23: A Letter

Dear Teresa,

Happy 23rd Anniversary Teresa! I find it hard to believe that it’s been 23 years since we got married and find it just as hard, if not more so, that this is the 4th year that I have celebrated it without you.

Last year I wrote you a letter to tell you what had been going on and how I was spending our anniversary and I enjoyed doing that and so here I am doing it again this year, perhaps it will become a tradition.

I still, at times, get caught up wondering if I’m celebrating our day right. If I’m going to the right places, picking the right food and choosing the right activities. It still happens but I’ve been working hard to let go of those thoughts and just go with what feels right. This has been a theme a lot in my life this year, learning how to let go of control, so much so that I ended up letting go of the title Controller at work.

So as the day began, Burke and I went to the Farmer’s Market to get our supplies for the week and then went to Goodwill to donate some toys that Fritz decided to let go of.

That done I headed towards the coast to do hiking at Stub Stewart State Park and go to Vernonia where I had heard there was a good coffee roaster.  To my determent at times, coffee and coffee shops have filled the gap of breweries and wineries as I continue on my journey of not drinking alcohol. It’s been over a year now and I also find that hard to believe and, at times, hard to stick to but I have and have appreciated learning to be with life in this way.

In a way, this new way of living made your absence feel as fresh as it did when you first left us. It was intense learning how to cope with feeling all that I had been feeling over the previous years but doing so without the solution of numbing. I needed to feel the grief this way and I needed to learn what was me and what was alcohol. I don’t know that I will ever be through the learning but I’m grateful for the strides that I have made.

Anyway, I went to Vernonia to visit this coffee roaster and discovered that they didn’t have a shop, nor did they actually sell their coffee where they roast their beans, which I think may have been their house. I feel like I have to order some online now just so I can find out if the trip to the unopened roaster was worth it.

Adding this lesson to the many I’ve absorbed around control, I ended up taking a stroll through the downtown of Vernonia. It was a nice little area, sort of like a Sturgis – lots of bikers and tourists. I did manage to get a cup of coffee though I’m not sure my business was much appreciated. The town happened to be celebrating Salmon Day today so I went to their Salmon Festival which consisted of a lot of kids activities, a few maker’s booths and food, almost none of which consisted of salmon. Perhaps this was good as it means they are not overfishing. The booth that was selling Salmon Chowder was cash only and was raffling off tickets to win various large guns. In the end I was glad to not have had any cash on me as I may have accidently won a gun that I would have had no choice but to use to get coffee beans from the alleged coffee roaster in town.

In June, I began my month-and-a-half long leave from work and took Burke and Fritz on a road trip for a little over two weeks. It was a really good time and it intensified my practice of letting go of control. In all we ended up visiting 15 states and, somehow, the kids still talk to me on occasion. I enjoyed the trip a lot and for so many reasons. It was great to spend that time with Burke and Fritz, exploring and learning to find ways for us all to have our own experiences.

We stayed at a ranch house in Montana that was next to a river and held one of the more beautiful sunsets I’ve been witness to. We stayed in a camping trailer in Flagstaff at my friend Travis’s place, and we saw the most beautiful night sky (the kids got to see the Milky Way!). We got to see your uncle Roger in Iowa where the kids got to drive a boat on Lake Okiboji. We visited my parents in Oklahoma City for a few days where we all got to reacquaint ourselves with Maxie and Mema and Papa. We got to see friends in Flagstaff, friends who have meant a lot to me over the many years that I have known them.

We saw Devil’s Tower and the Biggest Ball of Stamps. We got to see Mt Rushmore, Crazy Horse Memorial and the Cosmic Mystery Area. We got to see the Badlands at sunset and Wall Drugs during a storm. We got to visit 5 national parks and countless rows of corn. We got to see dinosaur bones in Oklahoma and dinosaur tracks in Arizona. We got to see where Billy the Kid was jailed in Santa Fe and the sole jerky stand on our travels in Utah.

Through it all I saw you.

I saw your strength in the jagged peaks of the mountains we passed in Montana and in the rivers that carved their paths next to many roads that we travelled. I saw your beauty in the delicate Arches in Utah and in the rolling hills of South Dakota. I saw your unending love for Burke and Fritz in the petrified trees in Arizona and saw your caring and kind nature spread across the top of the San Francisco Peaks as the sun descended behind them for the night. I saw your tenacity in Burke as he navigated getting a license to do street art in Rapid City and saw your determined grace in Fritz as he calmly navigated us along various routes of our trip.

I saw your childhood in Spencer.

I saw you.

I see you.

After my lack of cash led me to make my exit from Vernonia, I went back to Stuart Stubbs State Park and began walking along the trails that were offered near the visitor’s center. I had never been to this park and I wondered if you had. I know you went many places and enjoyed taking classes that took you to parks like this.

The trails were really nice, and I meandered here and there around this area of the park. I hardly saw anyone so it was peaceful walking through these forested trails listening to the birds, a creek running somewhere close by and the occasional frog. I was also visited by two random dogs who were kind enough to run up to me, sniff and run away – perhaps I should have showered before coming to the park.  After sitting on a bench for a bit at a place called Holly’s Point of View, I got a text from Burke asking how the day was going.

Burke is a great kid and has had a busy past year. He has been playing football the last three years but may be at the end of his interest in the sport. Burke also played Rugby at the beginning of the year and enjoyed the sport. It sounds like he may play it again. Besides sports and getting A’s and B’s so far in all of his classes Burke has been learning how to drive and hopes to get his license when he turns 16 next month. He has done well so far and made a good choice for his first accident as he backed into our neighbors old Toyota truck. They were very understanding and haven’t asked for anything to fix their truck. Your car is a little worse for the wear after that but not terrible. Burke is impressive in all that he does and is truly a kind and amazing young man.

Speaking of amazing young men, Fritz is also a great young man and has done so well his first year and change in the Summa program. The science fair has been far and away the most difficult project in the program but he has done well working through the process and putting together a project that is well beyond my understanding. Last year, he attempted to make a mag-lev track and researched the properties of using magnetism to propel trains and working through ideas of how this could be used for cars in day-to-day use. This year he is working on a project around earthquakes and how they affect bridges or buildings, an idea that your brother gave him. Besides school, Fritz has been going on really long walks around the neighborhood and always comes back home with beautiful pictures that he has taken along the way. As it was the summer that he finished the 6th grade, Fritz got to go to Grand Teton National Park with your parents. They had a great time hiking, taking a river trip, seeing several moose and bald eagles. Like Burke, Fritz is a really impressive young man. He’s growing up but still has a great sense of humor and really loves playing games of all sorts.

I’m truly grateful to be their dad and it’s an honor to be here with them as they continue to grow and become. I see so much of you in each of them – from their intelligence to their gentleness. From their laughter to their tenacity. They are lucky that you are their mom and I’m so glad that we started this family together.

I’m also grateful that we got to spend time with your parents this summer as your dad left this life on August 28th, just a week after they headed home from their visit here. He was a great man and I miss him. I think most of us are still trying to process this loss, while still working through the grief of your passing. We appreciated that your mom and dad continued to visit us and the kids appreciated spending time with him; Burke working on different projects and Fritz getting grandpa to play combo games with him. I appreciated his presence, his always doing the dishes while he was here and for just being a steady presence for us all. Tell him I say hello, and that I look forward to sharing stories with him when we next meet. In the meantime, I imagine the two of you are having a good time discussing the poor dishwasher loading habits that some of us may have.

And, so it’s been a difficult year at time and for many reasons, but it has also been quite beautiful at times as well.

As I drove to a different part of Stuart Stubb State Park today I found a trail called Unfit Settlement View and knew I had to check it out. Which I did, but going the wrong way from what I had intended. I’m admitting to this fact for the sole reason that, along with poor dishwasher loading skills, I figure this would give you and your dad a good chuckle. When I discovered I was heading the wrong way I turned back and found the route I wanted to go. It was all very peaceful and again, I was alone on the trails, save a few birds and some chipmunks.

I had bought some flowers for you at the farmer’s market and found a stump on the Unfit Settlement View trail that felt like the right place to leave the flowers, I hope you found them okay.

After about 7 miles of trails, I made my way back to the van and a completely empty parking lot where I stayed and began writing this letter. Like the trails, it was just me. Like usual, I packed enough food to feed you, me and all of Vernonia, save the coffee roaster who would absolutely not be invited as I’m still a bit miffed that I wasn’t able to buy coffee form them while I was there. I brought cheeses (smoked cheddar, habanero cheddar, truffle cheese, brie and blue cheese), grapes from the farmer’s market, a baguette and a couple of non-alcoholic Wheat Beers – one for you and one for me. It was a very nice experience being there and being alone with my thoughts, emotions and memories.

It's hard to sit with the feeling of missing you deeply and wishing you were there while reflecting on the gratitude that I have for where I am in life and that I can continue to honor you and our time together in the ways that feel right. I am never glad that you are not here but I am glad to be here with the kids and for the opportunity to grown and learn more about this life. I imagine I’m following a trail of breadcrumbs that you have left for me as I think you were always more than two steps ahead of me in this life.

So as I sat there, and sit here on our couch ( a new couch by the way – our old couch finally had to go) a day later finishing this letter, I am sitting with these varied and conflicting emotions and trying to give them each the space to be. As I mentioned early the idea of giving up control has been a big lesson and practice this year and I reflect on losing you nearly four years ago and losing your dad just over a month ago, and I know I have very little control, if any.

If I did you would have been on the trails with me yesterday and would have relished in giving me a hard time for going to Vernonia for a coffee roaster who didn’t actually sell coffee.

If I did you would be here with me going to Burke’s football and rugby games. You would be here to help Fritz with his science fair projects. You would be here to help me eat my overwhelming picnic lunch and the pizza, etc that I ordered from Mucca Osteria’s new pizza place, Mucca Pizzeria.

If I did have control, you would be here. Your dad would be here.

If I had control, Burke would brake a lot sooner than he does and Fritz’s room would be clean each and every week.

But I am learning to be okay with and accepting that I can’t make these things happen. I can’t bring you back but I can keep the love we shared in my heart and carry it along this life wherever it takes me. I can hold onto the memories of our life together and share them if/when it feels right to do so. I can do what I can, when I can to honor our time together and on our anniversary I can celebrate by doing things that I think you would enjoy, things that feel good for me to do; including chasing down every rumor of coffee roasters that I hear as if I were on one of those treasure hunting shows I still continue to watch.

I can, and I will with your love and for this beautiful family that we started together.

I love you Teresa and I wish you a happy 23rd Anniversary. Thank you for choosing to be in my life and welcoming me and accepting me into yours.