Every parent yearns to find the perfect gift for their child, whether it’s for the holidays, birthday, or any ordinary day for that matter. Growing up as a 90s kid, one of the most iconic movies that came out was “The Rugrats Movie.” I wanted a Rugrats watch from Burger King so badly, pleading for it relentlessly. If there was something I wanted, my dad went to great lengths to get it, even if it meant driving to several Burger Kings and searching for it after a 12-hour work day, he stopped one last time and tiredly said, “I need the watch for my daughter” and they were happy to help him with my favorite watch.

It’s still a special memory, aside from loving my gift, I know how much effort he put into everything to make me happy. This has also become a phrase we jokingly say all the time, and I know he’s laughing right now.

I’m at my desk yesterday. I have my music on in the background listening to my favorite songs from the 60’s and 70’s. Jay & The Americans start to sing their cover of “Some Enchanted Evening” from the musical South Pacific. As I listened to the song I had a memory of my husband, Mike. When that song would come on the radio he would do an impersonation of Ezio Pinza who sang the song in the movie. He would reach out for me and in his best operatic voice (he was not a singer!) and with a poor Italian accent he would belt out “Sum-a enchan ted a eve en ing a” and I would dissolve into laughter.

This brought a smile to me yesterday as I remembered the many silly ways he could make me laugh throughout our almost 50 years together. My smile soon turned to having to fight back tears. This memory, although innocent as it seemed, filled my heart with the loneliness and longing and love for Mike that I will carry with me forever. Memories come in all shapes and sizes. They may not be elaborate. They might surprise you. They might be something only you can cherish. They might be a part of your love story or a part of your life story. They might be sentimental or just plain silly. Thanks, Mike, for the memories.

Often when we remember those we’ve lost, whether in sharing stories, memories, or obituaries, we only tell of the good things.

For me, my Dad’s missteps, mistakes and faults are what made him who he was.

Dad’s parents divorced when he was four and his father, for whatever reason, chose not to be a part of his life. When Dad was around 15 he stole his new step dad’s car and took off to Florida with a couple of his buddies, to play basketball. Of course, when he returned, consequences were waiting. That same “delinquent” would later teach basketball to younger kids at the community center.

At seventeen his step dad died of leukemia. Dad chose to drop out of high school and get a job to support his mom. He continued to support her the rest of her life.

My Dad learned how to be a man, husband, father, and grandfather by just living it. He learned every day of his life. I’m not saying he was perfect. He made mistakes in life, we all do. We all wish we could have those do-overs. He knew that and made himself better because of it.

For my brothers and I, we learned by being with him. Everything he missed out on, we were given. He took care of his family. Dad held and loved all the babies. His kids, grandkids and great grandkids. He taught us to do things for people without expecting anything in return, because that was what he did. He made sure we knew that what others think of you, doesn’t matter. That you don’t change who you are or how you present yourself to fit in with those who are around you, because that was how he lived. He showed us that loyalty matters, your word matters, no games, just be straight forward, just be you.

Dad became a better man as he aged. When he was a young husband he was all about work and providing for his family. By the time he was a grandpa, he helped with laundry and dirty dishes. He continued to evolve, always trying to figure out what a “man” is.

I loved my Dad because of his faults, not in spite of them. They made him who he was supposed to be. And I miss him with all my heart.

It feels like yesterday in one breath, and in another I cannot even comprehend the lives I have lived since January 4, 2021. Since your hospitalization December 23, 2020. Since COVID diagnosis December 19, 2020.

Frozen. It was how I felt the moment things began to change: when speaking with you in the hospital wasn’t the way it had been before; oxygen deprivation surely settling in and affecting your countenance and communication and exhaustion. Right before intubation, things were on a path, and from the second intubation led to a heart attack, I felt like everything stopped for me. I had to tell myself to breathe, to get up and walk around, to sip water. So much was happening in slow motion. The way I took copious notes with every call to your nursing team, trying to remain objective as I transcribed them, without reacting in the moment for fear of crumbling. The way I reviewed those notes in a second family phone call with Brad and Kristyna and Marc right there, looping in whomever had not been on the call with the nurses. Also the way I became briefly unfrozen when a doctor told us midway through that week of hell that brain function was still occurring – because there was tremendous fear a stroke had occurred in this process too.

I worried with anguish and shame in my frozenness that I lacked your skills of gathering data and adopting an action plan, because the world was spinning so far and so fast out of control. But when I look back at what was actually happening those unfathomable hospital days, I was indeed creating a plan – disseminating information, gathering prayers and hopes in droves, repeating my own phrases constantly. Calling out to you to stay, to return to us. Somehow feeding and caring for a 5 year old and 2 year old without shattering on the spot. Driving to the ICU for a gift of time, to hold you, when it seemed you might not survive that December 27th night, being brave enough to draft and sign documents preserving your wishes at every turn. Driving to the ICU once more when it was the heart shattering end. I did that without crumbling. (How?) I didn’t die from the heartbreak of losing your incredible life, when I was sure I would. And if being at your side, holding you as you died didn’t kill me, I still don’t know how I didn’t die when I had to hold Amelia’s tiny hands in our living room and tell her what happened. That was the second worst moment of my life. Losing you and Mama are tied for first.

Somehow I found the ability to portion and pack your advice into a fire starter, throw it on the campfire of our entirely new world, and light the match: and stand tall. The phone calls I made about you. The tasks Brad and I jumped into immediately. The preservation of so many things which required creating longevity and fostering your legacy. Planning a family funeral. Writing a eulogy. Not dying on the spot from the pain I endured. Observing people in my neighborhood, people on my friends list, people I once trusted and loved, snark about COVID vaccines. Becoming for the first time (and last time) a keyboard warrior, fighting in the comments on social media with people (some strangers, some people I had considered friends) about why masks and social distancing might have bought us time until you could be vaccinated – single digits weeks away from your death, and then you would not be dead.

The way I dutifully pasted the link to the Houston Chronicle article written about your philanthropy and giving of yourself with Angel Flight missions – and typed through streaming tears: this – this is the kind of person your lack of care is responsible for killing. Asking in disbelief if my daddy didn’t deserve to live more than their perceived freedom about a piece of fabric? The arguments in the comments didn’t bring me peace or change minds as I might have once loftily believed they would, and I eventually summoned the courage to stop yelling into the void and hurting myself even more. But I never stopped wanting to avenge you, Daddy.

I didn’t realize it at the time but I did avenge your death, in the most ordinary of ways: by talking about your life. By chronicling your life. Celebrating it. Explaining it to my babies and anyone who would listen. By attempting to live with your tenets at the helm. By carefully and thoughtfully stewarding the things you set up to love on and support others in the wake of your death. By surviving your death to carry out what you asked of us, and right at this minute to be bravely pursuing what you hoped for us. By making my writing reach more than just friends on social media.

There is such a fear in loss of disappearance; that you’ll really be gone forever. I realize all the time you are simply too much to be gone.

All the words and concepts which are interwoven with YOU. Your life. The air conditioning temperature digital read in my car – casually set to 73 – a number meaning a medium cabin setting, but it is also the last age you ever were. And when that hurt to see and I changed it, another zing: 74, the age you might have still been if your life hadn’t stopped January 4, 2021. The majestic oaks in my yard which remind me of you (and we always called you “our family’s oak”): steadfast, sturdy, consistent, generously reaching to carry, to shelter, to give. The altitude noted at which we flew to Michigan – a trip by small and commercial aircraft made with you dozens upon dozens of times. The quirky salt and pepper shaker collections inside Zingerman’s Roadhouse in Ann Arbor, which touched off much speculation and giggling about their existence, and the ones you saw in family collections. Plaid shirts in the fall. The Beach Boys’ instantly recognizable Christmas carol on the radio and your hopeful falsetto singing along, and then the way “O Holy Night” places me back next to you in a church pew, both of us holding a tiny white candle with a bravely flickering light in one hand, and holding each other’s each in the other. Both of us with tear streaked faces those Christmas Eve services over the years, the squeezes of our hands communicating words we thought and more importantly words we had earnestly spoken to each other on phone calls, in text chains, in handwritten cards, at my kitchen table over the red Christmas mugs of coffee: I love you. I adore you. I treasure our bond. I am better for what we share. I exist because of your love. I am able to do so much because of your faith in me and the encouragement you give me. To us. To my babies. To our family.

The moments stacking up where you are not here to be a part of them on earth: instead of melting into pain of how many there are that we are doing on our own, I trust you know, and you are stacking them up, taking careful notes for us to discuss when I get there. The way you carried a post it note along to remind yourself to ask me about or tell me about various topics or tasks, I trust you are doing the same now. Ready to catch up and squeeze each other’s hands. To meet eyes. To know our love has outlasted distance and impossible earthly separation. Four years and a million moments down, quite a few million more to go. I love you. Because of you, I am. Because of you, I can.

For so many New Years is a hope of what the future holds. In our home, New Years is always a reminder of the past and how much we have lost. It is still unreal to me that we are living a life that James will never be a part of again. Seeing his kids grow up, meeting his grandson, growing old with me. There are so many layers to grief and it seems like we are constantly peeling a new one back. He’s always with us and always on our minds, my life will always have 2 chapters –Before 12/31/20 & After 1/1/21.

#Always #CovidRuinedOurLives