks of Kateri’s life… going through it… together. I am forever grateful to Maria for being here for many reasons, but it really comes down to the fact that I think Kateri needed her to be here. Kateri needed Maria to be with her as she was preparing to leave this earth… she needed her help… her support… her love. And Maria… needed to be with Kateri.
I didn’t remember the video when I stumbled upon it trying to clear space on my phone, so it sorta caught me by surprise. It’s hard for me to see Kateri in the “Cancer Time” and it’s quick, but it’s Kateri… through and through… in a space she loved… with people she loved.
I had told myself… and I guess the digital world… that I wanted to take these next two weeks (the last two of the first year without Kateri) to mourn the loss of my wife. The other day, at the end of a conversation with a friend, he asked me, “What does that mean to you?”…. and I realized… I have no fucking idea! But I figure rememberin’ has somethin’ to do with it so that’s what I’m gonna do a little of and see how it goes. I mean… we’ll see… it took me three days, 2 baths, a pint of Ben n Jerry’s, two hours and 23 minutes of Aquaman, and 13 packages of pills (Smarties) to get through 8 photos! (yup, the kind you can hold in your hand)
Each with an arm wrapped around my shoulders… a hand on my leg… one on across my chest. I remember them just holding me as I was processing what was going on… while they were processing what was going on… and I just remember saying to Keith… “This is it. We’re here for a reason…. right?… this is it?”… and all he had to say was, “Yes.”
There’s a strip between the coop and the house… which I was excited about… and then the chickens crapped all over it! (At least they looked happy!)
It hit me last night… I’m trying to jam “healing” into a time frame and attaching it to all sorts of things. This is one reason I’m thankful I decided to use writing, to start a blog, as a tool for myself as I go through this process. Recently, my plan was to just get all those things that I associate with “widower” stuff on the blog by the one year anniversary of Kateri’s passing. I wanted it all there… consolidated… organized… so that I could start year 2 with a fresh and brighter outlook, but I can’t do it. Tomorrow is the anniversary of one of the roughest days of my life… the day we found out there were no other options (two immunotherapy treatments which had two drugs at each treatment… along with one radiation session… did absolutely nothing). The day after that is the ER. The day after that… Palliative Care.
We were progressive n shit. (Actually, we didn’t like the idea of changing her name… Kateri Lidstrom wasn’t who she was… and it sounded stupid)
I’m a cook. It’s in my blood at this point… it’s part of “who” I am. We are not “Home Chefs” or tell people that, “I just love to cook!”… we are a different breed and unless you are one… you just don’t understand… like being a widower/widow. You may get a glimpse of what/who we are… but you never get the full story… there are too many details. Now, I do believe that that goes for any personal experience we humans go through. I may know that you are hurting, or are faced with the challenge of losing a loved one, or that you are an accountant and have to face Tax Season!… but I don’t know what that feels like for you… I don’t know what you need to do to get through your challenges. Nor, do I need to know. I just need to know that there are challenges in your world.
I was gonna write about all sorts of stuff… but then I read how long this thing was and decided against it… because I can do that. Looking back on this day (and I remember it clearly)… is just kinda weird. I remember wanting to be strong and positive. I probably overcompensated on the positivity, but I needed to at the time…… And then I fell asleep on the couch (seems to be a theme). Yup.
Sometimes, the ol’ balance scale is off kilter and I have to focus on whatever carries more weight. Sometimes the balance scale… feels like it has 7 arms.
All I wanna say is… I really enjoyed reading through these notes… looking back on this one day. At the time, the day itself was just kinda meh… and I’m sure I was just floating around in a daze. But reading what I was thinking about and recognizing the mood I was in as I wrote down ideas… as I was first trying to figure out what it was that I was gonna do in my life… to survive (because that’s what it feels like)… it felt good. Instant gratification. A talk with a friend. Looking for good in… whatever. Saying, “Fuck it”… and doing whatever it was that I felt I needed to do to feel better.
I like these notes because I can see a little bit of both chapters of my life in them and it was a “typical” day for me.
For 346 days I have been filling time with projects, with work, tidying, cleaning, organizing, removing stuff, chickens… and chicken chores, moving wood piles, remodeling bathrooms, acquiring things to help in the future (I’m getting older… and definitely over shoveling snow off driveways!), watering plants, rearranging living rooms (just last week!… I like it, but there’s a strange feeling sitting at home in a space set up in a way that Kateri has never experienced), seeing friends once in a while, meeting new people, seeing family even more once in a while, taking baths, playing guitars, keyboards, or blaring music when it’s significantly past the one-two. I’ve tried to fill time with actions that would help me in the future and/or make me feel good… or better. Right now though, right this second… I just want to stop… and sit… and feel the sadness that the loss of Kateri has given me… because it’s the closest I’m gonna get to her. When I can feel the pressure in my temples, when I have to breath through my mouth because my nose is all snotted up, when the words are blurry after a good ol’ “moment” (like this one)… when it hurts the most… I can see her the clearest. I can almost feel her… feel her skin… her hair. Her beautiful black and silver hair. Again… almost. Now, tell me that’s not fucked up!… (it’s not)
It was a good day… I mean today was. Looks like Day 24 wasn’t all that horrible, but I’m talking about my day in Boise. Aaaand… I ate a banana for breakfast… I hate bananas.
It’s the second day of my weekend and after staying up way too late last night… but enjoying no alarm!… I decided to try and pluck some things off of the “To Do” list today. You know, those little things that you just keep meaning to get to… or are blatantly disregarding?! So I did chicken chores, replaced the Daytime Running Light on the ol’ buggy, brought wood over from the potting shed… with help from said buggy… and a sled, changed out the drip pans on the stove because the old ones had literally disintegrated, and then… well… I rearranged the living room.
I thought I was gonna write something a little more in depth of what I’m about to do for the next thirty days, but it’s 11:41pm and I got home a little later than anticipated… and I’m… well… kinda tired. A friend and I went up to BTown for a get together of absolutely wonderful people who wanted to show a friend of ours that we love him… that we support him… that we are there for him as he does his dance with cancer. This is a man who I met when I first came to Vermont… who I have cooked with and for… and who Kateri considered one of the early “Pocket People”… which should tell you something about this guy.
Yup… I didn’t really realize it until I was driving home from work that today was the eleven month anniversary of Kateri’s passing. I felt a little off today, but didn’t think much about it. Plus, coming off of Kateri’s birthday and the ringer that that put me through, I was actually just looking forward to a little bit of a mellower time for the following few days… hopefully weeks… and so far it is. At this point, having gone through birthdays and holidays and anniversaries of cancer stuff… the month anniversaries are just a way to track time. Compared to Kateri’s birthday… or the date of the diagnosis of Melanoma in the brain… or the anniversary of her death coming up in a month… all the other months have just been a countdown to that 1 Full Year moment. So, for me right now… it kinda sucks to think that Kateri has been gone for eleven months, but I’m emotionally hung over… wanna take a breather… and just prepare (if you can) for 1 year. (wow… that just fucked up to think about)
I took an extra day off at the tail end of my weekend because… as I figured… Kateri’s birthday was probably gonna be the peak of the emotional mountain expedition. (no… I’m not a mountain climber or have any desire to scale Mt. Kilamenjaro or anything. Walks though… those are good) I wanted to make sure I had a little extra time so as not to have the sense of rushing it… and I’m glad I did!… cuz it’s been rough! I mean, yes it’s been rough, but I have come to expect that. However, I was surprised by the amount of crying I did. I was surprised by how early the water works and the “I miss those days” reminiscing started… a couple of weeks prior to her birthday. I was surprised by just how much… how many emotions… I had pushed to the side as I try to figure out how to maneuver, how to live in the present, how to get everything done in this new life… without her. And I knew I was gonna need a couple of days to recover from the onslaught of everything on Kateri’s birthday… on St. Patrick’s Day.
I had gotten up around six and hit the road at 6:30am for breakfast at George’s… in Gloucester… two hours and forty-three minutes away. It was gonna be my “I’m taking Kateri to the ocean for her birthday” end to the weekend, but when you drive for a few hours by yourself… the brain kinda does it’s thing! (having control over the radio has it’s advantages, though) As I thought more and more about it, I wasn’t taking Kateri to the ocean… I was taking just a part of Kateri to the ocean… and I was taking only a tiny fraction of what is left of her physical body… that which we cremated. I could try and make myself feel better by attaching her… by attaching Kateri to my little road trip, but she wasn’t by my side.
She didn’t order bisuits and gravy or shoot the shit with line dude. She didn’t feel the ocean air on her cheeks. And I didn’t take a selfie of us on the beach with her in the background doing some funny little kick… or doing anything at all. Yes, Kateri was with me in my memories, thoughts, emotions, and spirit as I drove 71 miles per hour across New England, but she wasn’t by my side… and I realized I just needed to cover some ground for myself as I remembered my wife… and all the wonderful “Let’s go to the ocean!” adventures we had.
So I had breakfast, I saw the ocean, I sat and thought about life. Luckily, Kateri’s birthday was the day for bawling like a baby so the last two days of my 3-day weekend were a little more manageable on the tear factor and I didn’t have to tell myself, “I don’t care if people see me crying on this bench… as I stare at the water”… while other tourists snap and bark at their partners because they aren’t holding the paper doll cutout correctly while posing beneath the memorial to fishermen lost at see! I mean, I got emotional here and there, but it has been a much mellower couple of days.
“YOU’RE AS OLD AS JESUS!”… Kateri loved to take advantage of any opportunity where she was able to say that. If it was someone’s birthday and they were turning 33… well, she would start with a, “Happy Birthday!”… and finish with, “You’re as old as Jesus!”… and then the birthday boy or girl would stare at us like, “What…?”. Now, I’m not a religious man and although Kateri grew up Catholic (she said she was a “Recovering Catholic”), she wasn’t very religious… spiritual, but not religious. So the addition of Jesus into the well wishing on birthdays is kind of a conundrum to me of how and why it started, but really it was just a fun little quirky thing that she brought into my life… that has been there over the years… that has put smiles on friend’s and strangers’ faces… and something I will probably say to every 33 year old I cross paths with on their birthday till my birthdays stop coming. (ps-I guess JC died at 33… how’s that to make you feel unaccomplished in life?! Jesus… he was a go getter!)
It seemed only natural to incorporate the whole “You’re as old as Jesus!” into the day when Kateri turned thirty-three. We were working in Burlington slinging “breads”… pizza… and we were renting a little cottage in the Green Mountains 50 minutes away that looked at the back side of Mad River Glenn. Life was starting to roll… we were at that stage in life where old friendships were solidified in their place and we were meeting wonderful new people to start new friendships with… people who became a part of our family. I wanted to capture some of those people… some of those memories from “When we were younger” to look back upon… decades down the road.
So I asked a friend to make a sign and I drove that sign to other friend’s houses and to their places of employment. I carried it with me in case I ran into someone on the road so that I could snap a picture of them holding it and wishing Kateri a “Happy… you are as old as Jesus… Birthday!”. I developed the pictures (yes, they were taken with a camera… with film) and grabbed a stupid little photo album to put them in. When I gave it to Kateri I watched the corners of her mouth turn upwards to a smile as she flipped through the pics and saw her friends and their well wishes. With every turn of the page, I got to see that simple smile turn into pure innocent love for the people who were holding that cardboard sign. Unfortunately, since that album was made, we only got a decade and a bit under our belts to do the whole “Remember when” thing together… to reminisce about turning thirty-three. Now I use the gift I gave her not so much to remember our friends… but to remember Kateri… and she’s not even in the album.
Sometimes, the plan was to just hang in a certain area and relax… or do something fun and fancy like go to a piano concert in some historical and beautiful concert hall or theater that overlooks the water. You know, pretend like we were fancy as we rubbed elbows with fancy people. Sometimes we would bring our espresso machine with us on these trips, set it up on the dresser in the hotel room, and drink cappuccinos on the porch as we looked down the line of empty rooms and listened to the water as it tried to run up the land… thinking about how lucky we were not to have to share the space.
I could write about the debates birthdays created between friends pertaining to when your “Mid Forties” start… and no, they don’t start at 41! There are a lot of good memories accumulated over the years I could share, but today is the first time in nineteen years that I’m not spending Kateri’s birthday with her… because life decided it was so… and presently I don’t have the time or energy to remember twenty years of good times that are simply all just memories now. That’s what I’ll use the future for… to remember the past. Today… after I write this, I guess… I’m just gonna sit in the present for a bit and see how it goes. Being a widower is rough… it’s hard… it’s emotional. Jesus Christ!… it’s emotional. Losing Kateri is harder… she was a part of me… and still is… because I love her… and I miss her………. so much.
I had to leave work early today. I knew when I was driving in at 7:24am that I probably wasn’t gonna make it that long. I knew at 6:50am that I was probably gonna be useless. As well as at 6:15am when the first harp started the progression from a musical instrument made to create beautiful sounds… to a car horn made to scare the shit out of someone who is unaware of the tin can behind them. It’s my version of the “Sunrise Alarm”… something which I will never own.
widower provides. It’s relentless. The brain just doesn’t stop. There are periods where I can balance the “loss” and “living”. There have been times where “living” overshadowed “loss”! Other times… not so much. Right now, it just so happens to be a “loss” time. Yes, there is still “living” happening… just not a ton… and mostly in comfy clothes.
Well there… all of that sad shit just to get to a point where I could raise my spirits by giving myself a compliment! In actuality, I don’t need to give myself compliments to try and make myself feel better. I’m a lucky person and have some good people in my life who are supportive, loving, and fun. There are a shit ton of things in my life that I am grateful for. There are a lot of good things in my life… many more than horrible ones. The horrible ones are just… well… kinda gross. This is a hard experience to go through and there are a lot of challenges, but people have been going through it ever since the first Pat fell in love with the first Pat… first Pat loved first Pat back… and then first Pat died from Metastatic Melanoma in the brain… with mutations. People survive death. It just kind of sucks that it’s a part of the gig.
New show on Netflix?… nope! Hell, I’m getting emotional during sitcoms about high school kids, puberty, and first loves!
I slept in until 9:24. Well, I first woke up at 5:04am on the couch. One of those open my eyes… realize I’m still downstairs… check my phone to see what time it actually was… and then listen to the Smarties that were on my belly… from when I fell asleep… four hours earlier… roll across the hardwood floor as I stumbled to throw a couple of logs on the fire… before I stumbled up the stairs and flopped into bed. It’s a pretty normal occurrence these days on my Fridays (your Mondays)… the pile of Smarties just hanging out on my belly for 4 hours… not so much. For whatever reason, I have a tendency to want to stay up late… and if I have the next day off… helloooo couch-bed! I don’t know why I keep doing it. Every night I say to myself, “I should go to bed earlier!”… but I don’t listen.
at home in the schoolhouse… and then I move on.
it’s cooler… and the sun is running to the west providing another spectacular Vermont sunset… and feel Kateri’s skin as she holds my hand.
bone hair stick thing as a weapon… and TSA never questioned it.
you were actually hoping to do! It’s kind of annoying… but has also made me chuckle out loud a couple of times.
I don’t remember if Kateri was coming home from the restaurant or from the art/artist/fancy store on Church Street, but I remember I was frantically learning origami so that when she came home and walked into the studio… which was above a garage… she walked in to her own little field of flowers… in February.
Long story short, we wanted out of the house, out of Burlington… we wanted our own space to start living our lives together. We had met this kid in Wyoming, who was also a Vermonter, and he mentioned that his father had a home with a studio attached to it above the garage. He made the introductions. It was perfect. It also helped that the giant house the studio/garage was attached to was empty… and on 28 acres. So when Valentine’s Day rolled around, I asked Steve (the dad) if I could use the bathroom in the big house so that Kateri could take a bath (it was a huge bathtub… and anyone who knows Kateri… she loves to take a bath… unless it doesn’t cover her boobs… then she finds that to be annoying… remember?). I got candles, some music, and all that jive. But she was gonna come to the studio first… so I wanted to do something that she would instantly see… like fifty origami tulips. Now, I wish I could say that I chose the origami tulip because I’m a hopeless romantic and there was some epiphany with Valentine’s Day, but it was really only because people give you things like books on origami for Christmas and we had a couple in a corner. So I thought, “Well, that would be kinda cool… and I don’t need to leave!”. So I started folding the bases of the tulips… and then the flower… then put them together and carefully placed them all over the studio to greet her when she came home from work. Side note-when you sorta just wing it, sometimes your origami tulips come with all sorts of colors and patterns.
About Kateri opening her eyes one afternoon as a new doctor came in to check on her and her saying, “You’re really good looking.”… he was. I wish I could share so much more, but it’s rough… and exhausting. Life is big… and it’s complicated. Sometimes it’s hard. Sometimes… it’s worse than that. Sometimes… for some things… they just don’t get better… no matter how many times you tell yourself that they are. I said it a lot… and it wasn’t true. We just weren’t gonna allow ourselves to give up. We didn’t want to. We couldn’t… because that’s not what you do.
In the days after Kateri passed away I told myself I wasn’t gonna go to the doctor for at least a year. The main reason being… what did I care if there was something wrong with me? I had just lost the one thing in my life that I didn’t want to live without… yet that’s what I was doing. So what if my organs were on the fritz?… or that headache was something more than just dehydration or lack of coffee?… or that pain in the tummy was more than just the Boston Baked Beans from the night before? So what? I was good with life and if life wanted to take me just as soon as it had taken Kateri… well, so be it… it was a fun run. Now, I’m not a religious man, but in the back of my mind there was the hope that if something did happen… it just meant I got to see my sweet Kateri sooner. I wasn’t gonna do anything to hasten that journey, but I was comfortable if life handed me that card.
![img_4036[6962]](https://thirtydaysofmorning.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/img_40366962.jpg)
I went for a drive yesterday. As a cook, you get to be lucky and have days off like Tuesdays and Wednesdays… while your friends are working. I haven’t really taken any time off for myself since Kateri passed. The time I have taken has been loaded with the heavy shit… 2 weeks after she passed, 3 days for Kateri’s Kick Ass Party (our version of her funeral), a long weekend for my parent’s 50th Anniversary, and a couple of days for Thanksgiving to spend with the fam in Boise. For whatever reasons, it’s just kinda hard for me to take time for myself, so I have decided to take it when I can in the form of a day here and a day there. Hence, I am currently laying in bed on a Thursday morning, the I Love NY coffee mug on the stool I call a nightstand (with a quarter inch of cold coffee in it), and I’m typing away… well, slowly… procrastinating the shoveling of snow I’m gonna need to do… again… while trying to capture some of the things I thought about yesterday on my drive from my schoolhouse in Vermont, through the middle of New Hampshire, to York Beach in Maine where I sat on a folding chair as it sank into the sand…. with Kateri by my side.
I planned on grabbing some clam chowder from Lobster Cove, but they were closed until Friday. So I parked on the side of the road, grabbed the folding chair, and walked across the low tide beach, plopped down in said folding chair, and placed the little jar Kateri was in down on the sand next to me… and just sat for a spell. Although hoodie hoods and winter hats muffle the sound of the waves as they try to reach land, I could still hear the rhythm of the ocean and feel the salty air on my face as I sat there… once in a while looking around and wondering if there was anyone who could tell that I was crying beneath my sunglasses as my body sunk deeper into the chair. It’s not that I cared if anyone would see me crying… as a widower, you become comfortable with the fact that some emotions may bubble up at any moment… day or night… here or there… but it’s still nice NOT to be a babbling idiot in public or have a stranger stare at the frozen tears on your cheek or snot stuck in your mustache. Luckily, not that many people go to the beach on a Wednesday… in January… so for me, the experience was just what I was looking for. Well, except for the plan to smoke the joint that was in my pocket on the beach… Kateri would’ve loved that. I, however, am too much of a Nervous Nelly to be so brazen with those types of things when I’m out and about alone. Just another thing I miss about Kateri… she was the instigator… she liked to egg you on… she was the one telling you to “jump, jump, jump!”. If you listened to her, she would provide you with experiences that you wouldn’t of had if she wasn’t there… like smoking a joint on the beach.
at the absolute vastness before me. I’m sure there are all sorts of beautiful things you could say about the scenario to make it sound poetic… or you could attach metaphors to the water, the land, the vastness, the sun, or the wind, but it was really quite simpler than that. I was just a man, saddened by the loss of his wife, who was trying to find some way to feel closer to her. Although Kateri loved the ocean, although she would’ve loved sitting on the sand with me in Maine, although she would’ve loved to get some clam chowder, although she would’ve smoked that joint on the beach… she wasn’t there. So I left… got a lobster roll at Bob’s… and drove home… alone… with her by my side.
blower… and there is more snow coming tomorrow. Yup, a widower still has to put pants on, water the plants, go to work, get oil changes, feed the chickens, do the laundry, clean the house, chop the kindling and bring in wood, replace faucets, fix gutters, shop for food… prepare that food… and to eat that food (which sounds easier that it is)… all while living in a world that isn’t gonna slow down because you are sad. Soooo… I’m gonna do what is hard for a widower to do many a mornings, but we do it anyways… and get out of bed.
It doesn’t matter what challenges you faced or hardships you endured or successes you achieved… it can always get better. As a cook, it’s ingrained in you that New Year’s is just another day you may have to work. As you get older, you’re just as fine going to bed at 10:30. As a widower, the New Year is a point in the timeline that brings up all sorts of thoughts, questions, emotions, and memories. Personally, I don’t know if I would necessarily consider myself happy as I go through this experience… but I’m getting happier.
I don’t really have much to say about this right now… just thought I should jot something down. For me, the finding the mass in Kateri’s brain was the significant date. It didn’t matter what type of cancer it was… it was in the brain and that didn’t seem to be a very good thing… any which way you cut it. The diagnosis was three days after finding the mass and we new of the melanoma in the arm from a couple of years prior so it wasn’t much of a shock. The shock comes when you barely even scratch the surface on the information out there on melanoma… when it reaches the brain. You’re immediately thrown into a world filled with word’s like “Stage 4″… and “Metastatic Malignant Melanoma”… and “4-5 Months”. That’s when the shock sets in.
WE LIVE IN A LITTLE RED SCHOOLHOUSE!! I love that I found one for the village that Kateri sorta started for me. It seemed like the perfect piece given the circumstances!
underside of a counter. Headaches and stars… that’s all they were at that time.
but I can’t picture any of the specifics in my head… it’s a blur. It was three days before we heard the diagnosis of Melanoma… six days before I hopped on a plane to spend time with my family for the holidays… and nine days before Kateri spent her last Christmas in our little red schoolhouse… without me.
I thought it would be the Christmas decorations that I would have a hard time going through, seeing, remembering the memories attached to them, but it was the tidying of the house, organizing it, making room for Christmas that slapped me in the face with the reality of my life. It was the taking down of Kateri’s Birthday cards that have hung above
my kitchen for nine months… and reading through them… seeing the words of friends and relatives giving my wife support… celebrating her life in a time when it was approaching the end… thirty-six days later… that threw me for a loop. The last card in the pile was from me… and I kinda had to take a sit on the floor. It was the tidying of the book shelf and finding pictures spanning the last twenty years… of horseback rides in the Tetons and snowmobile rides in the backcountry. Images of road trips to Ohio (where we said we would never go back to… and then went back 5 times), sailboat excursions in Maine, snowstorms, beaches, adventures with friends, and adventures for just the two of us. Images of sister in-laws when they were twelve, at their college graduation, and then from this year holding my wife… their sister… for one of the last times. Pictures of the various places we’ve lived in… from the Rocky Mountains to our little red schoolhouse in Vermont… pictures of 
various cabins and cottages filled with the richness of what was our life… pictures of our various homes. Snapshots of a life I don’t have anymore… and no Christmas miracle is gonna bring back my sweet sweet Kateri.
with the people who are here sharing it with us. It is the relationships with those people in our lives that we celebrate as we prop up trees and decorate them with artifacts from our past, pull out the flying Santa’s, set up various Nativities, and plug in lights to soften the darkness.
I haven’t hung up the smashed and weathered piece of mistle toe that I used to kiss Kateri beneath… and it may not ever hung up again. Things change. Significance and meanings attached to those things change… and we adapt. It’s not the mistle toe that’s important… it’s the memory of feeling Kateri’s lips, of holding her in my arms, of remembering how excited she would get during the holidays that is important to me… how she would treat people… love people… how she would put on Kenny Rodger’s and Dolly’s Christmas album at 7:00am or yell out, “Festive to the left!” as we drove through the hills of Vermont at night during the holidays. That is how I keep her with me.
think Kateri would be proud of my decorating, happy with our tree (with 2 angels and a star on top), and excited that there is snow on the ground. Although Kateri won’t be sitting next to me in her robe this Christmas morning as we open gifts of food storage containers, flannels, and Obama dolls… (actually, those are all old gifts… it’s a little more sparse under the tree this year without her), but she will be with me. If you think about other people, if you remember what is important in life, if you are true to yourself and your intentions are good… if you get excited when you see an over the top display of Christmas lights… she’ll be with you, too.
I am thankful that I was just able to give my mother a hug… to hold her in my arms… on Thanksgiving morning… and I wish Kateri was here. It took me ten minutes to write that sentence. Thanksgiving. The first Thanksgiving without my wife. The first Thanksgiving I am spending with my family in years… in at least over a decade… and it’s where I’m supposed to be today. The last seven… nine… eleven… twelve months have been filled with some of the most horribly inexplicable events that I have had to deal with in my life. My mother was diagnosed with lung cancer which spread to her brain. Melanoma took Kateri away from me in four months and three days. There are many things in this life that I am not thankful for, but there are more people, friends, family, and experiences that have been in… or have entered… my life that have given me strength, love and compassion to keep moving forward through this timeline. It’s a strange life to live when your mantra is, ” Well, for being the worst thing I have ever gone through… ever felt… ever experienced… it went as well as it possibly could have.”… and it’s still going.
I shaved my head the other night (that’s just my hairdo… I haven’t paid for a haircut in seventeen years), looked in the mirror… and didn’t recognize myself. You wanna talk about a fucked up thing to go through… well… it was fucked up. It could have been the fact that my beard is the longest it has ever been coupled with the newly trimmed noggin. It could have been the fact that it was the first time I shaved my head in the bathroom after working on it for over a year… a bathroom in which Kateri put the first hole in the wall and I was now cleaning up 
little pieces of hair from a sink and tiled floor in a whole new life. A floor I tiled in the early morning hours over the course of three nights while Kateri was in the hospital… Maria being there by her side for her… while I did whatever I needed to do before Kateri was discharged with gastrointestinal issues from the immunotherapy. A floor I needed to learn how to tile for the simple fact that my wife needed a toilet upstairs so that she could sleep in her own bed. Staring at myself in the mirror… looking into my own eyes for the first time in a while… it was hard to deal with all the emotions that came flooding in as I recognized that specific point in the timeline… that life is different… but I couldn’t recognize myself. To my core… I am different… I have
changed, because my life has changed. I cried… a lot…. as I leaned on the sink and didn’t move as I searched in those eyes for understanding to what was going on, but never really got an answer. So what do you do? Well, I took a shower to remove those little bits of hair from my shoulders, beard, and body… put on some comfy clothes… texted with a friend… and waited for the “next day” to come.
Bloggery Post Addition…
Widower Day 179… really 180, but 179 was six months and I just couldn’t write anything… I didn’t have the energy for it and simply… there were other things I wanted and needed to do. I started this post because of the kindness and compassion of a friend and thought it kinda fit for the six month mark. It’s the people that keep us going, that give us purpose, that give us reasons to get excited for life… even after you find out that it’s our relationships with people that sometimes makes us hurt, makes us sad, makes it so that we don’t want to leave our little schoolhouse homes and face the world… but we do because the risk is worth it… and because sometimes its just what we have to do.
Ummm, now its Widower Day 174 and I was gonna continue on with stories of grilled steaks, talking on the porch, and four hour drives to Quechee, but I think those texts speak to what I wanted to say today… what I needed to just get out of my brain after having a “moment” driving between the lake and my house… and then for twenty minutes in the driveway.
Friendship. When you’re wading through that pile of poop (trying not to say shit so much), you rely on all sorts of friendships to get through the day. I feel the need to say that in the grand scheme of things, in this new “chapter”, I’m doing ok. All honesty, I am excited to see what the future brings, to meet new people, to have new experiences… and I am. There has been laughter, and singing in the bathtub, and sitting by fires, playing guitars, fun texting banters with friends… old and new, and beautiful fall scenery. There’s still enough Good in the world to show us that it’s worth putting pants on for… especially as the weather is turning. But when dealing with this shit (twice, sorry), this upheaval of life, I am grateful to have people in my life who share the common value of what it means to be a part of “The Good” in the world… who understand what is important in the world…who are present when needed even with distance in between. Just knowing that I could call any number of people at 3:07… a.m. … and they would be there for me is not only heart warming, but I also rely on it to keep some of that feeling of being all alone at bay. It’s not that I call people at three in the morning all the time, but if I did!… they’d answer! Everyone should have those types of friends and friendships in their lives, but more importantly… you should be that type of friend.
blog post except for this… I have had a rough go lately. I haven’t wanted to do anything… at all. To just stop everything for a bit. I have wanted off this ride… to change the song… or at least the tune. (side note… NO, I do not want to slit my wrists in the newly tiled bath tub while drinking a glass of whisky… smoking a joint… and a cigarette or anything. I kinda figure this is all sorta normal “widower” stuff. Life—beautiful…. sometimes a pile of shit. 3 times… I’m gonna stop apologizing) I have been sad, lost, and lonely. And it’s not that I need anyone to do anything because……. I guess here is the point I’m trying to make. This has sucked, these things suck, but it’s the people in my life… the people who are still plopped here on this earth with me… whether they be from when we were making memories as stupid boys 26 years ago or from this new “chapter” in life… it’s the people who provide me with strength, security, and reassurance… with excitement and smiles… with joy. It’s my friends… and I find them everywhere. Friendship comes in all shapes and sizes… in varying degrees… and with all sorts of intentions. When going through a traumatic event like this you need people. You may not talk often and you may not live in the same town. Hell, you may not even know each other very well!… but that’s not the important part of friendship. It’s being there at the right time, for the right reason… however big or small. That’s what I have… that’s what everyone should have… because that’s what let’s you know you’ll be ok.
also knew it wasn’t gonna be an easy thing so I should probably start today on Anniversary Eve. The thought crossed my mind that going through pictures had the potential of taking a bit of time and energy so I might as well get the memories started. I have to say… I was correct in my assessment… going through pictures was rough. Beautiful… but rough.
We smoked a pig… another glorious thing. Along with smoking the pig, we were able to have some entertainment when the grease lining the lid and walls of the smoker decided to join the party and provide us with a bonfire. Of course, then you realize you still need to put the pig on so you have someone… hopefully without a ton of body hair… slam the lid shut. Luckliy, our volunteer had all of the hair on their face, head, and body afterwards. We scrounged and found windows to attach to wooden stakes so that we could make our “church”, meeting a wonderful cast of characters and seeing some cool places during the search. Our friends picked flowers from the farm up the road… the one with the beautiful big white barn. Kateri and friends brewed our “Wedding Beer”… I bought a shit load of A&W. We were able to buy wine from a friend… and neighbor. We made steamed buns… mmmmm, steamed buns. There were cabins and porches for friends and family to stay and hang in… and for us to write our vows on… three hours before the ceremony (yes, both of us). There was a pond for people to naked swim in under the faint light of the stars. There were people. Nothing but wonderful people. We wanted to have nothing but friends and families that we loved and cared about at our wedding. Even the people helping serve the food, pour drinks, play music, and wash dishes… everyone was someone we wanted there, someone in our life. We wanted to know that whoever we came into contact with on the day of our wedding… they would put a smile on our face… and they did. Kateri always said our wedding was the type of wedding that she would enjoy going to… I agree.
I was home from Idaho for about three days before I noticed the eggs in the flower pot… they’re still there… I think they look kinda nice. I have found myself being a little oblivious from time to time and not being overly concerned about why I’m not paying attention to certain things or putting undue weight on them. I’m assuming all that stuff will still be there when I’m ready to pay attention to it. It’s actually been quite the educating, busy, somewhat hectic, somewhat nerve wracking, positive, and empowering couple of weeks. As it pertains to this thing… Thirty Days of Mo(u)rning… there’s a plethora of reasons I’m fiddling around with this site and I’ve realized one of them is that just by having it provides me with questions on how I want to live my life as I go through this experience. I’ve recently been reminded that it also gives me strength as vulnerability is scotch taped to the posts I publish.
astro turf at some new shopping/eating/huge movie theater type place… at the age of 42. It was nice to see my family again so shortly after our last visit. We’ve been together more in the last year than in the last 5 or so… which has been nice, even if the circumstances have leaned more towards the heavy real life hard shit than the celebratory, but I’ll take what I can get. We haven’t spoken much since I’ve gotten home, a couple of times, but not nearly as much as I would like to. Of course, I believe most people are in that boat.
I was writing it on the plane because that was the first chance I had to sit and put thought into it. My sister had asked me if I would be willing to do it only 2ish days before! I was honored… I was also delirious on an hour and twenty minutes of sleep as I wrote it. It was a great experience putting thought into what it was that I wanted to say to two people who have been with each other longer than I have been alive… what it was that I wanted to say to my parents? As the same for these blogs, it was nice to sit and focus on what I wanted to share and why. I have found that writing allows me to take all those things swirling around in the noggin and kinda line them up in a row. Everything is still there… I just plug away at one thought at a time… while all the others are smashing up against that one thought up front like a pack of crazed shoppers waiting for the doors to open at Walmart… two hours after eating Thanksgiving Dinner.
50 years together… however you wish to cut it… is filled with all sorts of things. I’m not one of those people who likes to sugar coat life, which might not make me the best person to give speeches and toasts for celebrations, but this is about the bond between a husband and wife that have made it through 5 decades of life together. They have not only built their lives together, but have created, nurtured, loved, and supported children…. something that should also be acknowledged because committing to live life with one person can be quite the challenge… add in dirty, snotty, bratty children and I’m sure it can be ruthless at times. Not ever having children of my own, I’m only speaking to what I have seen as friends try to corral their “littles” into SUV’s, deal with their children being sick, or ornery, or going off to school, or first loves… and first heartaches. You know, a mother puts a band aid on her child’s scraped knee, cheers for them at gymnastic meets or ballet recitals (less “cheering” at a ballet recital), drives them to swim lessons, and sends them cards in the mail telling them she loves them as they go through rough times when they are older and out of the house. A father teaches you how to throw a baseball, ride a bike without training wheels, what work ethic is, and how to maneuver the transition of being a boy to becoming a man. That’s what mom’s and dad’s do… they raise their children. A husband and wife, who stick with each other through thick and thin, through the good times and the challenging times, through disagreements, through experiences that spouses just shouldn’t have to go through in a perfect world… that creates a family. Of course, come to think of it, mom and dad got lucky… they had perfect children that were always well behaved and as we grew up… we made all the right choices!
Mom and Dad… Donald Martin Lidstrom and Denise Ann Lyeburger got hitched. Dina posted a picture of you guys… I think from your wedding… and it was awesome! I’ve been given quite the education on time as of recently and as I prepared to travel to Boise to celebrate and recognize the 50 years you guys have been together it caught me off guard to see a pic of two hip youngsters that would one day be Mom and Dad…. You guys had style! Fifty years… that’s a long time filled with a lot of experiences. From my vantage point… the forty-two years I have been a part of your life have been filled with the type of love that you hope for from a parent. But again, this isn’t about me… or Dina… or anyone else. This is about the 50 years of life you two have committed to each other, through thick and thin, through the hard times… the good times… and all that jive. I know there have been difficult times, but the good memories, the good times, the sense of family that you two have provided the Lidstroms overshadows all the other bullshit that sometimes comes with life. You have definitely tested all sorts of waters within this marriage… but you are here today… together… as husband and wife. So, here is my toast: