This past weekend, Sarah and I traveled to Toronto to attend our third Camp Widow there.  We’ve both realized that Camp Widow recharges us. Though we may not be in the active throes of grief on a daily basis, with Megan’s death four years ago, and Drew’s six, there is something about telling our stories, and hearing others’ that brings a warmth that we didn’t realize we were lacking.  

This year though, it was so much more.  I assisted with two of the focus groups on Friday, one for those that lost their partners less than a year ago, and one for widowers. I was given the opportunity and honor of introducing Michele Neff Hernandez for her final keynote address.  I helped Sarah setup for her intensive workshop on Saturday, “Rebuilding our Hearts”, and took my leave to let her shine. Those stories are for a different time though. I will certainly be expanding upon my “introduction speech” soon, because ten minutes is certainly not enough time to convey how much my story has been influenced by Michele.

A few months before Camp, Michele contacted Sarah, and proposed an idea for the message release that is conducted at each and every Saturday banquet at Camp.  It was to be a large sign, displaying the word “Hope”, with a similar look and feel to the large “Toronto” sign just across the street from the hotel. Since we can easily drive to Toronto from Ohio, and I have a pickup truck, logistically, it was easier (and obviously more cost effective) for us to create something and deliver it across the border than it would be to ship something from California.

We worked for weeks creating this.  Purchasing supplies, calculating, measuring, cutting materials, sanding, painting, gluing, and lighting these letters.  As late as the Wednesday night before camp, we were cutting out small cork “bricks” and tying a string to over 200 of them.

It was a lot of work, to say the least, but the reception we received to it was far and away more than we could have ever imagined.  

Well I made it. I made it through the first wedding since Tin passed only two months ago and it was followed by the next day being the first Father’s Day without my father. There were times I couldn’t hold back the tears and times I couldn’t catch my breath. I felt like a stranded fish. How ironic to be a crying stranded fish that needs salt water to breathe but the water is blurring you vision instead of spilling over your gills. I made it through the night with the fun songs, the heartbreaking songs that meant joy to all the others in the room, the condolences from family that haven’t seen me since Tin passed and catching myself rubbing my own palm and realizing I was just hoping to feel Tin take my hand. It’s not just losing the person it’s losing all the plans you had with that person and watching other people be rewarded with what you have lost.

The plane ride home was going well until I fell asleep. Dreams of the plane crashing, my apartment being robbed while I was gone and “Oh my God is my dog safe?”. What would I do if Roan was gone? I need to get home and the panic sets in. I move forward and jolted awake startling the guy in the seat next to me realizing I was locked 10,000 ft. from the answers to cure my panic. Of course everything was fine and Roan was tail wag crazy but as I returned home so did the stomachaches and dark clouds I had been carrying before my trip. It was an unexpected return home to realize how lonely and depressed I was. Skip it and go to bed. Work in the morning.

The past few days have been exhausting. As hurricane Harvey slammed into my hometown area - a whole flood of emotions has rained down on me. Mike and I have been glued to the news nonstop. Houston is now getting catastrophic flooding. Many, many people are still missing and unaccounted for in the worst areas. It is torture to watch it all from so far away.

We were up more than half the night when it hit, sending text updates to my friends who stayed in Corpus, because they had no power or internet and were sitting scared in their homes with no way to know what was going on all around them.

One of my best and oldest friends went dark on us around 2am, and we didn’t hear from her again until after 3pm the next day. Even though she was in Corpus and didn’t get the worst of it, I can tell you… it was one of the longest waits ever for me.

 It’s 2017.  This is the 35th time that my body has traveled around the sun on this little rock called earth.  In those 35 trips, I’ve been witness and participant to milestones of education and career, love and marriage, childbirth and parenting, sickness, and death.  I’ve seen friendships both grow and wither.  I’ve evolved from a curious child, to an outgoing teenager, then a determined Marine, followed by a devoted husband and father, on through to a caretaker, and then...a widower.  I volunteered my twenties and early thirties to the life of a woman that I knew would not be with me to old age.  We created a beautiful child that anyone would be proud to call their own.  

Two years ago, on the first day of 2015, that life had abruptly come to an end.  I was no longer a husband, but rather, a widower.  My years of education and youthful curiosity were far behind me, a relic of my adolescence.  I was beyond the pride that came with earning the title of Marine, for my country deemed me too old to serve by that point.  My caretaking services, as sharpened and experienced as they were, were no longer needed in the advanced capacities they were capable of.  

“I hear her voice in the morning hour, she calls me, the radio reminds me of my home far away.
And driving down the road I get a feeling that I should have been home yesterday, yesterday.
Country roads, take me home to the place I belong.
West Virginia, mountain mamma, take me home, country roads.” - John Denver

However, I’ve spent many-a-night under the dark skies of the Dolly Sods Wilderness in West Virginia.  I’ve walked every inch of trail on that plateau, at 4000 feet, the highest in the east.  It was the first place I backpacked as a civilian, apprehensively leaving Megan at home, alone, for a long weekend.  

Two years after her death, and I had finally mustered up the motivation and fortitude to wander off into that windswept spruce forest again.  For a few months now, I’ve been planning this trip, fantasizing about going back to the place I belong.  Winding up the dirt road leading to the trailheads on the eastern continental divide, where boulders and stunted spruce trees greet the sky.  Disappearing from civilization for even a few days, where i’m not a widower, caretaker, husband, father, or employee.  That scene was to happen this Friday, December 2nd.

It was to be my first “real” backpacking trip since Megan’s death, and it’s been crushed, as am I.

Megan and I bought our home in June of 2005.  For nine years, it was “our” home.  I had the outdoor spaces...lawn care, gardening, the garage, and landscaping were all mine to take care of and shape into something I enjoyed.  Megan had the inside.  Knick-knacks and decorations, paint colors, organization, and general decor were hers.  

The system worked.  I’m not exactly an interior designer, and she wasn’t exactly a farmer.  We both appreciated and enjoyed what each other had done with their respective spaces, and there weren’t any conflicts.  We complimented each other well.

It would be all too easy to just “mothball” what she had done with the inside of the house.  Her decor was pretty much set already when she died.  We hadn’t been talking about doing anything in particular with paint or furniture before the transplant rejection set in, so I was content that she was happy with what she had done up to that point.

I bought my house almost 11 years ago.  It was our “starter home”, and Megan and I were married a month after we moved in.  We did what most couples do.  We painted the major rooms before moving in, and left some of the rooms for me to repair and remodel after we were situated.

Megan had a style of her own, that I was, being the husband, largely beholden to.  I didn’t disagree with her tastes, which could best be described as “Americana”.  It wasn’t mine, but I also didn’t find it gaudy or overly feminine.  The walls were painted in a natural tan, with deep red as an accent wall in our living and dining rooms.  

Until a few weeks ago, I still hadn’t changed anything in the house as far as decoration, colors, or even the knick-knacks she had meticulously placed.  For one, I had no reason.  It was decorated...good enough.  Secondly, there was a small amount of resistance in me to any drastic changes.  This was our home, and any changes would make it feel less so.

Until I realized that this house had not felt like my home since the day she was admitted to the hospital.