As most of us know, there are several stages of grief in reference to death of a loved one. Maybe I'm just a naturally born rebel, but I didn't necessarily flow through tiered "stages" (I LOVE quotation marks. I also may have ADD. More at 11.). I was just sad. Maybe a little angry, but mostly sad. I miss him so much it hurts. However, he was fighting a war against his own body which there was no chance of winning. I've accepted that he's finally at peace and I know he's always with me.
His presence is justified when super coincidental things happen. Like a few weeks ago, I was thinking about my dad while I was driving and I started to tear up a little bit. I had the radio on, and the timeless classic, "E.I." by Nelly started playing. Let me tell you a little something about Freddy Crittela: He thought that rapping was hilarious. As soon as he learned like 3 lines to any rap song, he would repeat them over and over, while bopping his head to a rhythm not found in any musical selection. This song in particular, was one of his favorites. His "go to" line was, "I'm a sucker for corn rows and manicured toes. Fendi capri pants and Parasucos (<---my dad would actually say, "parachute clothes". Wtf are parachute clothes??)". Then he would "dance" until the chorus. "Andele, andele, mami. E I E I, uh ohhhhhhhh. What's poppin' tonight?". He would have this huge, proud grin on his face like, "Yeah, that's right. I can relate to black people." When he would perform this masterpiece while working in the kitchen, the black guys hew worked with would (thankfully) crack up. Anyway, when the song came on that day in the car, I immediately started laughing. So then I had the crying/laughing look on my face which I'm sure the other people at the stop light thought was incredibly attractive.
I'm totally sidetracking from what I wanted to write about originally. This is MY blog though, right? I can do what I want. I'll make this flow....somehow.
One of the coolest (and most painful) things about life is that there's always something there to remind us.
It's ok, I just did the "Ba da da da da" sound in my head, too.
In terms of broken relationships, little reminders of the past pop up unexpectedly at any given time and can completely throw us out of whack.
What the fuck, you know here I am, doing ok, got my career a flowin', kids are good, family's good, then POW!!!! And all I did was open my internet browser. Yahoo! is my homepage, although it very well could be replaced soon, and I occasionally peruse through some of the featured articles, which are usually ridiculous. On this particular day, I came across one article entitled, "When It's Just Another Fight, and When It's Over", taken from The Wall Street Journal. I thought to myself, "That's a respectable periodical. Let's see if I really knew when my marriage was over. Haha."
Well a few minutes later, there was no more "haha". I was full out sobbing. If you'd like to read it, here's the link: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/just-another-fight-over-040100241.html
The gist of the article is basically asking the reader to seriously consider if divorce is really the only option. It encourages trying counseling first and takes you along the journey of one couple who divorced suddenly but later on in life ended up working together and still do to this day. They even wrote a book together.
I can't pinpoint what the trigger was that made me upset. Maybe we should have done something else? Should we have tried counseling? Would we both have showed up to go to counseling? I went from feeling confident and happy to feeling like I didn't have the answers anymore. I feel like I still don't have closure on exactly why he strayed, or why he begged to stay when I told him to leave or how we went from being totally crazy about each other to sleeping in separate places over the course of three years.
Then, every little thing reminded me of him and our relationship. In one day, no joke, I heard the song we walked down the aisle to (I'm Yours by Jason Mraz), the song we had our first dance to (Wild Horses by The Rolling Stones) and Story of My Life by Social Distortion, a song from the Social D playlist we listened to while we cleaned our old apartment. Three very different songs, all heard in various places. Grocery store, Michael's, and satellite radio, to be specific. It doesn't stop with just music either. This is going to sound so ridick and it's a total stretch, but even when I see lobsters at the grocery store, I think of my 26th birthday, when he made me this amazing seafood dinner with all my favorite delicious undersea creatures.
He introduced me to things I otherwise would not have cared about. Irish music, for example, I probably never would have given a chance, but he had me listening to The Pogues, Flogging Molly and The Dropkick Murphys, all of whom I now love. Sriracha, the greatest hot sauce EVER, would not be a permanent staple in my fridge had he never put it on my eggs. I miss the look on his face when I would cook something that came out really well. I miss our chemistry. I miss the way we laughed together. I miss the way he would look at me before he kissed me.
Does it ever get any easier? Or maybe it was meant to be all along and life just got in the way? There's no instruction manual to refer to, so how the hell are we supposed to know what we're doing?
All of life's questions are answered in songs from the 80's.
