OUCH

I sliced my thumb on a can of beans I had just opened to go into the pot of soup I was making for dinner. It’s not bad, not a stitches situation, but when it happened I quietly said “Ouch! Fuck!” and then my thumb started bleeding. Michael took one look at the first drop of blood and said “Oh no…” and then he ran off in search of a bandaid, which once found he applied to my thumb with shaky hands. I almost asked him if he needed to sit down for a minute. A few hours later, I removed the bandaid only to put on a new bandaid five minutes later when my thumb started bleeding again. Thumbs tend to be workhorses of the hands and this particular wound is in a place that gets bumped around a lot. I feel every bump and it smarts.

January.

Every time, I think it will be easier. If anything, the passing of time makes it worse and when I tell myself that I just have to make it through January, there’s a voice that whispers “February is going to be just as bad.” I want to blame it all on the weather, the bitter cold that makes it impossible to move around on this planet. It wasn’t this cold back then when we first moved here. It wasn’t even this cold the year he left us. Passed away, whatever. Some days it’s “he died”, some days “he departed” and some days when I’m feeling really cranky it’s “he left us”. The goddamn nerve of that man and the choices I have made since have set me up for a lifetime of knowing my life was better in the before times. Maybe that’s the why of making those choices.

Sometimes, I get so mad that I am still writing about this. I will write paragraphs around my unhappiness and then I will delete it all. I will fill the empty space with forced joy while asking myself when was the last time I was truly happy. This question always arises during the coldest, darkest months of the year when I’ve been the most stagnant, when the air is the most painful. Every year I make a plan, a strategy for navigation around this time and every year that plan fails not just miserably but epically. With flames and destruction. It is quite possible that my plans have failed more epically this year than any other year, even though on the outside it all looks normal and happy. She smiles. She make an attempt at laughing. She pretends.

I pretend.

After Thanksgiving, I calmly told Michael that I was no longer putting any work into this relationship. In some ways this made my life easier. I have dropped any expectations I had of him being a true definition of the word ‘partner’. That means doing tasks that I’d have to do any way if I lived alone. Shoveling the driveway, clearing the snow from my car, making a meal plan, holding myself accountable. I’ve stopped expecting an equally emotional and intellectual relationship. I had been working and striving so hard for this to be that kind of relationship, that the more effort I made, the more I was reminded that I didn’t have to do this in my previous relationship. I thought for the longest time that I was compromising, but what I’ve really been doing is conceding and with each concession, giving up pieces of myself until I just didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything.

Mostly, I didn’t care about the loss of myself but how is that different from the days that followed Chris’s death? So now, in the darkest coldest months of the year I have more time and space for the past. Again with these choices I have made. I am not sure I ever really figured out who I am without Chris other than a bit pathetic. I’m tired of everything but mostly I am tired of being pathetic. When will I ever learn to lean into the stillness and the benefits of rest that come with these months? The truth is that if I stop being pathetic and less conceding, I will see that I am still the person I was with Chris. I had my own identity then and there’s no reason to believe that I don’t have my own singular identity now.

Knowing that doesn’t make this month feel any less poky. January will always be a cut on my thumb that’s deeper than a paper cut but not so deep that it requires needle and thread.

TIS THE SEASON

To my knowledge, Chris has never been to Iowa. I haven’t ever really been to Iowa, though Michael told me we drove through the state on our way to the Apostle Islands. We drove through while I was sleeping in the back seat because Michael had decided to drive us to Wisconsin in the middle of the night. His idea was that I would sleep while he drove and then we would switch drivers in the morning. His plan mostly worked. I drove us from Duluth to our campsite near Bayfield WI as the sun rose up in the East, with Michael snoring in the passenger seat. Chris was left in Wisconsin on the banks of Lake Superior during that trip. The night before leaving for Heather’s in Des Moines, I realized that Chris had never actually made it to Iowa.

As I pulled his coffee can down from the bookcase, I tried to remember the last time I had taken Chris anywhere. It’s been awhile. Maybe the last time was over a year ago when we visited Vancouver and I left in the hand of laughing sculpture. Our travels of late have all to been to places where Chris and I have already gone. I was in the kitchen, opening the can when Michael and the Cabbage walked in. “What’s that?!” The Cabbage asked as they opened the fridge in search of a snack. Michael answered for me and then there was a brief but frank discussion on human remains. There’s not a whole lot of Chris’s ashes left. Enough left for a few more adventures. Once we made it to Heather’s we sat around the table discussing possible locations to leave Chris. I had looked up some places listed on the Atlas Obscura website. One spot happened to be a cemetery and it was Terry who asked “Have you ever theft Chris in an actual cemetery?”

The Huston Cemetery in Wes Des Moines used to be the center of a roundabout. The intersection has since been remodeled but the tiny cemetery of maybe ten headstones still remain. The last person buried in the space was James B Huston in 1889, the man who founded the settlement. I walked all the way around the cemetery, looking for a good spot to leave Chris. The headstones were all so worn that barely any lettering stood out. I finally settled on a spot close to the tree and in eyesight of an old farmhouse. Really, it was too cold to stand outside debating too long on the perfect place and too cold for tears. There have been a number of times Chris has been left hastily and rushed, mostly because it’s not quite legal. This spot was probably the most legal of all, being it is an actual cemetery.

This is the time of year where everything starts to feel like a scratchy hair coat for those of us who have experienced loss. The memories of our past lives float in to remind of us what it is that we have lost and the Holiday season becomes a mix of pain and joy. Good and bad. Our grief can cause us to lash out in unexpected ways and I am reminded to speak mindfully and tread softly. I am not the only one to have experienced loss. I am not the only one with a ritual for celebrating the life of someone I love. Leaving Chris in all of these different places is a reminder to myself that I do not live in a vacuum. We all have broken or bruised hearts.

This is the time of year for more then ever leading with kindness.

NATURAL DISASTER

In this dream, I am the one everyone believed was dead. Chris was alive and well. He was the one who had moved on with a new partner. I was the one that came back from where ever, back from being missing in action. Chris was overjoyed to see me. We kissed, hastily had sex and then it was Chris with the dilemma. He kind of in a blurred way had just cheated on the woman he was partnered to with the wife he had thought was dead. While he figured things out, I went on roadtrip and found myself driving through a torrential downpour. Water rushed down the side of the road in a flash flood. Cows floated by and the road flooded. I made my way to the top of a steep embankment, ditching my vehicle. The rain changed to ice and snow and I had to abandon the car. I ended up sliding down the embankment, the cold and ice burning and tearing the skin on my hands I went. When I reached the bottom, I looked up to a perfect Fall scene, a landscape of tree covered mountains with colors of green, gold and red.

I woke up, but every time I went back to sleep I went back to being the one who had died. I’ve had this dream so many times, but in reverse. Chris is the one who’s been missing in action and I am the one to make the choice, that is really no choice at all. We both know the choice is always him. Then I’m left with the consequences of that choice and cleaning up the mess it forces to me make. It was so strange to be on the other side of this, to see him having to choose and deal with consequences of choices. Now we both have a life littered with broken hearts and hurt feelings. This feels validating some how, like Chris now knows what it feels like to navigate the complexity of relationships, how we build a maze around our losses.

One day, this body will be a corpse.

I used to think of my heart as a broken vessel, hastily patched together with pieces missing. Now I know that if you open my heart, you will see an intricate labyrinth with new paths looping around the old dead-end ones. In a way, I was the one who died or at least a version of me died with Chris. While his illness and death were quick, mine was slow and painful. I’ve had to let go of how I identified myself. I’ve had to let go of a way of life. My rebirth into this new version of myself has been equally slow and painful. The building of new paths has been like sliding down that snow and ice covered hill, bruising, burning and scrapping skin as I go. Is this new version of myself fully formed? For now. I have entered a new season of life at least. See above where I’ve entered into a season of color.

People recover from natural disasters. There will always be memories and trauma from the time the tornado took the house or the car was washed away in a flash flood, but there will be new homes, new cars. That kind of trauma is the reason why I continue to dream of a dead man. It’s the brain playing tricks on me or just reminding me that my house or car was different then. The labyrinth in my heart has new twists and turns. The landscape changes, but supports new growth. That ancient banyan tree in Maui has new green leaves sprouting up through the chard bark, proof that we can survive disasters.

We are resilient and ever changing.

FARE THEE WELL

During the evenings of the last two Fridays, I have managed to clean out a bookcase, removed unused/untouched things from the house, break down empty boxes, throw away garage garbage and sweep the garage. I have come home from work, exhausted from the whole week, but have forced myself to stay with this momentum. I have never had a hard time tossing out things. It’s just that sometimes I do not have the energy to toss. I need rewards. The reward is doing nothing on Sunday. This often is my mantra: If I do this now, I won’t have to do it Sunday. It also turns out that I don’t Spring clean. I Fall clean.

Months ago, I received notice that my domain for elephantsoap.com was set to auto renew. I sat on this information for a month before hacking my way into my account and changing the setting to not renew. I may have written here a long time ago that I was letting go of that domain. I lied. When it came time to actually do it, I froze. Elephantsoap was my identity for so long that when it came time to not renew, I just couldn’t do it. I choked. There’s a lot of emotional energy tied into that domain, but I haven’t been Elephantsoap in a really long time in more ways than one.

Remove unused/untouched things.

Then on Monday, I received a noticed that elephantsoap.com had been renewed and my credit card had been billed $300. Yes, that’s how much I’ve been paying to hold onto a name that no longer represents me. So I spent forever chatting with customer service about getting a refund and at one point, was so frustrated with how long it was taking that I almost said “Forget it. I’ll just keep the damn thing.” I had to remind myself that this thing no longer served a purpose and that I am wasting $300. That’s $300 I can put towards the camera lens that I’ve been eyeing. Again, evidence that I am not the woman I used to be. So I stuck in there, I got my refund and said “Good bye!” to elephantsoap.com.

And I was a little sad about it.

I gave myself a few moments to grieve, taking time to remember all the business cards I have made over the years with that domain to hand out at BlogHer. I remember how proud of myself I was whenever I figured out the correct code for inserting a picture. I may have shed a few tears when I thought about how elephantsoap would not have existed with out Chris. There is a lot about the person I was and the person I am that would not exist without Chris. There comes a time when holding onto something because of an emotional attachment is just holding onto pain and the constant reminder of what is lost. Sometimes you have to trust yourself to recognize when it’s time to let go of that particular attachment, that particular ache.

Elephantsoap was a place to learn. I’ve graduated and I’m pretty proud of this space I’ve built on my own. I trust myself to know that it’s time to let go of this particular attachment.

THE VACATION

When someone at work would ask me where I was going for vacation, my answer never really sounded too enthusiastic. As the time got closer and closer to the trip, I found myself having to come to terms with why I was not as enthusiastic as I probably should be to be going to Seattle for a week. This would be my first real, non-work related vacation that I have gone on in well over a year. We would be staying with Amani for the first half of the trip, a person I love with as much heart as I have left in me. I love the Pacific Northwest. I should have been vibrating with excitement to be there. The Sunday before we were to leave, I sent a text to Amy because I knew she’d be the only one to understand this particular hesitation.

The last time I was in Seattle was with Chris and we were happy and life was great and we were still friends with the couple we were staying with in Seattle. What if I run into those people?

“Those people” refers to a couple we were friends with who turned out to not be good and honest friends. I am still furious with the two of them for how they treated Chris, who played a minor yet innocent part in their melodramatic marriage woes. Even though Seattle is a big place, I worried about the awkwardness of seeing these people. Amani lives in the same suburb as them and even though the chances are slim to none, I was still feeling anxious. I was also contending with memories of Chris and I gleefully exploring downtown Seattle together. We both considered this to be our first real vacation. Previous trips were either camping or bargain getaways to Vegas. We had starting thinking about traveling to the places where we might want to live one day and Seattle was at the top of that list. We spent hours talking about how we wanted to visit this place and now we were finally doing the thing. All of my memories of us are bright, technicolor images of us smiling at the camera, smiling at each other, smiling at everything. Ridiculous, painful, joy. Now I was going back to the city that started the quest for a new place to live, with a new family.

Synapses were about to be re-mapped.

There is an act in the play Almost Maine about a woman who has travelled to Maine to see the Aurora Borealis. She sets up her tent in an open field that belongs to a man named East. He comes out to ask her what she thinks she’s doing camping on private property. She’s surprised by him and his questions because she’d read somewhere that people in Maine let hikers camp on their property. She explains to East that she’s there to see the Northern Lights because it is believed that the lights are the spirits of the dead walking with torches to heaven. Her husband has just died. She’s there to see him off and say a final goodbye. During her exchange with East, they keep passing a paper bag back and forth and every time it leaves the woman’s hands, she gets distraught. The bag contains her broken heart. By the end of the scene, East dumps the bag and begins the process of fixing it.

This is the play that Michael has chosen for his students to perform in the Fall. When he chose it, he asked me to read lines with him, which swirled up a hornets nests of feelings of the countless hours reading lines with Chris. The day we left for Seattle, Amani sent us a text about the possibility of seeing the Aurora Borealis and I thought about that scene and what it would be like to see those lights. Though, after being up for almost twenty hours, neither of us were up for a midnight excursion to hunt down the Aurora. So our first day in Seattle was spent lounging and recovering at Amani’s. I sent Michael and the Cabbage out over the next two days to explore Seattle without me, while I stayed with Amani. She was hosting a grief camp, Grief Out Loud. While Michael and the Cabbage did a lot of the things that I did on my first visit, I sat with my grief and bonded.

One of the last activities Amani had us do was to write a letter to ourselves from a person we are grieving. It was the kind of activity that made me look at Amani and tell her “I hate this.” It was so easy for me to write pages and pages of a letter in my own voice about how disappointing I am without Chris. I could go on and on about how I’ve done everything wrong, how I am the absolute worst, a failure. Instead I sat there with my composition book (the kind that Chris seemed to always have an endless supply of) and tried to hear Chris’s voice. What would Chris have to say to me now? I thought about his generous personality and that there was a reason why everyone loved him. In my letter, I allowed Chris to speak kindly to me. He didn’t tell me I was doing everything right. I couldn’t be that kind to myself, but I did allow him to tell me that he understood the choices I have made. There was a condoning of my choices.

I am always with you.

Love, Chris

I ended that letter and put a lid on my grief. Michael, the Cabbage and I left Amani’s for a condo in downtown Seattle. We spent the next two days doing all the touristy things that Chris and I didn’t do, like travel up to the top of the Space Needle. We went to museums and on a boat tour of the harbor. Raw fish was consumed daily. We walked many many steps and talked about what it would be like to live there. This is a discussion I’ve had with Michael every time we’ve visited the Pacific Northwest, a discussion Chris and I had thousands of times.

Some things change but some things don’t.

CLEAR VISION AHEAD WITH A REAR VISION MIRROR

Anyone who really knows me also knows about my obsession with Wes Anderson’s movies. I have his films ranked by favorites and importance. If the story does do it for me, there’s always the creative visuals. When the day comes to remodel my kitchen, I’m doing it in Wes Anderson style with dark teal cabinets and light pink walls. My reward for sitting through a panel discussion on baseball statistics, was to see the new Wes Anderson film, Astroid City, in the theater. I posted something about having thoughts on the movie afterwards, which may have sounded like I had negative thoughts or I had been disappointed. That wasn’t my intention. My thoughts on the movie are not negative. In fact I loved it and have placed it number three in my list of Wes Anderson films. I probably loved it so much because I felt a little too close to the character of Augie, the grieving father in the story line traveling with his children and carrying along his wife’s ashes in a Tupperware bowl.

I’m a photographer. My pictures always come out. - Augie Steenbeck

A number of people have asked me what this movie is about and every time I’ve been unable to say anything other than “it’s weird, but really really good.” I don’t know how to verbally describe a movie about death and loss and the sidecar of crazy life that just continues to travel around with you in spite of your emotional state. Of course, in true Wes Anderson fashion, the events happening around Augie are over the top crazy and surreal. Yet no matter how bizarre the thing, Augie’s reactions are always the same bland, expressionless reaction. This is the shock and numbness that comes with loss. Things happen all around you, small thing and big things, but all you can muster up is a shrug and a ‘huh.’

The movie is a play within a play and at one point, the actor portraying Augie in the play breaks character and walks off stage. He says he needs a break and steps out on to a fire escape. The woman who was supposed to play his dead wife in a dream sequence is standing on the fire escape of the building right across from him. The dream sequence ends up getting cut in the play and the two have a brief discussion of it. Then the actor playing Augie says “I’m not sure I get it. The play.” The woman goes on to explain that it’s okay if you don’t ‘get it’. You just do your best with the parts you do get. Everyone interprets the script in their own way, just as we each deal with grief in our way.

We don’t have to ‘get it’.

One of the advertisement signs on the gas station garage reads Clear Vision Ahead with a Rear Vision Mirror. There’s another one across from this one that reads Death Rides on Unsafe Tires. Those signs are probably silly and meaningless to most, just something to draw attention with out much thought. For me though, those signs are my then and now. The first sign is something I am constantly doing, remembering and reflecting on the road traveled. Looking back every now and then to see the road behind you, reminds you to pay attention to the road ahead. That second sign was left for me by Chris, a safety warning from a man who worried about me doing things that he thought I couldn’t handle on my own. It is a testament to my strength (and stubbornness) all of the things that I have found that I can handle on my own. But I will concede that life is easier when you don’t have to handle things alone. That’s something that Augie also realizes. He doesn’t have to do this alone.

We don’t have to do this alone.

SIGHT

I have a burned out spot on my retina. It happened years ago from aligning an HBO bulb on a microscope. I didn’t even know about it until I finally visited an eye doctor six years ago. The spot is in the lower right quadrant of my left eye, not really in my field of vision. The only time I notice it is there is when I have closed my eyes. My eyelids are not blackout curtains. So I see this kaleidoscope of tinted colors of darkness with the exception of one teeny tiny speck of complete dark, black, nothing. It’s like noticing a couple of pixels are out on the TV. That burnt spot on my retina is the best thing about closing my eyes. It becomes a point of focus during meditation. It is the center of my very own everything bagel and the second I close my eyes, I tune into that tiny speck of nothing.

Last Friday, my schedule opened up and made it possible to attend one of Roze’s yoga/meditation hammock classes. I got to class feeling like my brain was hot and staticky from some last minute issues I had to fix at work before leaving for the evening. The whole week had been a mental challenge of dealing with people who acted like they’d never seen a microscope before. I found my hammock and was chatting with Sarah and Leigh. At one point I said “Man, I wish I’d taken this stupid bra off before I came to class.” and Leigh said “Take it off. No one cares. The bathroom is that way.” I said I don’t need a bathroom and then proceeded to take off my bra without taking of my shirt and then I sighed with relief. I spun the bra around the top of my head like a lasso as all the women cheered. We all had a good laugh and then settled into class.

Roze started us off with some gentle movement before getting us comfy for guided meditation. I snuggled down into my hammock and pulled my blanket up over my face. I closed my eyes and focused on my void of nothing spot. Then Roze started playing with a rain stick. When I first heard it, I thought it was a car crashing into the building and I almost yelled out “THERE’S A CAR CRASHING INTO THE BUILDING!” But I didn’t. I told Roze this story a few days later and she responded with concern. I assured her that it was fine. I told her that the second I realized it was the rain stick, I started giggling. I told Roze “I laugh at fear.” which she though was a ‘juicy’ response. I don’t know if it’s juicy or just instinct.

I’m not condoning running out and burning spots on to your retinas. We just were not as concerned about lab safety fifteen years ago or at least where I worked was not that concerned. Robin and I wore flip flops and climbed around on cabinets to reach things on the top shelf. That behavior would be highly frowned upon today, but I file it into the same folder as ‘before seatbelts’ and ‘bicycle helmet?’. I learned to walk on hard brick floors with pointy edges all around me. My car seat was sitting on the armrest between the driver and passenger seat of my mom’s car. Mom’s arm was my seatbelt. Safety gear was not a thing. Many of you reading this can probably relate. We all grew up, flying down a hill while balancing on the handle bars of a sibling’s bicycle. Our childhoods did not have soft padding and it didn’t stop many of us from being the one to volunteer for the handle bar seat.

I have so many scars, so many markings of being broken and healed. Some of these scars are visible, but many like the one on the inside of my lip and the spot on my retina are scars just for me. The secret scars that I don’t have to explain or answer questions about. Good lord, you should see the scars on my heart. Those hidden ones on my heart are my favorite ones. They were earned and received just after great bouts of laughter and joy.When Chris was sick, we were terrified, but still joking about the tortilla chip stuck in his liver. The last time I talked to J, we were joking about Dad’s haircut. The last real visit with Dad, he joked about Michael and I’s living situation. In fact, I am positive if the wounds that led to those scars had not been proceeded by a ridiculous amount of laughter, those scars would barely be visible to even me. The loss of sources of great amounts of laughter and joy leaves the deepest scars.

So I laugh at fear because what difference does another scar make.

ONE FOOT IN, ONE FOOT OUT

It was one of those rare Saturday mornings where Michael was up at the same time as me. So I talked him into breakfast at You Say Tomato before heading downtown to the Asian food market. We had not been to You Say Tomato since well before the pandemic. They closed for a while and went to a meal service business model. Now they’re open on Fridays and Saturdays for breakfast and lunch. This place has always been one of my favorites. It was an early find and Chris and I would go there almost every weekend. We fell for the eclectic and cozy feel of the place because it reminded us of Portland. This was one of the ways we justified our move to Kansas City instead of the Pacific North West. We explored the city and hunted up all the little Portland like pockets. There are , surprisingly, quite a few.

Chris and I would be celebrating our twenty fifth wedding anniversary in March. When Randy and Katrina had their twenty fifth, we all went to Vegas and watched as an Elvis impersonator officiated their vow renewal. It was a great trip. I wonder if Chris and I would be doing something like that, though I don’t see us as the vow renewing type. I bet we would trade Vegas for some place like Costa Rica or Paris. Twenty five years…that seems so strange. I think about that while two different members of our framily are currently having their marriages crumble tragically down around them. Is this another thing that would be happening if Chris were still around? Would Chris and I still be the example we were to others back before it all ended? An example I strive for now in my current relationship.

This is a contract renewal year for Michael and I. We will have been together for ten years in June. Early in our relationship, he said something to me about if we lasted as many years as Chris and I did, he might ask me to stop wearing Chris’s wedding ring around my neck. I wonder if he remembers asking me that or my non-committal response to his request. It is very possible that this relationship might last longer than my last one. The effort I make in my desperate attempt at being in this layer of time is visible and puts me in the not quite the ideal category for a partner. That might be the thing that ends us. He might just get tired of settling for what I really am and not what he wishes I was.

One day he’ll get fed up with the number of times I might mention Chris’s name.

On this particular Saturday, Michael and I sat at opposite ends of a table. He gave me space to write in my Fortune Cookie journal while we waited for our food, then moved closer to share the pecan roll I had ordered on impulse. I was two bites into my egg croissant when I realized Fields of Gold was playing in the background. I paused and drifted back. When that song ended, the next in the line up of Ten Summoner’s Tales started playing. The restaurant was playing the album that played on loop in Chris’s dorm room while we were having sex. I know that playlist by heart. When Michael and I were done with breakfast, he asked “You ready to go?” and I replied “Yes. I’d like to leave Chris’s dorm room now.”

And we left.

RANDOM HAUNTS

I walked past a conference room and from the corner of my eye, I saw a younger version of Chris standing at the podium. Leaning on the podium is more like it, with his chin resting in his hand so that his index finger rested on his upper lip in the same way Chris would rest his chin in his own hand. His hair cut was the same short cut. Same glasses. Same shaped head. I am a little amazed at the details I remember considering I was flying by and barely looked into the room. Though there was enough resemblance for me to look twice.

There’s an older gentleman that I run into often at a convenience store between work and home. He always teases me about riding my scooter so fast and ends each interaction with “You be safe out there, girl.” He has my dad’s mannerisms. The way he carries himself. The way he talks to me. The shape of his nose. He doesn’t look enough like Dad for me to have a moment where I forget reality, but I always walk away with a picture of Dad in my head, him grinning while holding up a brown paper bag of peanuts. Who could have ever imaged how much peanuts would define Dad in that latter part of his life?

We are entering my haunting season with a bang.

Ho’oponopono Prayer: I love you. I’m sorry, Please forgive me. Thank you.

I chanted this prayer out loud to myself while my Self Care Circle group sat in their own spaces chanting this prayer, all of us visible through zoom windows. All of us had our mics on mute. I could only hear Roze’s voice as she guided us and my own voice. Josephine was curled up in my lap, looking up at me and for a brief few rounds, I was speaking those words to her even though those words are meant for me. Instead of saying those words to myself, I said them to Dad. I said them to Chris. I even said them to J for not talking him out of enlisting or even trying to talk him out it. Finally, I gave in and said those words to myself.

I love you.

I’m sorry… for placing the blame on myself…for moving us away from our friends and family…for not being there in the end…for the moments I allowed my grief to make me hateful and bitter…for not protecting my own heart…for my inability to control the uncontrollable… for the moments when I can’t breath because I’ve taken care of everyone else’s oxygen mask first…for not quite being the woman you want…for being my worst enemy…for all the things…for the thoughts I do not speak out loud.

Please forgive me.

Thank you.

I carry this prayer with me as I move into the season of hauntings, whispering all of it to myself at each ghostly encounter, each moment of self disappointment. Because the dead cannot, will not, absolve me. I will never hear Chris tell me that it was not my fault. I will never hear Dad tell me that I was right where he wanted me to be on his last day. I will never hear J tell me that he wouldn’t have listened to me anyway. It’s all up to me. Like so much of everything. The laundry isn’t going to wash itself; the bathroom isn’t self cleaning. I have to do those things. I have to provide my own absolution.

I love you

I’m sorry

Please forgive me

Thank you

No more. No less.

MIA

Michael and I were watching The Greatest Beer Run on Saturday evening and early in the movie, the main character gets word that his best friend has been reported MIA. Michael said “That has got to be the worst. I mean what you and your family have done if J was MIA?” He didn’t know. He didn’t realize what that question would and could do to me. But he asked it and the words were out and I sort of just collapsed in on myself. I mean, he realized his mistake immediately and started back peddling and apologizing. There are so many things that he just couldn’t know about any of it. He doesn’t know that I still, after all these years, have dreams where J is alive and I can assure you that this is a collective dream shared with my family. Sometimes in those dreams, J never left and sometimes he just shows up after being gone for a number of years.

None of them are reality.

If I could have expressed myself in words in that moment, I would have said that a MIA report would have turned hope into an albatross that wouldn’t just dangle around our necks, but dangle and twist to choke us. There would be no moving forward or backwards. My family would be stuck, trapped inside a ball of questions lined with unimaginable layers of hope. We would never be able to come to terms with all the meanings in the words missing in action and this would shatter and fragment us even more than we already are. There would be those of us who would give up hoping and would just wish for a finding of remains. There are those of us who would never stop believing that J was alive somewhere out there in the desert. And we would tear each other to pieces over our different beliefs and hopes.

A notice of missing in action would be worse than death.

That was the answer I eventually squeaked out around my tears.

I have received some horrific news that I cannot currently discuss (or will probably ever discuss here). Just know that the weeks ahead are going to be difficult for many and confusing and weird. It is particularly a week for being mindful of our words and the questions we ask. It is a week for softness and empathy. It is a week for comforting each other.

Speak softly with kind words.

EVEN ON GOOD DAYS

It was a good day. The whole weekend was shaping up nicely. It took a three page write up in Bon Appetit with them listing this place as one of the top ten best new restaurants, but I finally convinced Michael to try Baba’s Pantry. Now we can’t eat anything else for the rest of our lives. I picked up Friday night’s dinner from there and the next day we went back for hummus and cheeses and spicy pickled things. In continuing with the them of lists, we headed out on our scooters for Kitty’s Cafe, who made the list of top 50 restaurants for the New York Times. It was okay. I guess the pork tenderloin is the main reason they made that list. My option was a fish sandwich which was tasty, but it was just a fish sandwich.

After lunch, Michael led us to Mikey’s Military Surplus. The route took us through a part of town that I didn’t even know existed. At one point, Michael stopped so I could pull up next to him. He said “Honk if you want to stop to take pictures.” and then I had some serious regrets for not having my bigger camera. The road we were on ran right along side the railroad tracks that follow the Missouri river. On one side, we had tall grasses, train tracks and the occasional train. The other side of the street was lined with shotgun houses varying in shades of blues, pinks and greens. Then we came to a four way stop and on one corner was a little house with a sign that read “Welcome to East Argentine”. I beeped my horn so Michael would know that I wanted to stop. It was like we had just entered a different country.

We made it to Mikey’s, which is split. Half of it is regular work clothes with brands like Dickies and Carharrt. I found a nice pair of fleece fingerless mittens with grippy pads on the palms. The other side of the shop is devoted to military surplus. I could feel the nudge in the back of my brain as I stepped into that area. It smelled like every single military surplus store I had been into with Chris. My fingers grazed over a rack of coveralls and I thought about pulling one down and putting it on. There was a crate full of com-phone receivers that probably should have been in my basement. I did not spend a lot of time in this area and became inpatient to leave.

We stopped at a large Mercado on our way home with nothing inside labeled in english, bought a large wedge of white crumbly cheese and popsicles. Then we sat outside at a picnic table in the shade, eating our popsicles and watching families come and go. My popsicle was more shredded coconut than ice cream. The tropical taste mixed with the warmth of the day and unfamiliar surroundings, again made think for a moment that I had magically transported myself to South America. As Michael and I rode our scooters back down the road that had brought us to that area, that nudging in the back of my brain became a hard shove.

When Chris and I moved here, we knew very little about this city. So we spent our weekends just driving around with no destination in mind. We’d turn off maps and GPS and go out and get lost. It’s how we discovered so many great little Portland like places. These adventures allowed us to see that even though we hadn’t moved to the city that held our hearts, we had moved to a really cool place that was very much like the city that held our hearts. Michael’s lived here his whole life and I was able to introduce him to places he’s never heard of and all of that was because of mine and Chris’s adventures in getting lost. So while I was riding down this strange little street with railroads on one side and shotgun houses on the other side, I was struck that this, all of it, was something that Chris and I never found. At the very least, how was it that we never stumbled across Mikey’s Surplus? That shit was right up Chris’s alley.

I picked up speed as anger rose up inside me and I stewed in it for most of the ride home. Then I thought about the beauty of the day, the perfection of all the finds and the weather. I marveled at how after all this time I could still let it get to me. The things we didn’t do. Not enough time. The reconciliation of my life now without him. That’s the most difficult part, giving myself permission to have this life without him.

THE TEN YEAR CHALLENGE

My alternate title for this post could also be Why I Am Not Participating in a Deep Learning Experiment on Aging. I have noticed people participating in a Ten Year Challenge on social media the last few days. For those of you who don’t know what this challenge is, it is a photo challenge. You post a picture of yourself from ten years ago next to a picture of yourself today. It’s nice and I will admit that I enjoy seeing other people’s pictures of then and now. I will aslo admit that I have been tempted to participate and post my own then and now pictures. Then I remember where I was ten years ago and I think that just surviving and being here and now on the other side of death is the challenge.

I doubt very seriously that I ever took a picture of myself during the month of January ten years ago. If I did, the woman in that picture would probably have a weird awkward smile plastered on her face and her eyes filled with terror. The picture might even be blurry because I’m pretty sure I vibrated with panic and tension. For those who knew me before this moment, I did not look like the person they remembered because I was also in the process of growing my hair out to be donated to charity. Really, the ten-years-ago me wasn’t me. I don’t know who it was, maybe an alternate reality version of myself, but it wasn’t me. When it was finally time to cut off all that hair, I posted a picture of the new haircut and Robin commented something about finally getting our Cindy back. Everyone at work was shocked by the drastic short hair because they didn’t know me before when I had mostly always had short hair. Almost a year later, I resembled my old self. A little skinnier. Terror in the eyes replaced with sadness, but there is a smile on my face.

I’ve always put on a brave face.

I don’t know if I look older now. I bought one of those face roller things and I have been routinely rolling my face every evening. It is a placebo, but I feel like I look younger than I did this time last year. There is more gray in my hair. A lot more gray now. Natural highlights. I like it. I’m about the same size and shape I was ten years ago. Actually, I am smaller now. Ten years ago to this date, I was still in a panic state of trying to save a life and hadn’t just yet started to lose weight. That came later when bottles of wine and sleeves of Saltines became routine meals. The photographic comparison between ten-years-ago-me and now-me would show little differences. This is because the real Ten Year Challenge cannot be compared in photographs. I am no longer terrified, but that terror is easily triggered. I am still sad, but maybe less sad (?). I question that because I didn’t have time ten years ago today to be sad. I’m not more confident than I was ten years ago, but I’m not less confident. I’ve had to fight to get my confidence level back where it was ten years ago, which was probably on the level of somewhat confident.

I am younger now than I was then for a number reasons. Some good and some bad. All unrepresentable with photography.

METABOLICALLY READY

I skipped lunch on Sunday because I was driving home from a weekend at Mom’s and once I’m in the car, I am reluctant to stop until I get home (Dad trait). Also, the food options for me on the road between Tulsa and Kansas City are not great options. When I got home, Michael said he wanted bbq. He made us a dinner reservation for Jack Stack (one of KC’s most popular bbq joints) after checking the menu for Jack Stack, who has a surprisingly decent amount of fish options. We shared an appetizer of fried mushrooms. Then, when my order of bbq trout with loaded (no bacon) baked potato and garden salad arrived at our table, I ate all of it. I left half the garden salad because Jack Stack’s ‘dinner’ salad is truly dinner sized, but still. Michael only ate half of his sandwich and sides, while I just continued eating on a giant plate of food until I felt ill.

That night, I’m not really sure what was happening in my dream, but someone who felt like my brother gave me a hot dog from Katz’s Deli. When I unwrapped the hotdog from the wax paper, I discovered a perfect New York hot dog, but a vegetarian hot dog, not a meat one. I was overjoyed and hugged this brother like person with all my might. I woke up wanting all of this to be real. It is not. The only thing I can eat at Katz’s Deli is the egg salad sandwich. It is the most superb egg salad sandwich I have ever eaten and now I want one with a gallon container of their pickles. Then I want to consume tomatoes and mozzarella cheese until my stomach bursts and ohmygod I do not know what is happening to me. It’s like I am a hibernating breed of animal that just looked at the calendar and realized that winter is not all that far away and is now saying to itself “Oh no! I’m not metabolically ready for winter!”

For some reason, I found myself watching the first episode of the Fantasy Island reboot on FOX. One of the guests was a news anchorwoman who had been depriving herself of food for fear of getting too fat for TV, but it was a habit she formed in her early teens. The result of this was that she always felt hungry, always felt empty inside. On the island she was able to eat anything and all that she wanted without gaining an ounce. She immediately sat down to elaborate meals, full of all of the things that she never allowed herself to eat, but with each meal came a memory and an interruption from her step-dad, the man who planted and watered the seed of her idea of food and her body. Each time, she pushed the memory away and the more empty she felt inside. It wasn’t until she finally confronted the memory that she felt full and content. She left the island with an intent to find more joy in her daily life and that sometimes that joy comes in the form of a cupcake.

I wonder what memory it is I am suddenly trying to push away. What is nudging me that I need to confront? Where did this sudden space come from that I feel needs to be filled up with something such as more cheese?

The August session of Camp Wildling starts this week. I am not going, but I still recieve all of the updates and newsletters regarding camp and it makes me wish I was going to camp. Yesterday, Kelly posted a list of last minute suggestions for the campers. Number seven on the list was in regards to an impromptu grief ceremony at the ancient Indian mounds that are in the camp. She was floating it out there for other campers because sometimes sharing what is in our grieving hearts can help us heal. It was a ceremony that I participated in when I was at camp and seeing this posted on the list made me tear up immediately. I had not expected to have any part in this ceremony. Then Kelly approached me and said that she and another camper where going to the mounds for a grief ceremony and invited me to go. It was very last minute. I had nothing prepared to share. I didn’t know what this grief ceremony was going to look like and was not prepared for any of it. Kelly started by sharing her story and then she “Cindy, will you tell us about Chris?” Maybe two words came out of my mouth before the rest of anything I had to say was taken over by a rush of sobs. My body made sounds of grief I had not heard since Chris’s death. I lost complete control of myself and I didn’t even know I had that kind of sobbing left in me after all this time. It was like a black sticky tar ball lodged between my kidneys had for some reason chosen this moment to wiggle itself free.

Am I trying to fill that space back up with food? Unintentionally maybe.

It is the habit that once you clean out a space, to fill it up with new stuff. It is as if one cannot handle empty spaces. Except if we take some time, if we just let ourselves feel unsettled with the empty space for a few minutes, I think we will eventually get used to the emptiness. I’m good with this concept of thinking outside of my own body. In fact, empty spaces are my Xanax, but internally is a different story. For one thing, I come from a family of non communicators. We internalize all thoughts and feelings. This is why I am better at writing about it then talking about it. My grief for Chris is just the easiest box or boxes to reach in this attic of internalized crap, but getting rid of some of those boxes, makes room for sorting through others. So, I’ve curbed my appetite.

I’m leaving space for more mental sorting.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Living our lives with more purpose than before.

That was one of the sentences Rebecca Woolf wrote in a posting regarding expectations in widowhood last week. Of all the head nodding relatable things she wrote about society’s judgements on how a widow should behave after the death of her husband, it was that sentence that hit the hardest. Those words were like hands wrapping around my arms to give me a good shake. Living my life with more purpose than I did before Chris’s death is like walking around under a thick heavy blanket. It is exhausting and when it is all I can do to take air into my own lungs, the guilt of not living with more purpose turns that thick heavy blanket into a wet thick heavy blanket.

Now, I know that the people in my immediate circle do not judge or have expectations regarding my widow behavior. I know that those judgment fingers are my own fingers pointing into my own face. No one expects more than I do of myself. After reading Rebecca’s post, I sent a message to her that read “‘Living our lives with more purpose than before’ is so fucking exhausting.” It wasn’t until I had written it out that I realized the weight of what I have been carrying around with me all this time. No wonder I’m tired all the dang time. It is hard enough on most days to live a life of purpose for myself, let alone live a life of purpose for myself and another human. I had a hard time separating the me from the me and Chris. So much of my life after Chris is tinged with guilt because I went from being a person who didn’t care what others thought of me to a person who suddenly cared what a dead man thought of me. It has taken me almost ten years to figure out that who I am without Chris is the same person I was with Chris, with just a few minor adjustments.

This week, I removed my set of wedding rings from the chain I wear around my neck, leaving Chris’s wedding band and my scooter charm. I remember clearly when I added my rings to the chain with Chris’s ring. I took them off my finger because I had lost enough weight to make them loose on my ring finger. Dangerously loose. I remember riding the scooter home from work and feeling them slip from the largest knuckle. At the time, it made perfect sense to add them to Chris’s ring. I really didn’t know what else to do with my wedding rings, but I really didn’t know what to do with myself. As I lifted my chain to place it around my neck, I was astounded by how noticeably lighter that chain felt without my rings and later in the day, when I caught a reflection of myself with only Chris’s ring and my scooter charm on that chain, my hand flew to my neck in a moment of panic. For a very brief moment, I thought “there is no me without him.” Then the thumb of my hand that had flown up to my neck, looped Chris’s wedding band onto itself. I spun that ring around my thumb, feeling the soothing coolness and remembered how light I felt by taking my rings off. The moment of panic slipped easily away because I realized that the truth is, there is no him without me.

The Cabbage recently broached the subject of death and afterlife. I mentioned The Law of Conservation of Energy.

The law of conservation of energy states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed - only converted from one form of energy to another.

Chris’s energy is everywhere and nowhere. I feel it when I’m writing and creating. I feel it when I watch any movie or hear new music from one of our favorite bands. He’s holding the pen every time I sit down to make a list of any kind. I feel it when I see something that I know we would both laugh forever about. It is his voice saying that sharp witted subtle thing that makes someone else in the room laugh. I will never let go of Chris or his wedding band. I will always be married to him, but I am ready to let go of living this life for him. I am ready to drop these expectations I have of myself, the ones that whisper “I am not enough.”

I want to have some not so great expectations for living.

MEMORIALS

J’s combat boots are currently sitting on the top shelf of my closet. In about two weeks, I will be taking those boots out of the closet and packing them into the camper. I have grand visions of me in my pink tool skirt, wearing those boots and taking pictures in stunning places like the Grand Canyon at sunset or Bryce Canyon at sunrise. My vision of what I want from the photos is probably better than what I will actually be able to photograph, but my goals are set and I’m going to do my best to honor those damn boots.

For some of us, every day is Memorial Day.

I have a love hate relationship with this photo project idea of mine. I love the idea of it as a way to honor J, but I hate that there is a need to honor J. I have our National Parks Pass ready to go into the truck but I am already cringing at whatever response will come from flashing it to the park rangers as we enter the parks. Inevitably someone is going to say “thank you for your sacrifice” and my gut reaction to that is always a big “Fuck you.” Then a whole rant of ‘protecting your freedoms to sit on your fat ass drinking your supersized Coke and eating your supersized McDonald’s meal and you still have to take your shoes off at airport security’ flows through my brain. I clinch my teeth to keep the words from escaping my brain and I am amazed with how much anger I still have over this loss. I know you mean well when you thank my family for our sacrifice. Truly, I do. I’m just saying that those words do not make any of this easier.

This photo project also makes me nervous. It is going to require me to be on point with my photography skills, to be patient and take my time setting up equipment. I cannot rush this, which is something I tend to do when in travel mode. This means remembering to breathe while taking pictures. Sometimes I hold my breath while capturing an image. Basically I am going to just need to get out of my own head because at the end of the day it is the intent of why I am doing this project that really matters. I’ve gotten good at taking lost loved ones on road trips. I’ve done this before and maybe that is where some of the nervousness comes from because this is the first time I’m doing something like this for J. What if it doesn’t turn out as I imagined it would? Again, something else I’ve done before. Play the What If game. I’ve played it enough times to know that the ‘what if?’ can not be predicted. Every action (or inaction) has consequences and consequences are neutral.

But the truth is, I’d rather be photographing J in his own boots.

NACHO DREAMS

I woke up with tears on my face and squinted at the clock. It was 3:28 AM. I sighed and rolled over, scenes from the dream I had been in the middle of still playing out in my head. It was yet another breakup dream where Chris was dumping me. He does this in my dreams and every time, I hear myself pleading with him, begging him to give me another chance. I tell him I’ll do whatever he wants and I’ll change to fit any mold. Every time, he just shakes his head and turns away. This time was no different from the last time. I woke up rejected and heartbroken all over again.

I know why I have these dreams. Wait…that’s not really true. I don’t know why I am still having these dreams, but I understand the meaning in these dreams. Chris left me and there was nothing I could do about it. There was nothing I could do to make him stay. Death is the ultimate breakup. The difference now is that when I wake from these dreams, I no longer see that breakup as my fault. I know that Chris’s leaving had nothing to do with me not being enough. In the beginning though, I was not so sure and sometimes even now that idea of not enough is a thorn sticking into the soft part of some flesh on my body. It takes a needle and tweezers to pull it free, but once it is, there is a modicum of relief. I see pictures of couples celebrating the anniversaries that Chris and I should be celebrating and my heart fills with equal parts joy and jealousy for them. I wince as I feel a new thorn stab me and I dig into the medicine cabinet for my extraction tools.

Not to long ago, I dreamed that I had a fancy new coffee maker. At the push of a button, you could have any coffee beverage you wanted. Americano, espresso, latte, soy latte, mocha latte. Anything. Then there was another button you could push that would dispense nacho cheese dip. In my dream, I was giddy and holding a bowl of tortilla chips up to the coffee maker. By the end of it, I held an Americano in one hand and a bowl of nachos in the other and I was filled with joy. I did not realize until just now that this is exactly the kind of coffee maker Chris would have invented.

Why can’t all dreams be like this one?

BLASTERS

I recently had to explain the above picture to some new friends. The Cabbage pointed it out to everyone in the room and I found myself saying “that’s my late husband with a Stormtrooper.” This was not an acceptable answer for the Cabbage who replied “but why that picture?” I went with the simplest answer. I went with that picture because it’s funny. We were at the Medieval Fair in Norman and Stormtroopers appearing in Medieval times is nerdy genius. The more elaborate answer as to why that picture is that it is a capture of pure authentic joy. It is one of the few pictures I have of Chris where he is not making a face at the camera and it is a picture of Chris with something Star Wars, his favorite thing.

Most every single picture I own of the two of us, in everyone of them Chris is not looking at the camera. He is always looking at me.

There is a gap forming between when Chris died and now. I was scrolling through pictures, looking for something in particular, and I noticed that there are hundreds of photos in my storage that I must scroll through to get to the Chris years. It makes me think of the end of Titanic where they just show a bunch of photographs of Rose doing stuff and living life. The only difference is that I know Chris would have fit on that door with me floating in the Atlantic and I would made sure that he was on it with me. We both probably would have lost our feet to frostbite, but we’d still be alive. Chris dragged me to the theater four times to watch that movie. The first viewing was great, but by the fourth viewing, I was fed up with Rose and her wide-eyed, insipid, innocence and I still did not understand why it was that both of them could not fit on that giant door. Chris fell off into the ocean anyway and I went on to live a life and every day I feel that tether linking us get longer and longer. I worry that my rope isn’t long enough. I’m going to run out of length and stretch the line until it thins and breaks. Some time back, Michael mentioned that I might stop wearing my wedding rings after a certain amount of time. Like, if Michael and I are together for as long as Chris and I were, then maybe I could stop wearing them. I remember vaguely nodding my head without comment. The truth is that I don’t ever see me not wearing these wedding rings around my neck. They’re part of the tether. The weight of them resting just above my heart is what helps to keep that tether from fraying.

For Star Wars Day, my friend Jeff sent me a link to a trivia game based on all things Star Wars. It reminded me of all the times we played Star Wars Trivial Pursuit and how my answer to every question was “R2D2”. Meanwhile Chris would know random ships by their number. The game always came down to Chris and Jen with one of them winning or maybe tying. I did not beat Jeff’s trivia score. Too many questions about lightsaber colors and ship numbers, all the questions Chris would have the answers to. None of the answers were R2D2. None of the answers are ever really R2D2.

It is days like these that close the gap of the in between years.

DC

Kilroy was here and so is Chris. I have a story about this one, but you'll have to wait for it.

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The emotion in me started to build up the closer I got to the National Mall and by the time I crossed Constitution Avenue I had melted into a puddle of goo. I’m not really sure what happened. I was just suddenly overwhelmed by the grandeur and the history and patriotism. I had the Capitol Building to my left and way off to my right was the Washington Monument. It was still very early in the morning and a bit cold, making my breath visible as I walked towards the Washington Monument. I also carried a ziplock baggy of Chris’s ashes in my pocket and my plan was to leave them somewhere on the National Mall.

It has been over a year since I’ve left Chris somewhere. I think the last place I left him was in New Mexico. I just didn’t go any where this year that Chris hadn’t already been. When I decided to go to this conference in DC, I realized that I needed to do some research to determine an appropriate spot for Chris. I thought about leaving him near the Washington Monument because he thought it was funny we had this giant phallic symbol as a monument. Then again, no one I know could do a more accurate Forrest Gump impression than Chris. Whenever I hear the name ‘Jenny’, I hear it in Chris’s Forrest Gump voice. There’s that scene where Forrest and Jenny meet in middle of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, so I also toyed with the idea of leaving him there. There were too many options really: The Air and Space Museum, the International Spy Museum, the Blind Whino Psychedelic Church. That’s the short list.

In the end I decided to leave Chris as close as I could to the Kilroy graffiti hidden on the back side of the World War II Memorial. “Kilroy was here” cartoons started showing up during the second World War where ever US troops appeared. The comedy in tragedy theme was a humor that Chris embraced. His favorite book was Catch 22. He signed on as medic because he thought he’d be spending his time wearing a Hawaiian print shirt, lounging in a hammock with a martini in his hand just like the doctors in M.A.S.H. Then there’s the bonus of being hidden in plain site. Remember that time Chris put that ‘Return to the fiery pits of Mount Doom’ sticker on the Barnes and Noble display copy of that Anne Coulter book? This spot just seemed to be the right one and being there at such a deserted time of morning made it easier for me accomplish this. I still managed dump about half of Chris’s ashes down the front of my black coat. I looked like a beignet from Cafe du Monde.

I ended up having a couple of really good discussions on death after leaving Chris’s ashes. When I met up with Christy, a college friend who I had not seen in twenty years, she talked about how even though we’d lost touch with each other and only had minimal connections through social media, Chris had left a void. She feels the void left by his passing. And that’s true. He left a big ole gapping hole that we have all had to figure out how to navigate around. Our last night in DC, I ended up talking to my boss about navigating the gapping holes of death. He is in the middle of dealing with a terminally ill loved one and we talked about loss and moving forward. I told him about J and I told him about how his death shaped mine and Chris’s views on death and living. I talked about how the very best way I can honor Chris is by living, truly living, my life. It is not always easy, but it is harder for me to think of myself as a disappointment to him.

So I do my best to truly live this life.

OUT OF TOWNER

The ghost of Paul Revere

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I have managed to be out of town every August 1st since 2006. I didn’t realize this until Michael said something about the date while we ate our last lobster (lobstah) rolls of our Boston trip. He said “Is today a bad date?” “It’s not a great one” I replied while shoving a giant piece of lobster meat into my mouth. This was all I said on the subject. For our last day in Boston, the temperatures dropped to the high seventies. All week long, until that day, we were in the middle of a sweltering heat wave. It wasn’t a big deal for me because I spent most of the first four days of our trip in conference rooms listening to developmental biology talks. Michael, on the other hand, had two-shirt days. Really three-shirt days, but he didn’t pack enough t-shirts for that. We thought it would be cooler when we took a day trip up to Salem, but that turned out to be the hottest day. Some poor park ranger drew the short straw and was stuck out on the replica tall ship at the Maritime National Historic site. They had provided him with a tent like shelter and he refused to leave his square of shade to even point out where the masts are usually placed on the ship. It was so hot that I felt like I was sweating between my fingers, so I don’t blame that unlucky park ranger for refusing to leave his square of shade.

The best thing about that day, about the whole trip really, was the ferry ride we took back to Boston. Michael sat down at a table inside the ferry and we dumped our backpacks. He looked at me and said “go do what you need to do.” I swapped out lenses on my camera and headed outside where I was able to position myself at the very front of the ship. The ferry maneuvered it’s way out of the harbor and then began to pick up speed. Then we were speeding across the Atlantic and there I was at the very front of the ship feeling the full effect of racing across the water. I stood there with the wind hitting me full blast, snapping terrible pictures and practically giggling with joy. When Michael finally came out to find me, I turned to look at him with this giant grin on my face. “THIS IS AMAZING!” I yelled at him to be heard over the wind and sound of the engine. I am usually hesitant about getting on big boats. It is not from a fear of drowning, but more from a fear of boredom. It all stems from that one time Dad and I got trapped on a paddle boat ride up the Mississippi. Dad was not a good swimmer, but thought that even he could swim faster than the boat we were on. We both fantasized of jumping overboard. But this ferry? Dad would have loved this ride.

I wonder how Dad felt about fried clams. I ate enough of them for the both of us.

As we made our way through security to board our flight home, Michael got caught up in the security check point. Something about him that day lit up all the bells on the scanner. His luggage got scanned twice and he received a personal pat down from a TSA officer. It was not a big deal. We had plenty of time to kill before our flight any way. After he finally made it through, we were settled on a bench repacking his stuff and I kind of chuckled. I looked at him sideways and said “J was totally just fucking with you.” Michael was curious as to why I thought this, but I didn’t have the best explanation for him. It just felt like something J had a hand in. I could almost see him standing next to one of the TSA officers with a wicked grin on his face as he whispered in the officer’s ear “why don’t you recheck that bag.”

August is a weird month.

Ghosts are everywhere.

IN THE SAME CATEGORY AS BLOO AND DROP DEAD FRED

Alien

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Chris blindly reached his hand over to grab his favorite pen, except the pen was not there. Chris felt certain he’d left that pen there on the side table. He continued to blindly pat around on the table, searching for his pen. Finally he got up and looked over the top of the side table. He picked up his books and papers that he had stacked there. Still, Chris did not see his pen. He frowned as he set the books and papers back onto the side table and scratched his head. He was almost certain that was the last place he saw that pen. Maybe it rolled off the table, Chris thought. So, he got down on his hands and knees and started rummaging around on the floor, looking under the table and that corner of the couch. He was really starting to frustrated when Cindy walked into the living room. “What are you doing?” she asked. Her question startled Chris enough to make him jump and then bump his head on the bottom of the couch. Chris replied through gritted teeth “I’m looking for my favorite pen.” Cindy tilted her head to one side and said “which one?” Chris sighed heavily, “You know. The metal one with the orange ring around the top. I know I left it on this table, but it’s not here.” Cindy walked over to the coffee table and picked up one of Chris’s journals. She opened the journal and extracted Chris’s favorite pen. “This one?” she said as she held the pen up. Chris smiled and reached to take the pen from her hand. “Yes! That one!”

It’s a story I wrote on Saturday, in the Fortune Cookie journal. The prompt had something to do with writing your hearts desires or dreams or something like that. It’s the first time since I’ve started writing in that journal where I used Chris and I as characters. The story is fiction, but could have easily been something that really happened. You did not have to know Chris long to know he had a thing for pens. And journals. I have a superpower that I mostly never mention and that’s an ability to just know where stuff is. This is why it was so weird that I couldn’t find my scooter key after Chris died. I might not know exactly where everything is, but I can usually give you three locations of possibility and whatever it is you’re looking for is guaranteed to be in one of those three spots. I’m not saying that I can do this all the time, but it happens just often enough for some people really close to me to notice my abilities.

It’s quite possible that I only thought I was writing a fictitious story about a moment in the day and life of Chris and Cindy. That’s the thing about these memories. As time passes, the memories start to feel like dreams or wishes. No one here got a chance to really know Chris or even meet him. When I talk about my life before, the life when Chris was still alive, it sounds like I’m talking about a pretend life. Sometimes I feel like Christopher Robin explaining to a grown up about the existence of his best friend, Winnie the Pooh. Chris is some imaginary person. If only I could just walk down the street to Madame Foster’s and hang out with him. Oh, the shenanigans we’d get into or the movies we’d watch. You know what’s dumb? If that was at all possible, that is exactly what we’d end up doing. All those questions I have for him? I’d completely forget to ask any of them. The answers wouldn’t matter anymore.

I’ve been working hard at being present in this current life. When I find myself in a small-talk kind of conversation with a stranger and they ask me how long I’ve lived in Kansas City, I’ve started saying that I moved here about seven years ago (or is it eight?). I don’t say “My late husband and I moved here about seven years ago.” I’ve stopped including Chris in my story of the move to Kansas City. I don’t know why. Maybe because it’s just easier, less confusing. Leaving him out of it ensures that I will not get that look of sympathy that usually makes me cringe and I don’t have to answer any follow up questions regarding how he died or what life is like as a widow. I don’t have to explain anything. For a moment I can pretend to be someone else, someone without a sad backstory. Only for a moment. Eventually I slip up and say something about a late husband.

I’d make a terrible undercover agent.