I woke up on the couch this morning beneath the fleece blanket that Kateri’s father had given us years ago. My head wedged in the corner padded by a pillow I stole from the guest bedroom as Xander nestled his 85 pounds into the crux of my knees. It was a much different way to for me to wake up than I did 13 years ago. Thirteen years ago, I woke up as a Husband. Today… just another day of Widowhood.
I’ve gotta be honest, for six and a half years I have tried to be super positive about… everything. I’ve overcompensated on trying to focus on the good things in life because the bad seemed to infiltrate every aspect of my day to day. Well, sometimes I have to just let the feelings do what they do and today it seems like I’m not gonna get too far past… blah.
My Wedding was absolutely wonderful… still the best day of my life. Nowadays, it’s more of an opportunity to reminisce about life, my life, what has filled it, and what has been taken away. Over the years since Kateri died, I have tried to give my Wedding Anniversary it’s time and space. I’ve tried to do things with purpose and with specific attachments to my previous life and in particular… my Wedding Day. This year… not so much. Not because I’ve “gotten past” certain aspects of my Widowhood or because I have any sorta sense of closure with this whole experience. No, this year I just happened to have this thing called Reality taking up a bunch of my time and I had to adapt to doing things I didn’t really wanna adapt to… or even have to deal with!… but like I said… that’s Life.
Although I had to incorporate The Present as I was coping with The Past, it was still a decent enough day spent in the woods around The Schoolhouse… with a chainsaw and a four-wheeler… as I thought about Kateri and our life together.
Widower Notes n Thoughts… on my Wedding Anniversary:
- Our Wedding was quite the party… it took three days..!
- I love that we smoked a whole pig at a vegetarian Summer Camp.
- We had a live band the night before the wedding…!
- We were young. Not like young-young, but young enough to let loose and not be too stoopid.
- I can’t believe we didn’t get eaten alive by ticks… didn’t even think of them.
- It was fun to hear about the shenanigans and gossip of who hooked up with who in the days and months following the celebration.
- Our Wedding was on a Wednesday. We were in the restaurant world… all our friends worked weekends…!
- I remember that feeling of pure love and joy when I made the commitment to Kateri. I think everyone should have the opportunity experience those feelings.
- Widowhood is a hard and complicated thing. Besides my sister and father, I’m not in regular communication with a single person who was at my wedding… that’s fucked up…!.. but it’s even harder to accept that a lot of the reason I have lost touch with so many peeps… is of my own doing.
- I like to think we’re all still friends that are simply consumed with our own lives… and I look forward to catching up.
- If you’re reading this and were at my wedding… Thank You, I hope you had a nice time, I miss you, and I hope you are able to look back on it with fond memories of the day… and of the Love Kateri brought into this world as she danced to the music and melody of her own soundtrack to Life.
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!
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.
Thirty Days of Mo(u)rning 