Man of the Hour - Pearl Jam

My father died a year ago today. One year and two weeks after my husband died. Often, my grief for Dad gets entangled with my grief for Steve.

I wish it was less complicated.

It isn't.

Edge of Darkness

"Well, we all know what the facts are. We live a while, and then we die sooner than we planned."

-  Edge of Darkness

Missing - Everything But The Girl

There are many versions of this song out there. I've always been partial to remixes, though.

I had dinner with my in-laws the other night. I saw them last at Christmas, when I also spent a few days in New York City revisiting old places and times. All of which are connected to Steve. This song was cycling through my head when I visited Steve's old neighborhood. Cousin Frank was at work that day but managed to text me the entire time I was in the old neighborhood. Amongst a dozen other reasons, I love him for that.

Seeing Steve's family a week after his death anniversary has me revisiting my last visit with them. I never feel like I'm able to say what it is I want to say to them. I never feel like I have enough time with them. I wish I could find the words to tell them how much my love has grown for them in the past two years. How much I want to give Steve back to them. How sorry I am that for ten years we didn't visit as often as we could have, as much as Steve wanted to visit.

I never knew how wonderful my in-laws were until we were no longer, technically speaking, in-laws. What a fool I've been.

Keep me...

104 Weeks (Two Years)

... 104 Moments We didn't Get To Share Together...

There are few things in life that we plan out very far. All the same, I can be pretty certain that these moments would have occurred within the last two years.

1. Celebrate your forty-eighth birthday in Venice, Italy.
2. Take a romantic Gondola ride in Venice, Italy.
3. Buy that special piece of Murano glass we were especially looking forward to picking out.
4. Sit in Piazza San Marco, eating home made gelato, laughing at the hundreds of pigeons walking around.  
5. Return home in time to watch the new HBO series, "Boardwalk Empire," all excited to see what Martin Scorsese would create. 
6. Buy you a new pair of work shoes as your current pair are developing a hole in the sole.
7. Go to State Fair to "baaaaa" at the sheep.
8. Watch the movie "Social Network" only because Aaron Sorkin wrote the screenplay.
9. Hold hands as we Walk for Autism.
10. Celebrate our eighth wedding anniversary.
11. Get our haircuts together by our friend John, then all of us going out for dinner.
12. Try to keep our crack-head dog from running away with all the adorable kids who ring our bell on Halloween.
13. Go to DC to watch the Packers lose to the Redskins with our friend Dan.
14. Tailgate at said same game.
15. Walk in to the church where we vote, holding hands.
16. Your joy at sending and my joy at receiving, flowers for no particular reason.
17. Cook Thanksgiving dinner.
18. Go to the theater to watch "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1" in the middle of a Friday so as to avoid all the kids.
19. Pull out all our Christmas lights only to find out they've all burnt out in the same year.
20. Use our backup Christmas lights, which are all red, and promptly name our place the Christmas Hootchie House.
21. The moment when I finally got your guitars hanging on the walls, like pieces of 3-D art.
22. Laugh at our dog as she gets crazier than normal during the first snow fall of the winter.
23. Take our friend Dan to see "The Nutcracker Suite" ballet and, surprisingly, finding out he couldn't really get into it even with a dancing bear.
24. Celebrate the one year adoption anniversary of Belle. Wonder how we survived that long with a knuckle-headed border collie.
25. Invite all our friends over for a big Italian meal on Christmas Eve.
26. Go to Christmas Eve midnight service and giggling like ten year olds through the service cause, really, you can't take us anywhere.
27. Come home on Christmas Eve, sit by the lights of the tree, open a present each and reminisce about getting engaged exactly nine years earlier in Rockefeller Center.
28. Freak the F out when my father fell and broke his hip.
29. Celebrate my thirty-seventh birthday with one of your surprise birthday binders.
30. Ring in the New Year with a kiss and a slow dance. 
31. Finally see your band, The Scrubbs, play somewhere outside of practice.
32. Watch the Packers win the Super Bowl.
33. Buy the new flat screen, high-def, really big tv to watch said Super Bowl.
34. Exchange Valentine's Day, hand written, love letters.
35. You mow the lawn and I plant flowers followed by both of us relaxing and enjoying the view. 
36. Celebrate Dad's seventy-sixth birthday with him.
37. Decorate the bushes out front with pastel, plastic Easter eggs.
38. Walk the Easter Parade talking about all the bands and how you guys could play there next year.
39. Buy at least one stupid thing at Arts in the Park.
40. Mark the moment when your convertible finally hit 30,000 miles.
41. Discuss that now Osama bin Laden is dead, maybe we can go see how the new tower is looking in NewYork, having specifically not gone since it was still a smoking rubble.
42. Find a new favorite HBO series "Game of Thrones" to whittle away our Sunday evenings watching.
43. Have dinner with your brother Frank and his wife on their way south to visit friends - and throwing movie quips back and forth all evening.
44. Have dinner with Doc when he comes to town for business.
45. At this point, probably mark the moment when your convertible finally hit 40,000 miles.
46. Celebrate the forth of July by not watching fireworks amongst crowds of people.
47. Walk out of the theater from watching "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" all kinda crying because the story is over.
48. Have dinner with Aunt Jean, Uncle Frank, Cousin Frank, Lisa, Samantha, and Michael and asking, yet again, why your family thinks coming to Virginia in July and August is a good idea?
49. Stand next to my father's bed in the hours before he died.
50. Sharing how it was for you when your father died as I cope with the death of my father.
51. Freak the F out when the earthquake that originated in Virgina shakes things up all the way to New York.
52. Try and figure out the right food, the right oils, the right anything to solve the problem of our freaky dog's sensitive skin issue.
53. Get pissed at Hurricane Irene which took out our mulberry tree when, by rights, it should have taken out our black walnut tree.
54. On the ten year anniversary of 9/11, talk about how 9/11 made us both realize that the other was the most important person in our lives.
55.  Sort and haul junk from the garage to the street for bulk pick-up day.
56. Celebrate your forty-ninth birthday in Florance, Italy.
57. Realizing that Galileo and Michelangelo are entombed next to each other at Basilica of Santa Croce, then spending days comparing the two and their work.
58. Walk through Roman ruins in the basements of churches and private buildings, and getting that weird butterfly-time-tummy feeling.
59. Visit so many museums while in Florance that we can start to recognize Medici family portraits without having to read the titles.
60. Laugh hysterically when you see exactly how long it's going to take me and how many t-shirt I'm gonna end up needing to finish the t-shirt latch-hook rug I've started.
61. Go to State Fair and try really hard not to come home with a fuzzy bunny.
62. Celebrate our ninth wedding anniversary.
63. Once again argue if we should give glow sticks and pencils or candy for Halloween. 
64. Walk out of the church where we vote, holding hands.
65. Start to rake the yard only to decide, screw it, we'll mow all the leaves and call it even.
66. Eat Thanksgiving dinner by candlelight.
67. Watch HOB's special on Vince Lombardi. Discuss the Packers of your youth.
68. Go to Lewis-Ginter Botanical Gardens to see the Christmas lights, be disappointed for the second time in a row and vow never to return again.
69. Buy Green Bay Packer stock because you couldn't afford it during the last offering in 1997.
70. Immediately buy Packer Owner clothing for bragging rights.
71. Pick out Christmas gifts for all the kids in the family. 
72. Celebrate the two year adoption date of Belle. Realize we now drink more because of border collie feet licking tendencies.
73. Blow off all our usual Christmas traditions to spend it in New York with your family, as we did ten years earlier when you asked me to marry you.
74. Go back to your old neighborhood and see how it's quickly filling up with boutique hotels.
75. Take a carriage ride through Central Park because the weather is just that nice and you are just that romantic.
76. Go see Alan Rickman in "Seminar" on Broadway because no way we're gonna miss a chance to see Alan live!
77. Finally getting to see your cousin's brand new, gorgeous house with the way cool thermal heating / air conditioning system.
78. Celebrate my thirty-eighth birthday as we normally do - you having meticulously planned the day and me completely surprised.
79. Ring in the New Year drunk off our asses.
80. The happiness you exude when I join you on a work trip.
81. Watch the Packers have a perfect season right up until they didn't. During playoffs.
82. Watch "Rio" on HBO - the only movie where the bird doesn't "get it" (die) and be really excited.
83. Complain that in "Rio" the monkeys (my animal) and the birds (your animal) really should have been on the same side but it's all good cause for once, your side got to win!
84. A romantic Valentine's Day dinner even if it's not actually on Valentine's Day.
85. Share stories about my father on his birthday the first year after he died.
86. Be the only two nerds we know who would spend all day talking about the Titanic the day before the one-hundred year anniversary of it's sinking.
87. Promise that next year we really will bring the crazy foot-licking dog to the Easter Parade.
88. Talk about cooking a special Easter diner and then not make one. Just like every year. 
89. Walk around Arts in the Park talking about how all the painting are really just the same ones secretly moved from booth to booth when we're not looking.
90. Listen to Beastie Boys songs all day when we hear that Adam Yauch died.
91. See Michael and Samantha's first communion. 
92. Cry during Blake and Katherine's wedding ceremony.
93. Talk for a week about the band at Blake and Katherine's wedding. In a good way.
94. Discuss every Ray Bradbury book we've read, in depth, after hearing of his death.
95. Entertain Dan's parents when they came into town for his graduation.
96. Scream our fool heads off when they called Dan's name to walk the stage.
97. Take Dan out for a special graduation / moving away dinner.
98. Excitedly watch the new HBO series "The Newsroom" because finally! Aron Sorkin is back on television where he belongs! 
99. Also? "The Newsroom" music is written by Thomas Newman. Double bonus points!
100. Mourn the loss of the sugar maple falling down on the house from a freak storm.
101. Get excited over the opportunity to upgrade the back porch, thanks to the sugar maple and freak storm.
102. Be royally pissed that the damn black walnut tree, which by all rights shoulda been gone long ago, is still standing unscathed.
103. Celebrate the forth of July by making our own fireworks. In the bedroom.
104. July fifteenth would be a normal day for the two of us. As it has always been.

Slipped Away - Avril Lavigne

The Tree of Life

You make yourself what you are. You have control of your own destiny. You can’t say “I can’t.” You say, I’m having trouble. I’m not done yet. You can’t say “I can’t.”

- "The Tree of Life"