Balsa Girl

Hey there animal fans.

CCI (canine companions for independence) is an organization that breeds, trains, and places extremely high-caliber assistance dogs with individuals with some form of inhibited ability. Whether it's hearing, mobility, or learning related. Although each dog will cost about $45,000 by the time they're trained and placed, they are donated to their human matches. Given that one of my dearest friends was matched and graduated with her own service dog, Tadaki, I have a serious loyalty and commitment to the organization.

Tadaki is a professional. I don't see him get rowdy or hyper unless his vest is off, and his Kelly announces "release!" and our office-dweller friend Paul comes by. He's a very serious dog. Sometimes I swear Tadaki is rolling his eyes at me. He's not a snuggler. He's not a toucher/feeler. He's a worker. He is sweet and loving, but he means business. Kelly is his number one priority.

During 2009's annual girls' trip we call Jackson Fireball, I was lying on the floor of the condo, crying. It was only a few months after Rbf was killed, and I had hardly any social stamina. Too much activity would level me, and that night it did. Tadaki walked quietly into the room, saw me laying there, breathed deep and lowered himself to the ground in front of me. He curled up against me and I fell asleep spooning him. The next day, I woke up on the floor in the same position. Tadaki was there, in position, hadn't moved an inch. He would not leave my side until I got up off the floor. A dog can see a broken soul, and can soothe it in special ways.

CCI trusts trained volunteers with the first year of each dog's life, to raise in preparation for the advanced intensive training. These volunteers use their own time and money to raise these dogs. At the end of that year, they have to say goodbye. It takes a special kind of person to do this. Obviously. When these people go out of town, they have to have a backup in place. Enter Kir!

The first dog I "puppy sat," was Macy. It just so happened it was the first night in my apartment, six months after the accident. I had let my apartment sit empty for a month. I couldn't bear to accept what it meant to sleep there. Macy was there the first night. In the middle of moving, I didn't have the energy to set up her crate. Instead I made her a bed out of padding in my empty room. I turned off the light and flopped down on my bare mattress on the floor. Macy waited about 30 seconds, and tiptoed up onto my mattress. CCI dogs in training are NOT allowed on furniture, and certainly not in beds. This puppy curled into a ball behind the bend of my knee. I did not care what I had signed, how many hours of training and lectures I've received, there was no way on God's holy earth that I was moving that dog. I let her think she was sneaky the next three nights as she climbed up and slept behind my legs, where Rbf's knees used to go. I could hear her breathing and feel her heartbeat as I fell asleep. She saved me from the brutal sadness of what it meant to be sleeping in that room.

Today, I finally got the FAA's final accident report on Rbf's plane crash. I saw more pictures and diagrams of what landed where on that mountain. I read the details of every twist of metal on every broken piece of that plane. And I cried. Amidst the aviation jargon and plane-speak, I read this bit which was not in the preliminary report:

"...After leaving the airport, the flight path goes northwest and continues along the Snake River. The path begins..."

It jogged a memory of us flying low over the Snake, following the river like a path. It was the only piece of the report that referenced the human experience that was that final flight. Before, it was just a technical description. Now, it is a human experience. So, naturally, I spend 20 minutes crying at my desk like a true professional. One more layer of this being real was laid down on my world. And it hurt, but I will tell you, it was sweet. I knew what that part of the report meant. It was the part of the flight when Rbf made it fun, so proud to have both his dad and brother on board at the same time, and hoping they loved it as much as he did. It's hard to imagine them going down in a plane, but in my mind's eye I can totally see them flying above the river on their boys adventure.

I came home with Balsa, a puppy - only one week into the program. She is two months old. She squirms and nips at my hair, but is already potty trained and doesn't make any noise. She cuddles and perks her giant floppy ears at me, and cocks her head. My heavy heart melts a little. And then my phone rings, it's my mom. My brother's best friend committed suicide tonight.

I hear my tall, sturdy, stable brother weeping in the room with mom. And that powerless feeling he and she felt a year ago, that horrible, impotent silence, I just couldn't bear it. I'd never heard anything like that sound before in my life.

My mom asked me to leave a note online for the grieving family. I open Facebook. Gill is my friend on the site, and I go to his page and leave a note for him. I see at the bottom of the page that he is a member of the Facebook support group, titled "WE LOVE YOU KIR" that was started for me when I lost Rbf. And it blew my mind. My heart breaks to think of his breaking for me last year - and now here we are today. Even as I sit here now, the tenure of my loss and the merit badges of survival I wear every day...I honestly can not imagine surviving what Gil's family has to. How can this be borne?

And there was Balsa. On my floor, squirming and hrrming and hawwwing with my hair clip. And so I cry, and she makes it a little better. If CCI is reading, she is of COURSE sleeping in her crate tonight...

:)

Forgiveness

For my Learning Topic delivery at 10/10/10 YMAD meeting:

A woman killed in the Virginia Tech shooting wrote about forgiveness in her final journal entry before her passing, this was a video made about it. A lot dramatic, but what's not dramatic about any of that? Hope it moves you a little.



When Reboyfriend passed away, a very close friend I've had since 7th grade drove up for the funeral. Her sweet husband had only met me once, and never met Reboyfriend. He's a very spiritual person, and I respect it. He came home to her shortly after Rbf died, before the funeral, and told her that every time he thought of Rbf, me, and this tragedy, he kept feeling the strongest impressions returning to him regarding the importance of forgiveness. He was reluctant to share, but felt such a sense of the imperative that it be passed to me, that he told her, and she told me.

There was not much I could think of that I needed to forgive Rbf for. I resent how much time I lost with him and a lot of that was his fault. He also made mistakes just like any human being. But I believe that this wasn't about me needing to forgive him for anything in particular. I believe it was him needing to pass that lesson along to me.

When I had a chance to choose what topic I'd be cramming down the youths throats all year for YMAD before dragging them to a 3rd world country, I saw "Forgiveness" on the page. All I could think about was my friend's amazing husband and the humility he seemed to feel in passing this info on to her for me. I decided it would be my topic for the year, and here I am.

I feel abandoned by Rbf often. I feel frustrated with him for taking too long to do everything. I feel robbed by him.

I feel left behind.

But I also feel inspired by him every day and this is one virtue I am glad I get to practice and learn more about in the time I spend alive.

Wish me luck delivering my training presentation tonight. xo/km

Remember that one time when I was a blogger?

I have had like two or three people ask where I am in blogland. I feel like JK Rowling when she hinted the HP series might be over. I'm obviously famous and important.

SO...as is the case every year, I crawl under a rock (it resembles a cubicle) and don't come out until like, November, and that's only for the annual Fireball trip with my friends. Guess what. If you have benefits from your job, and you are aware of them, it's because of courageous men and women just like me, had to tell you about them. Courageous men and women who look like shit after three months of pencil pushing with your HR manager on how to convey to you the expensiveness and grandeur of your employee benefits. Think about when it is you get that info. Right around October. Someone is behind the evil. And that someone...once had a very pleasant blog that is now inviting cobwebs, graffiti, drug deals and homeless squatters. Well the bitch is back.

My bluntly bitchy friend misses my old blogs that are fun to read, and are not depressing. I asked her what effing posts she's talking about, and she referenced some story I never wrote about a place I have never been. I told her I was sorry, I don't remember a whole lot of things that never really happened. But the principle stands, that I think it's safe to stop doing this about every little thing someone says to me about dating and boys and flirting.

Because it makes me be that way to a lot of people. Sorry everyone.

Anyway, I am a big girl and I wrote even on a week when I have 3 week old garbage in my kitchen after three 50 hour weeks at work. Durr.

It's kind of nice being nice. And not making people run away from me after flipping out on them.

Sorry.

In other news, I've been officially blogging for six years. Happy October!!!

Ground Zero + 1 year

Dear My Favorite People Ever,

It's that time of year again.

I'm in my messy-ass apartment, getting ready to go to Baconfest 2010 (you can still taste it from when you read about Baconfest 2009, can't you?). Getting ready means wrapping up some things at work. And checking the weather. And charging my camera battery. Washing some delicates. Digging up a razor head as if I'm going to need to shave there. And blogging. Obviously duh like what else and stuff seriously?

There are some marked differences between this year's Baconfest and last year's.

For one). Anaga can't give me shit for being stoned out of my mind (stoned on xanax, sorry. No, I can't score you anything). It's me and her and the fam and the cabin and food and no sedatives and far fewer tears.

Also). I am not 102 pounds anymore. That's for fricking sure.

And). It's a few weeks earlier. So possibly warmer. Should I pack a swimsuit? Probably. It will go good with my not shaved legs. Sorry boys.

D). I'm flying there, not driving - all 330 miles and all in a very small plane. Our friend Rob (aka Fat Rob) is a pilot. A pilot I trust with my life, literally. And if I didn't, I am still so not afraid of death that I am OK getting into a small plane with him. The last small plane I got on was the Navion. And that was the last time it flew before That Day. I am brave. I have giant steel womanballs. I also trust that you meet God when you're supposed to, even if you're a baby, or don't feel ready, or just barely got that girl back in your life after waiting for years. I believe in those stories people tell about times they cheated death. It happened to Rbf three separate times while The One That Got Away was still "away." After he enjoyed his final year with her, he got to go home. In short, I'm putting on my big girl pants and flying free.

5). It's been a year. And everything that implies.

There is something about it being a year. There is something about honoring someone with reverence for 365 days, and for longer. There's something about confirming that it's possible to be loved purely and loyally by someone for 4 of God's seasons after you've moved into your next existence and left them behind. I wanted to do it right, I wanted it to be about him. I knew I was supposed to be that someone he left behind in shambles. I did it. I didn't just survive it, but I made this last year everything I wanted it to be. I got to look back on the agony I made it through, the gargantuan price I paid - all so that his final days, his final moments, closed out with all things in their proper places. To quote one of his dearest friends and certainly my own, Jesse Black: "He went out on top, in love, and loved by you."

So, guess who's still in shambles? This girl. But guess who can finally say "I'm good" when someone asks, not just a reserved "I'm OK." Me. I can. No, I am not in the dating scene. I'm not looking. I don't have to. I'll know it's time for that when he brings that person to me. I don't want people telling me my future. I always got nervous about people telling me I would someday love life again. I still hate that. It's for me to discover, not for others to predict so later the could say they "told me so." Nobody would ever say that...but I still felt like they might. It always felt like this thing they were doing to comfort themselves, and when I finally believed them, they could dismiss compassion. How stupid is that? Oh well. It's how a warped mind works. My girlfriend at work recently told me that she was worried about me near the end of July, about the dark place I was in. She's right, it was probably the darker and scarier of the stages I faced. I dreaded something, not sure what. Maybe I dreaded the reality that pain can be fresh and it can be stale. Stale pain hurts a deeply as fresh pain - but has less of the fanfare, so it's lonelier. How is that fair?

And I could have written that last paragraph right there, and saved you all a year of listening to me retch and groan about others' stupidity and my bizarre state(s) of mind, but that trademark mixture of your laughter and your tears is so much more of an experience than the other things you'd have done with those hours upon hours. Whoever you are, I love you for reading.

The past year hurt in blinding, debilitating, redefining ways, which I found fulfilling, which felt right. It was all about him, and it was amazing. I'm excited, though, for this next year to be about me. To live the life I love, and to let myself love it. He's next to me, communicating with me and circling around me still. One of his most valued themes in life was progression - something he talked about when he delivered grandpa Floyd's life sketch, something that was later quoted in his own. I don't want to bore him. I know he's ready to see my own progression.

I know how lofty this post is, I totally do. And I always like to close with something inappropriate and irreverent like a your mom joke or something about the trans-fat food-flush I like to put my body through every other day. But that's really it for now. I will post gratuitous pictures of bacon, children, and nature. And most importantly, yours truly in the air, womanballs of steel in the friendly skies. Year two is a go.

Love always and always,

Your mom.

Kirie vs. Someone Who I Promise Wasn't You.

I have to make it clear up front that NOBODY reading this has contributed to this rant. I promise, the people who inspired this have no idea my blog exists. Just so you know. OK now read it.

Kirsten: Hello. What a charming tie.
Person: Thank you. I'm very rad. Who is your boyfriend?
K: His name is Reboyfriend, most specifically on my blog, which is the only thing that matters because everyone who reads it is magic and I treasure them. I still get butterflies when I see pictures of Rbf. 
P: Where is he?
K: He lives in heaven.
P: I'm sorry to hear of your loss.
K: Thanks. Me too. We just got headstones. So pretty. Want to see?
P: No. I want to circumvent social norms to ask if you've started to date again.
K: I'd rather talk about going to India.
P: But I'm really preoccupied with your single status. It's an odd number, and that makes my married, middle-aged ass SUPER uncomfortable. I want your status to be different. 
K: Me too.
P: I'm going to say things about you getting married someday so that I can sleep better tonight.
K: I can see that. And I'm saying really polite things to dismiss this issue and reroute the conversation.
P: Yeah, I'm missing all of those cues.
K: I can see that also.
P: Sooo. Have you started dating yet?
K: No.
P: But you're too cute. You can't be alone forever.
K: I can't? I am pretty sure it's allowed. So, technically I can.
P: No you can't. Being single is like being an armless legless torso person, who has to find a way to get all their food from the dumpster behind Jimmy John's.
K: I do very well alone.
P: No you don't. Being alone is the worst thing that can ever happen to anyone ever. Nobody has ever survived it.
K: I'm OK.
P: Nope. 
K: ..............
P: Did I mention you're too cute to be alone? I'm cloaking this in compliments so it goes down easier and then you can't easily paint me as a complete tool. You're pretty, you don't deserve to be alone.
K: Thanks. Well, I'm working on destroying my complexion and waistline so that I look more like people who DO deserve to be lonely and miserable.
P: Oh ruk ruk ruk!!! (That's how a complete tool's laughter is spelled)
K: I'm really just doing my own thing these days, haven't really thought about that.
P: Yeah it's really soon after the accident I guess...
K: Yeah! You said something right! I think we might have diverted the conversation before you hurried to throw in "But you'll find someone."
P: ...But you'll find someone.
K: OK. Well I don't know if I need to "find" someone since I'm not looking right now. But I'm staying busy, trying to heal, and trying to have fun. I have really great friends and my family is incredible.
P: {lunging at me} But you WILL get married.
K: Behh Ok. Sure, maybe. 
P: NOT MAYBE. 
K: Mumble fidget clear throat hate awful bad evil this is such a fail, my cuticles could not be more fascinating. Is that some sort of silver Ford Taurus? Those are interesting too. I need to stare off that way.
P: NOT MAYBE. Why are you ruining this for me? I wanted to sound sage, and all-knowing. I also can't handle your reality. It scares me. YOU HAVE TO AGREE WITH ME.

K: So when you buried your partner, your lover, your other half, your best friend, your everything...how long did it take you to replace them?
P: Who knows. I've never buried a partner or a lover or my other half or my best friend or my everything. All those people are alive and thriving! OH and I forgot to throw in the disclaimer that I certainly don't mean to imply that Rbf is REPLACEABLE even though that's pretty much what I'm implying.
K: Oh. So after God appeared to you to tell you about my future, did He command that you shove it down my throat like this?
P: I'm really tempted to not correct you, because I like the sound that one part, about God appearing to me with imperatives regarding your fate.

You know what I wish I could say?

Besides STFU?

That I know something they don't - and I'm not referring to my awareness of boundaries and general manners. I mean I know something about them that they don't know. Some people have a very strong compulsion to tell me this about my life and future, that I'm bound to live it in _____ fashion. It's a common reaction of people confronted with my situation. It makes them uncomfortable. Most of them don't know that the reason they fixate on convincing me of their idea of my life, is that it makes them feel better. Not me. They don't know that, but I do.

They have no idea that it is still painful to me to have it pointed out. And most don't recognize my resistance, and therefore force the topic - insisting with absolutes like "can't" and certainties like "you will."
My objection is not faux-modesty. I'm not holding out to solicit assurance. Know what it is? The sad truth that I really just want to pretend, for a little longer, that he's just around the corner. This force-feed is like telling me that he's not. And it's like losing him all over again. I wish people could understand this. I know it's sad, that it's naive, and that it's going to hurt when it wears off. But I wish people would just play along. Not because it's true, but because it's the polite thing to do.

The only thing people need to be concerned about his this: Every single second of my whole future was deleted, and I'm still just trying to grasp that. The only thing I ask is that I have a little more time with just question marks there where my future used to be. I wish people would please stop rewriting it for me. I'm not ready to have it retold by someone else, someone who knows nothing about what this feels like - by someone whose future is still theirs to call "tomorrow." It may sound like a happy ending to them, but it feels like a kick in the face to me.

When my life is eventually rewritten, it will be solely authored by me. And told by me. I will not hear it from someone else. There is nobody who knows my experience except for me. I want to be the person who announces it if I've moved on, if I've let him go. And most importantly, I want it to be OK with others if I never do. I want people to be comforted by my peaceful decision to live an authentic life, whether or not someone's by my side. My biggest fear is not dying unmarried; it's dying unaccomplished. When people speculate on the likelihood that I'll backfill his role in my universe, it's not a comfort. It's scribbling all over the blank slate I paid everything for. And it hurts. And this is the most sense I've been able to make of that anger. And I'm so glad I have a place to yell about it.


This little exchange of cluelessness happens to me probably about once a week. When I mentioned that I wasn't really thinking about "that" right now, that Rbf isn't someone you move on from in just one year, a man recently responded "Aw, OK now, that's a real nice sentiment, but you are too young to be by yourself forever." He was so condescending and tactless it was breathtaking. After he walked off, I turned around and pouted into the shoulder of my bestie Jason. He knew it was coming and just said "Kir, he's an ass." I asked him why it's always old, married people who do this? It's highly possible that the offender heard me say this, peppered with my signature f-bombs. I'm weirdly content with that being true. Could it be that the big fat lesson he thought he was being bestowed upon me was actually his to learn? Who knows. But the point isn't whether or not it's true. The point is whether or not it's nice to say to someone. Do I come up and tell a 50 year old man that he's about 40 pounds overweight? That his house is totally upside down in value? That his sweet teenage daughter is SOOOO not a virgin? Do I throw it in his face, even when it becomes clear to me that he does not feel like believing that right now? I wish some people weren't so damn stupid.


I still wonder if I'm in a weird dream that I'll wake up from any day, and roll over and tell Rbf all about. A year is a long time to feel that way. Sigh.


That was an epic vent-out, if there was one. Thanks for listening. Love to you.


/Fin/

365

Time to be trite. You knew it was coming. But I kinda have to. All the words you read, and cried over, and responded to over the past 12 months...I can't just not write a big fat tearjerker on the one-year anniversary. This is an epic moment. If this makes you sad, I just want to apologize to your husbands in advance. Sorry husbands.

The Regirlfriend Was Here.

I know why they call the blinking vertical bar a "cursor" because I swear it's a curse on my ability to fricking TYPE. It just sits there blinking at me like "What are you waiting for, moron? You came and logged in to me, drafted me up, and now you're just going to sit there? Spit it out."

August 7 will always and forever be a cursed day to me. It might be sacred in a way, but when you get to live the year I just survived, you lose your ability to tell the difference. My friend Christi wrote today "It's almost time to say goodbye to the hardest year of your life." Meems wrote from the road: "I'm thinking about you. You have survived one full year in 2 hours." And for whatever weird reason...I'm sad about that. It feels like I lost something more now that The Year is up. I have no idea how to explain this.

I cry when I think about me, 365 days ago. Bebopping around in my car, totally oblivious to the fact that I had been common-law-widowed. I was sitting in Soup Kitchen with my coworkers, talking about the house we were buying. His plane was falling from the sky as I ate my lunch.

I think of that next day. August 8th. I had a hair appointment and then a family party. I went to the Barnes & Noble by my salon and picked up the Utah Bride & Groom magazine to thumb through while my hair was getting done. I found the ring I was to buy for Reboyfriend, and showed to everyone I could. I found a dress I thought he might like to marry me in. I could not wait for him to get home from Washington to go through the magazine with me. I knew he'd patiently play along. He was excited to start the planning.

I brought the magazine to the family party where all the girls sat around and analyzed which gown would be most "Kir." I showed off the awesome ring I'd buy him. While we planned my future, his body lay quiet and undiscovered in the mountains.

He must have watched me. He must have sat next to me, stood above me, swirled all around me as I read that magazine. He must have whispered in my ear when the image of his ring caught my eye and my gut filled with certainty that it should be his. He must have been the one pointing it out.

Soon after his death, on the week before he was to "officially" propose to me (according to his friends), my friends and I walked by a jewelry store that displayed a ring just like "his," but for women. They spotted it in the window and talked me into going inside and trying it on. They had my size. It was embedded with a white sapphire - a stone the sales lady said represented loyalty. The ring was a display of mountains, just like his was to be. The mountains were in the shape of the Tetons, which will always remind me of that day I randomly realized that I wanted to marry this guy. It all tied together too weirdly and too perfectly that I paid the price for the ring, probably more than I should have spent, but it was more than worth it.

I have worn it with the engraved band given to me by Argento, every day for the entire year. One for each of us.

Years ago, he was sprawled on my bed and I sat at the side of it talking to him. He said out of the blue, "You know, if I were deaf and blind and lost my sense of smell and taste and couldn't reach out to touch you, and I were lying here, I'd be able to tell you were next to me."

I was 19 and dumb and didn't really get it. He went on to explain that he clearly recognized my spirit or energy when it was around him. He could just sense me. And then I got it. Because I felt the same way about him. *I would be fast asleep, dreaming of cupcakes or garden gnomes, living cities away from him. And he drove into town in the middle of the night without telling me, and snuck into my room, and watched me sleep...and immediately, I was dreaming of him.

And now I wonder if that happened because he was right next to me, and I sensed him. This sense is piqued sometimes. And the part of me that has hope, believes this is because he's really nearby. The hopeful part of me tells the doubtful part of me to step off and get lost.

Think about it. Human beings can just burst out of other human beings after being tiny cells...all from a little bit of fluid swapping on a drunken night. Plants can just spring from the earth without any engineering from anyone. And perfectly on time. We all spin around this giant ball of fire every day without any human contribution. Why the hell couldn't this additional sense just be a part of nature? A part of science? A manifestation of physics? We can doubt it, and blame it on missing our other half. But it's just as likely that this shit just plain happens, and it's not all that complicated.

So I decided he is right here.

Dear Jed,

Thank you for the year of sweetness and miracles. Thank you for all the times you planted little whispers in my ears and the ears of those around me. We heard them.

I miss you. I miss you so desperately that sometimes *I don't see in color. At first I thought it was my contacts. Then I realized it's sadness. I'm a person, cut in half. And that does weird stuff to a girl's vision.

I miss you fast asleep, your limbs tangled around me like a koala around a tree. I miss the way you always addressed people by their names in the middle of your sentences. I miss your screwed up feet. I miss the way you held your cell phone. I miss my seat on the back of your bike, reaching around and into your facemask, feeding you a piece of Australian licorice at every mile marker. I miss you calling from the freeway just to say you could see my office building as you passed. I miss you lecturing me about not knowing how to use a tiedown. I miss you not knowing who Death Cab is. How you liked streaking. How your nickname for me was always "dream girl." How eerily appropriate that turned out to be. How you valued your freedom. How you would take off your shirt and make me wipe my nose on it when you'd make me cry. I miss your flaws, your shortcomings. I miss everything about you. Every little thing. And despite what we all hoped for in the beginning of this nightmare, a year's time has proven useless in fading any of that.

The last night we were together, I asked you what you'd do if I died. You flatly told me you'd follow me home. And to this moment, I can hear your words like you spoke them seconds ago: "If you died, I would never recover." That remark rings in my ears sometimes for hours as I go throughout my life, not recovering. Thank you for letting me know that I was your everything. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You were someone's everything too.

I'm wearing my big girl pants, Jed, even though I have lost everything. I want nothing more than to make you proud as you loom around me from time to time, probably shaking your head at me in the Crown Burger drive-thru, cheering me on from the stands of the ballgames, "frolicking" around me as I stand barefoot on your grave, and most likely watching me in the shower. I'll put money on the fact that you're saving me a seat next to you in heaven.

So I just want to check in, and write another one of my cheesy, weird, open letters to you for all to see, so they can know that you were here, and that even if you didn't spring generations of your progeny into the world, you left behind so much. Everyone deserves someone to leave behind in shambles. I guess that's my gift to you. To be that someone.

Always,

Dream Girl.

*These are stories I know I've told before. I haven't FULLY lost my mind. :)

Kiri vs. The Warthog

This one time, at my grandma's, there was a giant railroad tie laying around. She uses weird stuff in her landscaping. For a grandma, she's very hip and edgy, you see.

She needed the railroad tie moved. It was extremely giant and huge. Since Reboyfriend was around, she thought it was a perfect opportunity to have him help my grandfather lift and move it. Two men oughtta be able to do the trick.

She told Rbf she would go get grandpa to help lift the other side, but Rbf had already hefted the beam up by himself and walked off with it. Grandma had an "oh my" type of moment. 

So when he died, they got me a AAA membership. Today, after The Warthog refused to start or lock or unlock...I learned why. Almost 11 months after he left us, the first thing I think in situations like these is "call Reboyfriend." I cried angrily when I remembered I was very much on my own. 

Instead, I called AAA. My new boyfriend.

The Warthog is now up and running. The end.

With Your Eyes Turned Skyward

I think by now we all know I work for a professional baseball team as a promo girl. I don't like to blog about it because a.) it's unprofessional and b.) I don't exactly run with a crowd that thinks promo girls in general are rad. Until I hook them up with tickets.

Anyway, on each and every game day, a small plane flies around about two hours before the game starts, and continues throughout the first inning or so, pulling the famous BEES banner. It's a summertime tradition in Salt Lake City; it is adorable, and all-American, and charming. I gaze up at it every time from the park and wonder if Rbf is doing a ridealong up there with the pilot. (Not that you'll ever give me deadlines, but I'm still within my statute of limitations surrounding my year of entitled crazy). It is always a mix of bitter and sweet, as everything in my life seems to be anymore. But, as crashing planes are on my mind all the time, I stare every time and worry that I will see it fall out of the sky, and that the pilot will be killed, and that someone's girlfriend or wife will get that phone call, read that family update, or greet that cop on her doorstep. Because I'm crazy like that.


As I was driving to the ballpark Saturday to work the game, that Bees-banner plane crashed, banner in tow.

It's annoying how we find out these things happen in two stages: first you hear there was a crash. "OK," you say. "Are you saying there was a crash...or that there was a fatality?"

Note to readers from your self-anointed subject-matter-expert: if there isn't a death, I've learned, you learn that right away. The guy was lifeflighted to whatever hospital in whatever condition. Or the guy walked away with minor cuts and bruises.

If the story stops at "our Bees plane just crashed" then you should know to get started with your meltdown right then and there. I know that now. Silly me, got that version of it and had STUPID hope and spent the next 20 STUPID minutes all anxious and worried. And hopeful. And you probably remember my disdain for having hope in those situations. I stood on the field holding a banner and smiling for the jumbotron after the ceremonial first pitch, when our resident announcer takes his place next to me for the promo. And I ask him if we have any news from the team offices, and he gets That Look. And I start crying, because yes, of course the pilot perished. And the girlfriend got that call, the update, the cop. Now she's probably "crazy like that" too. Crazy is a very exclusive sorority. The initiation, we can all agree, is beyond hazing.


One of my dearest friends, Kelly, was simultaneously widowed and paralyzed in a small plane crash, and this weekend was the 14-year anniversary of that accident. Of all the nights she could come to a Bees game to see me, she came to that night's. It's an eery coincidence, but for some reason I was selfishly glad to have her there. I found her on the concourse to chat, which was probably a dumb idea because you ALL know how it goes when you are teetering on waterworks-ing it, and all it takes is a run-in with one of your inner-circle nurturer figures, and it's over. So what do I do? I go find Kelly. I held it together. After all, I'm a paid smile. Kelly kicks immense amounts of ass, and stayed cool when I got ugly-cry-face and delivered the news of that night to her. All she was trying to do was go to a ballgame on that painful weekend with her adorable, amazing husband and not be sad about what happened to her. Apparently, such little comforts just weren't in the cards. I'm sorry, Kelly.

But this is not about Kelly, or the Salt Lake Bees, or me - aside from my paranoia that I am a curse since everything I love turns into plane crashes. This is not my loss, so why did I feel like I was on one of those strap-in free-fall amusement park rides when I got the news while standing on the field, cheesing it with a banner in my hand? I didn't know the pilot or his gfw or his parents. No, all it took was a moment's thought about the woman he left behind, and I was nearly done for the night. That one flash of my mind catapulted me into the deeper, darker corners of my mind. And there's no backing out of there once you've entered.

Now I can't tell you about parents of the departed, or children or coworkers or best friends of the departed. I can't fathom their own shock and sadness. I can't begin to know how to feel for them. But I can ache like a pro for his girlfriend. I can still taste my weird role in that funeral, and I'm obviously still carving out my weird role in its weird aftermath.

All through the weekend and even today I feel, in tandem, her horror as she sees the pictures of his crash site on the news (I was gently given the pictures, two months later, by Rbf's best friend who got them very privately from the Sheriff's office dispatched to the crash site, and nobody else in the world got to see them unless we gave them access). The fact that she is still really in the first 48 hours of shock right now. The horrifying phase she is in right now is something I can barely even think about. That was, for me, the most intense emotional force I've ever endured. I can't even call it "pain." It's beyond it; it's a "force," and it is so dark that all I can say is that it's one shade away from being categorized as evil. The morning after, I think was worse than the first five minutes. I had anxiety all that night, simply anticipating it for her. The next morning, I returned to the ballpark for Sunday's game and stood in the same place on the field while there was a moment of silence for Quinn Falk. He was one year older than Rbf.

Bees fans observe a moment of silence for Quinn Michael Falk prior to the game. He died Saturday in a plane crash. (Jeffrey B. Allred, Deseret News)

But as members of my Board of Loved Ones have noted, I need to not dwell on it. I need to remember that I've already lived that pain, and now I'm 45 weeks in, and that's 45 weeks I'll never have to go through again. And that woman will hit her 45 weeks, and her 1 year, and her 2 year and her 14 year. And with each milestone, she will wonder if she is normal, just like Kelly at 729 weeks. She'll have her first birthday without him, a first of every holiday without him - she will ache even on Halloween.

She will live through the first time his birthday is defined by what age he "would have been." She'll refer to him in the present tense anyway, and gag on her food, and worry that his voicemails will disappear if she doesn't resave them daily. She will probably suffer some degree of damage to her brain from the cortisol, and other emergency chemicals it will overproduce for weeks on end. She will beg God for contact with him, she will beg him directly. She will be asked when she'll be ready to date again, and not know how to answer. She will want to change her name to his anyway. She will glare at his closed casket, and she'll never be the same again. Pretty much that, and about 80 layers deeper, came rushing over me that night.


But as we know, there's more to it than her agony. She will also have so much support from the community that she won't know what to do with all of it. She will know with certainty that someone she loves was able to leave the world in the grandest way he likely believed possible (and you might as well, because we all have to do it in one way or another). She will see him everywhere and in everything, and if she pays attention, she will know when she is in his presence, and she will know that she now has a guardian angel, all her own.


I heard someone quote this in response:

Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you will always long to return.

-Da Vinci

I hope she knows that. This post is written mainly for her, and maybe someday she will read this...if so, welcome to the GfW sorority. It's very exclusive and it comes at the dearest price. But you're here, and you will - someday - look back and realize that you survived something big.

Next post will be lighthearted, I promise.

x and o/km

Video Courtesy of KSL.com

While You've Been Reading Other Blogs.... {in pictures}{and really unabridged}

...I've been keeping myself busy. See, I started to read this book for book club. It's all about how fat ladies numb themselves with food when they're too afraid to be alone with their feelings. Like, it even talks about ladies whose boyfriends and fiances and loves of their lives died, and they got a new boyfriend, called food. You know why it's easy for me to flip the bird at the thought of dating and boys and marriage? Know why it's easy to live without them?

Well, that and the fact that signing over my last name and 401k and half my bed just for sex (which also entails shaving regularly and eventual screaming kids) with someone who is not Rbf, makes me want to join a nunnery or start telling people I'm a lesbian that isn't attracted to females.

But seriously, this book made me look at food differently. If food were my new "boyfriend," then it was like finding "white pride"-themed and/or Olsen Twin paraphernalia under his bed while you're looking for your sandal. You're turned off and disturbed and want to break up with it. 

If food were my new boyfriend, seeing that 20 pounds I've gained since the funeral is kind of like, oh, giving that new boyfriend a chance to explain himself, and then him just trying to justify it by saying he's ONLY into the pre-bag-lady-era Olsen twins, you know, before that one twin got gross and scary looking. {You: "So, basically you mean the 15 year old versions?"} In other words, it's not only the confirmation you need, it's actually worse than you thought.

All this is to say that I've kind of broken up with food (in terms of our emotional relationship...I still obviously eat) and the disturbing role it played in my life. And instead of escaping the reality of my life by "treating myself" to Crown Burger every other day, I've been running myself ragged to escape reality. With other things. Picture time.

Working more with CCI and their incredible service dogs

FYI - My floor has been cleaned since this picture, and I've gotten a pedicure.

I did a no-no and left Mylie in my apartment for a couple minutes while I ran down to switch my laundry over. I came back upstairs, opened my front door, and this is exactly what I saw:

Just sitting there at the end of my entryway, staring at the door in "sit" position, waiting for me to come back. I wonder how long she would sit like that.

Bridesmaiding...that means the bachelorette party.

And no, I didn't carry a black purse with a brown dress. I was holding the bride's so she didn't lose it. She's not a big drinker, but we couldn't let her enter marital bliss without getting her destroyed in public.

And the wedding

YMAD

{Priming 20 teenagers to raise $70,000 and take them to a 3rd world country...by bringing them to a retreat and taking pictures of them as they wake up. Teenagers LOVE that. I just thought it would be a good way to see which ones are going to whine the most when they have to shower with a bucket and a ladle in India.}

Honeybuzzing

Quilting

Birthday Coordinating

Putting others down to build myself up

{Seriously watched this three times in a row}

Homemaking

{This is just the start...but for toying around, I think it's cute, isn't it? You have to say yes.}

I am still unpacking. I still don't know where to put things. I've been here four months...and I don't feel moved in yet.

Burying Dad-1

{I really just never posted about this...it's a few months old}

Book Clubbing

{This is the book that made me quit eating my feelings}

And at the end of all that, sometimes I just can't do much else. So I go back to my apartment, and in this weird stage 45 weeks after It Happened, I cry... like two weeks after It Happened. And sometimes, like on his birthday, I cry so hard my eyelids do THIS:

Yeah, they swelled to the size - and shape - of bananas. Gross! I got up to get another tissue and caught a nice shot of that in the mirror, and literally had to get my camera and take a picture. Oh, in case you have not noticed, this isn't a blog where I'm going to try to impress you in any way or, like make you jealous of me. That right there was proof, since you just vomited on your keyboard. Super fug. But to make it up to my flagging ego, I'll post a picture of what my eyelids looked like before Rbf was killed:

Don't ask me why I have a picture like this. Probably because I got new eyeshadow and couldn't believe how pretty it was, and thought Rbf would be totally stoked to get a picture of it on his blackberry as he waited to load a couple of oil tankers. Who wouldn't be? Anyway, I just think, with lots of makeup and lots of lovely deep satisfied sleep, and foot rubs from an eager-to-please Reboyfriend who regularly said things like "I adore you," living that life, that's what your eyelids would look like. No?

And I've been doing other things I don't have pictures for, like ballet class and running the Memorial Fund. Dealing with the nightmare that has become my Dad-1's estate. Oh, the ulcers. My grandparents are getting divorced. Three other couples I love are, too. My life is just weird.

And because I told Iceberg it was him, not me, and told him he was a really nice thick thick shake of a guy but that I needed to be freakishly busy and didn't have time for our relationship...and because I live alone now and I sit down on my couch after work and embrace reality and sit with swollen sinuses and bulging eyelids and heavy heart...

And because last night I unearthed his trucker calendar and biker bandana and two of his toothbrushes, and had to refrain from putting ON that bandana and talk myself down from brushing my teeth with his toothbrush {no lie, my friends}...

I think the fever is breaking, because oh, my loving God, it is nothing like what I thought "45 weeks later" would feel like. It hurts. BAD. And treats and gifts to myself don't work anymore. So I guess when it starts to hurt worse, that just means it's healing, right? So I do what other 45-weekers in that family do.

I drive to a small cemetery in southern Idaho to visit my boyfriend and pick up my mess from last time.

I get tired. And cranky.

{OK the one below is true fatigue, but it just turned out funnier than sad, so I had to post it}

For awhile I would go out every free night with my friends to the playground of nightclubs around my apartment and dance, ignoring the scattered disaster of my apartment. Now, I stay home and unpack every free night I get. 

And I cry. A lot. I miss my best friend. I miss him saying "I adore you." I miss everything about him, and I resent Colbie Caillat for singing those words when she really has no idea what the hell she is saying. 

I weep on the edge of my bathtub and at my breakfast table and over the kitchen sink. I am not living at my uncle's anymore, so nobody is around to distract me. Yesterday I pulled a blanket out of his closet (yes, he has his own closet at my apartment), and the smell of him pulled up into my face and through my nose, into my chest and all throughout my heart, and it leveled me. It's what 45 weeks feels like.

I didn't mean for this to become a pity party, but that's what I've been up to. Thanks for reading to this very last word. xo/km

P.S. Thanks to everyone who gave me these bachelorette, Honeybee and cemetery pix, etc. I'm so used to being behind the camera I forget I have no pictures of myself unless, of course, they're pictures of my eyelids. Gotta keep those documented.

DUN and DUN

Finally STARTED posting the beginning of 116 books on my Amazon account - all proceeds going to the reboyfriend Memorial Fund

Interviewed and selected 20 kids to take to India for YMAD, March 2011

Met two normal 20-something guys who think that self-impressed sexpot girls, who brag about their Xtreeme tomboyishness, = fake and obvious and stupid and want attention. Is the world starting to actually make sense?

Bought groceries, like actual stuff, for the first time since I've moved into my apartment

Then actually made dinner with them, rather than going to Crown Burger and letting them expire in my fridge

Responded to 30 facebook messages. That's just embarrassing.

Then wasted time blogging about it.

But all very very important things I have done here.

ReBrotherInLaw Word Of The Day

Reboyfriend's siblings made habits of marrying arguably rad people. He was about to complete the circle with rad yours truly. But that's only a small part of the point. One of his brothers-in-law called me "Girlfriend Widow." I thought it was a wonderful term. He said "You've earned it, in my opinion."

With great thanks, I would now like to add a new word to my blogtastic vernacular.

GfW, noun: Short for Girlfriend Widow. This is more than "girlfriend of the departed," as the departed was in that awkward stage between boyfriend and fiance, and because this is a role that was galvanized by years of patience, mixed with adoration, mixed with impatience, mixed with passion, mixed with flakiness, mixed with great stories and much frolicking. Otherwise you're just a girl whose boyfriend died. See also, unwidow. 


This brother-in-law also came up with the word Jedly, if that tells you anything! You know how I love words. That is all, you may go.

Inappropriate Laughter

So many of my friends know pretty well that I reserve carte blanche on crying inexplicably at things that aren't really sad, or laughing inexplicably at things that aren't really funny. When this problem first started emerging, I apologetically told my uncomfortable friends, "You know what? I get a year to be like this. And nobody gets to care. Then I'll get normal again." Well I'm coming around to about 10 months of unwidow-hood next week. And I don't see my inappropriate bursts of emotion going away soon. I may need an extension. Read on for more information...

In reading KSL today, I noticed an article that reported a pilot walking away from a small plane crash. These things are reported once in awhile in local news. I usually read them, and I usually become both happy for the pilot, and jealous of his wife-ianceé/girlfriend over their safe landing. But this, naturally, caught my eye and begged me to read on:

I fully appreciated, with uncontrolled giggles, one comment that it earned in the forum of public commentary:

I am such a weirdo. I laughed until my stomach hurt, thanks to this comment. I am extremely glad that they did not use this picture when KSL reported on Rbf's plane crash. I think what made this funny was that I was moderately offended by the image initially, until one smartass used sarcasm to effectively mock and belittle. Mocking and belittling is why God made sarcasm. Forget closing doors and opening windows...When He takes away the most important thing in your life, He leaves you with biting criticism and the laughter it can bring. 

I think it's so funny because, honestly, 99% of the human population's brain can't generate an actual image of what a plane crash looks like. Mine couldn't, until I saw the actual pictures. So they just kind of create their own stock photo and assign it. I think, honestly, the conversation goes like this:

People: "Pretty rings. Where's your Reboyfriend? You are so cute together."

                           {Thought bubble}

Rgf: "He is passed."

People: "I'm so sorry to hear that. What happened?"

                          

                           {Thought bubble}

Rgf: "Plane crash."

People: "How terrible! I am so sorry!"

                                {thought bubble}

You know how 2 year olds' interpretations of grown up things are funny? The general public's mental image of what happened to Rbf is almost like some sort of childlike innocence. Like the time my cousin Minimeems somehow picked up on enough of the whispering from the grownups, that awful week, that when asked if she knew who "Jed" was, she said "That's Kirstie's Friend-Boy who went bonk on the ground."

File this under Stupid Things People Innocently Do. {See New Boyfriends, promises of, and Pilot Error, suggestion of).

Really, this is the end.

*P.S. Chris G, were you the commenter? Sounds like you.