Guns In The Air

Why do I make fun of putting song lyrics in one's Fbook status but then do it on my blog posts? Because I'm a parade of double standards, that's why; sue me. Oh and I'm supposed to be packing for a 4 day getaway to nuptial fest 2010. Have I started? Yeah, started CRYING. Just kidding. But I'm not kidding about how unprepared I am. I still have to pick at my face, read old journals, fall asleep briefly, wake back up and wonder how late the Fresh[rapist]Market is open for Redbull runs...then get started counting how many underwears (I use it as a plural word and spare you from having to read the word p*nties blergffhrfhgh shudder) I should pack and then look at my phone for the time (frown at complete absence of text messages from witty friends at 3:30 a.m.) and then see that it's 3:30 a.m. and remember that, SHIT, I have to be in the office in like 180 minutes. (gasping after superlong sentence).

So here's to procrastinating like there's no tomorrow (which would save my butt, right?)

That said....I'm really excited for this wedding. Couldn't happen to a sweeter couple.

That's really all. I was briefly tempted to launch into one of my really long, sad blogvoms about missing Rbf. Which my aching joints and skin and hair and eyeballs and fingers tell me I still ravenously do. I told my friend Audra the other day that I miss him so much that I literally don't even see in color sometimes. I stare into the dull monochrome frame of jedlessness that this world has become. And don't think nine months gets you any more accepting of it...you just get more used to it being lived in shades of gray and nothing more.

But I won't...Instead I'll think if Rihanna's song about being a gangsta for life, which I totally relate to (it's called G4L. Let's use that in more sentences). Because I will cut a bitch. My office is in West Valley, and I feel that having to pump my gas in those hoods makes me way more street than the pansies who live in my building downtown. Ever felt like you were "in something" for life? In a way that makes you look stupid, dramatic, and extreme? I have. Like bangers fake-limping {for coolness, not sympathy} through the streets waving guns in the air to demonstrate attitude and fierceness. I know exactly what they mean. It's been nearly 10 months that I've had to miss him like this. And if I still feel this way, I probably always will. Blogs in the air. I'll just say that I really wish he were here for this.

Our Ashes 'Round The Yard.

I was telling my friend Janae about how pathetic I am. This conversation is pretty much a daily ritual. Today it was about how I haven't put sheets on my bed yet. See, I got my apartment in March. Then waited three weeks before bringing anything over. I have been sleeping on nothing but a mattress pad, under the uncovered comforter I bought Rbf in 2002 for his semi sleeper. The Reboyfriend Quilt is the top layer. I still sleep on the right side of the bed. I still have not been able to sleep in the middle of the bed like a normal human being.

The left side is covered in a heap of clean laundry and some spare bedding. I sometimes wake up spooning it with a spare pillow behind the square of my bent knees. I won't put my sheets on my bed. I don't know why.

Wait, yes I do.

It is because I'm not ready for this to feel like my home yet. I still have a stubborn streak that refuses to accept this as my home, because I'm not really supposed to live here. I'm only here because the wing broke off.

Today I went in and put away the clean laundry and put my sheets on my bed. I spread the quilt over the top and left the room. One step closer to actually living here.

I got the urge this morning to listen to some old Iron & Wine. So tonight I made good on it, as I sat down to list my 100+ books on Amazon (proceeds going to the Memorial Fund). And instead of doing that, I am blogging. Because Iron & Wine throws me back to this one time Rbf and I listened to the entire album with him sitting in my little bedroom armchair, me on the floor with my head in his lap.

We were in the car on the way back from a wedding when we got into one of the few "fights" we got in over a decade's time. Something he said made me feel like he was diminishing our awesomeness as a couple. Maybe the vague way he said he answered people when they cornered him at the reception to ask if he was next down the aisle. Not sure. But I made the mistake of thinking that silence was the best way to prevent your feelings from being known. WRONG BAD STUPID GIANT PIECE OF FAIL. He is a guy. A simple one. In his mind, silence was the BEST way of making your feelings known.

"You're mad." No I'm not. "You're not talking. That means you're mad." What are you talking about Reboyfriend? I'm not mad, I'm just not speaking. He was quiet for ten more seconds. "You're mad."

He let me be quiet for a while, then said "Kir what did I do?" I tried to avoid discussing it as long as I could, because I was, up to that point, always and ever BREEZY. You were an hour late? Bah...I had some errant quilt seams to rip and some pictures to upload. I will be busy with both, and very breezy, when you show up. And then make you wait until I finish. I'm BREEZY. Breezy regirlfriends don't give a CRAP whether or not you publicly announce (to an acquaintance at a wedding) your undying eternal love for that girl over there eating canteloupe and spilling punch on her skirt. Breezy regirlfriends are just as interested in the canteloupe as they are in Nicholas Sparks-like themes in life. And Breezy = Quiet. I think.

I of course waited about 2 minutes, and then accused him of not passionately adoring me in Twilight/Notebook proportions like he normally professed to.

And he didn't correct me as passionately and adoringly as I wanted. So then I got MORE quiet (aka even more insulted). He was so confused.

Watching confused Reboyfriend is kind of like watching three or four yellow lab puppies under a big heavy blanket trying to find their way out.

When we got home, he took the flight of stairs up to the kitchen, and I took the stairs down to my room. I turned my music on random, dumped my clean laundry onto the left side of the bed and began folding it to cool my pissy, indignant self down. Iron & Wine came on and, as you'd expect, it had a softening effect on me. So does clean white laundry.

Rbf wandered in after about five minutes. He quietly sat down in my little white armchair across the bed from me. It was really cute because old Rbf (Quoting my bestie Autumn: "I have always loved hearing your Reboyfriend stories. Well, except when he did stupid stuff. Then he sucked.  But that was boyfriend not reboyfriend." We love Autumn).  Back in the day, Just Boyfriend was able to remain comfortably in dead silent "fight" status for eternity if he had to. New, improved ReBF has less willpower, and also loves me more than he did back when he was Just Boyfriend. Neither of us said anything for a few minutes. Then I asked him "Are you batshit crazy in love with me and want to be with me for the rest of your life?"

"Yes."

"Ok. I'm batshit crazy in love with you and want to be with you for the rest of my life. That is all either of us needed to say." I was so right. I usually am. I finished folding and then walked around and sat down on the floor with my head in his lap. We didn't talk, just sat there like that, for like 20 minutes, and the only sound was this album (Our Endless Numbered Days).

It was my favorite "fight" ever. It was even cuter than the one in Seattle where his only comeback was that I was adorable.

I read in some article later on, that "Naked As We Came" is said to be one of the sweetest love songs ever written. I have to agree. I can't hear it without wanting to keep my clean white laundry in a huge pile on his side of the bed. I don't really ever want to put it away.



She says wake up, it's no use pretending
I'll keep stealing, breathing her
Birds are leaving over autumn's ending
One of us will die inside these arms

Eyes wide open
Naked as we came
One will spread our 
Ashes round the yard

She says if I leave before you darling
Don't you waste me in the ground
I lay smiling like our sleeping children
One of us will die inside these arms

Eyes wide open
Naked as we came
One will spread our
Ashes round the yard


-Iron & Wine

The one time abridged version of this blog, on the blog itself.

Yeah, I felt like summing up my blog in one post, so I did. And it’s all dramatic and long. Shocker. But here it is for those who might have just stumbled upon this and don't want to read it all.....

I was trying to read a blog the other day, it’s a popular bit you’re probably all familiar with. I’ve avoided it for a long time, thinking that one Saturday or Sunday I’d slug it out, fully outfitted in Rbf’s clothes and some slippers with a pot of coffee I’ll just keep microwaving as I drank it throughout the day, reading that entire blog start to finish. This, by the way, will never happen. Because I will never have a full day to devote to something like that. I kinda wish the author would just do a Cliffs notes type post, where I could just read to get up to speed, and then start from there. Then I realized there are probably people who get routed somehow to this online journal of mine, and are so lost they can’t see straight. So this is mine. And if you are one of my friends I’ve sent the URL to and you’ve just started reading, you are welcome to just start from here.

This blog started because, at the end of 2008, I got divorced and I was really pissed. My husband wanted out, but didn’t know why (who would? I’m amazing. That’s supposed to be funny…did that not come off?). He started drinking heavily and fooled around on me. Jerk, right? Not so fast. First of all, one of them looked like the business end of a frat house barbeque, and the other belonged to a religious cult where she bought some schpeal that she was supposed to join the Bay-area harem of a greasy reincarnated Messiah who was strictly into early-20’s Scene girls. My husband had wanted out, and I didn’t understand why…but I wouldn’t accept “I Don’t Know” for an answer. So he made a mistake I couldn’t refuse, and came to tell me about it. It worked. I kicked him out and started this blog.

Since that day, we have found a healthy, peaceful balance as friends. I’ve asked him to explain to me what was going through his head. I’d done nothing wrong. He wasn’t sick of me, and there was nobody he wanted more. He’s recently said that he almost just felt pulled, if not guided, away. Like he didn’t want to, but that he needed to. It was bizarre to me at the time, because he seemed so broken-hearted, but wouldn’t beg to stay. He just left like I told him to, but he seemed just as devastated as me. He’s not religious – he’s agnostic at best. But even he has wondered if there might be something more to his experience than he understood, that maybe I ended up exactly where I was supposed to be, and he maybe he needed to allow that to happen.

I was so mad when he left without even fighting for me, that the first thing I did for revenge was call my college sweetheart (the one I call Rbf). The one who broke my heart to be a trucker on the open road, and womanize to his heart’s content. I was welcome to wait it out, I came to understand. He truly wanted me there. In fact, I learned this past year that up to the day I left, he’d always assumed we’d just end up married after a few years…he just wasn’t ready to be a full time boyfriend at the time. Try telling that to an 18-23 year old girl who’s never known stability in her life and has the maturity of a slinky. She’ll eventually get smart, give up, and become “the one that got away,” and that’s exactly what happened.

Rbf didn’t hit kindergarten until age six because he just wasn’t ready to be in school all day long. This is kind of cute now, but probably freaked his mom out a little bit at the time. He didn’t leave for his LDS mission until he was 20 (the standard is 19), because he wanted to have a semester of college first, away from his hometown. He said “I didn’t want to be one of those guys that went straight from their mother’s teat to the mission field, I wanted to learn how to be on my own first.” The reason was a perfectly legitimate one. He just wasn’t ready to go straight from the farm he was born and raised, in a conservative little highway town…to another continent (He ended up going to Sao Paulo Brazil, the 4th largest city on earth with a tricky native tongue). He just wanted to be ready, even if it meant he took longer.

He was late for everything…EVERYTHING he did. At his funeral, his life sketch stated that his friends once calculated how much time they had spent waiting around for him being late. It came out to two weeks (around the clock) worth of hours. I’d say that was a conservative guess. He stayed an extra year at the junior college where we met, even after completing his A.S. there, just because he wasn’t quite ready to go to the university he eventually graduated from (BYU). It’s not that he was slow. It’s just that “slow” is how he grew.

Had he not been a year behind in kindergarten and needed that extra year at Dixie, he would never have met me. I’m so glad he grew slowly.

There is a Lady A song that reminds me of him, and I change the gender when I sing along because it’s so him. (He grew up on the side of the road, where the church bells ring and strong love grows. He grew up good, he grew up slow, like American honey.) You should listen to it, and sing it to him in your car, like I do. He’ll listen, and he’ll probably adore you for it. And then listen to the rest of the song – because that tells my story probably better than this post ever could.

Even though I should have recognized the pattern in how he paced himself in his more significant transitions in life, I took it very personally that he wanted to have a few free years before he became a husband and father forever. I took it so personally, that I gave up waiting after a few years, and turned to my Starter Husband. And we ran off and eloped. Maybe it broke my college sweetheart’s heart just a little bit, but I figured it was just as well. Fair enough to see him with a broken heart, I thought; because now we both had one. It was the only way I would ever quit him, and it was the only way to ensure I’d never have to watch him marry someone else. I was sure that day would come, and I didn’t want to be anywhere in earshot when it did. I wrapped myself up in the safe cocoon of another relationship, knowing that when he got married I would be insulated from the blow. (Oh, and it didn’t hurt that the other guy truly was amazing – after everything, I can still say that and more than mean it).

I actually had a fun marriage (when it didn’t suck ass). Near the end, we did everything with other couples. It was one of the best times of my life. I graduated college, started a career, figured out how to be my own rock so nobody else had to be, and even grew out my hair! And when I emailed him that day, three years after telling him goodbye, I had no idea what was about to happen to me.

We went to dinner a few days after my divorce. We stayed up all night talking and catching up. That’ll show my ex! That night, I learned that Rbf never got a real girlfriend after I left. That he wanted children and a family, but was waiting for the woman to do it with (and yes, he waved his hand toward me over the table, as if it were already assumed that we’d be inseparable from that meal on). I supposed if you think it’s excessive to wait around two weeks for him, you could give him some credit for waiting around for three years for me.

I apologized for being such a chore back in the day; I noted how I had charged him with the duty of being my stability. I told him I learned during marriage, college, and career that you can (and should) be your own stability. I thanked him for putting up with it. He replied, “Well I loved you. I still do.” We saw each other every time he was in town after that. We were joined at the hip. I joked about the blog, The Company Bitch, and how she got back together with her ex boyfriend and theretofore referred to him as “Reboyfriend.” This, we thought, was divinely and hilariously ingenius, and we then proceeded to steal it from Company Bitch, and refer to each other that way until he died. Sorry, CB. I hope you don’t mind that your brilliance provided a sweet part of a sad story. If you ever read this, here’s your credit.

By March, ReBf was asking me to get a place with him. But I was busy playing independent and hard to get. You know, to make up for all the years that I was neither of those things. But by April, I learned this was a very stupid plan, realized I was pissed when other girls tried seducing him, and decided I was ready to commit…for good. By May, we had made offers on two homes next to SkyPark in Bountiful (so he could hangar the plane within walking distance).

By the end of May, I’d moved in with him.

In June, I quietly learned I was pregnant right as I was losing the baby. We were shaken but excited, and decided to try again after we had our permanent house and our wedding. We wanted to do it in the right order, and we wanted to get back into the swing of our Church lives together too, so we started on that path. We left the home offers on hold, and started the process of building a custom home in the same neighborhood, to be completed that Fall. We had the down payment, the construction loan, the construction contract, and were finalizing the blueprints. I would only do stucco if it was in a dark moss green. He would only use high end shingles. I wanted my parents’ butcher block table in my kitchen. Rbf would plant 20’ pines at the perimeter of the backyard for his tree-hungry, Washingtonian wife. Even though he’d been talking to me about marriage and kids the entire seven months prior, he broke out The Preliminary Proposal point blank in a random conversation at the end of July. He seemed nervous, like I might say no, which would explain why he wanted to do it once first without a ring. I said yes, of course I’d marry him. And so it was.

And ten days later, he died with his brother and their father in his small plane over the remote mountains of eastern Oregon.

Our day would have been September 17, 2010 – ten years to the day after our first date.

Since his death, my blog has been about what it’s like dealing when you have just been the subject of what seemed like a very dramatic, obvious gesture of a higher power with very pointed intentions. I have mostly been balls-out, up-front, no-shame honest in this blog. I always hoped that it helped pull back the curtain that covers the fearful unknown for others terrified of living my nightmare themselves. I hoped that detailing a few angles of the agony would create a familiarity with the unspeakable that could give others the upper hand (“I’m no stranger to this, I can do it.”) in times of their own grief. But mostly, the sharing and oversharing and more oversharing – all of it was for my own benefit first and foremost. I received unparalleled waves of feedback and lived off of that for months. Really. It was selfish sharing, and I thank the armful of you who have read as I breathed in and breathed out for the past 18 months.

There are a few things I have not detailed here. One of them is the issue of things we (as in the Mingos and myself) have learned about the accident and wreckage, which I don’t really share because you don’t really need to know. Unfortunately, there was one thing I maybe could have talked about here that I didn’t: The emotional and psychological damage I suffered upon learning the details of the accident. The violence and physical trauma in the loss of life…it has an impact on those left behind – whether it “should” (such a dirty word) be permitted to weigh that much into our grief or not. People like to say that it doesn’t matter, but it’s easier for them to leave it at that, than it is for those closest to the deceased. For the first few months, I relived the accident 40, sometimes 50 times per day from each of the mens’ perspectives. In horrific, indescribable detail. It got so bad at one point that I developed the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. To put an end to the constant mutation of my mind’s looping replay of that day, getting more and more devastating with each reinvention of it, I had to find a way to trump my cruel imagination. After two months, I agreed to view pictures of what remained of the plane that took our boys down with it (the pictures provided were taken after the recovery of our loved ones from the site). It was a big decision. And it told me a lot of the story. After a lot of deliberation, I finally opted to view raw footage of real plane crashes, hear radio recordings of the last few moments from blackboxes in fatal aviation crashes, and faced images of actual victims in other accidents. It was devastating, horrifying, and it kinda screwed me up for life. And most importantly, it was the closure I desperately needed—the only way I could get it. I said a prayer of love and gratitude for the victims whose voices and fatalities helped me, by telling me the true story my mind wouldn’t stop writing on its own. I quietly, prayerfully thanked the families for allowing me and other similar mourners access to their painful realities. I know Rbf and his two sweet co-pilots were over it the minute it happened. But for me, who loved that perfect, gorgeous body, its smell, its presence, that smile, those eyelashes, those toenails, those arms and every hair on that head – finding peace with what happened to it was the singlemost difficult thing I’ve accomplished (short of surviving this at all). But I did it. And because it was too sensitive, I did not write about it, until now. I shortchanged this story by leaving it out. And at least now, I have really told the truth, even if it’s ugly. I won’t share more than this, and that’s all I have to say about that.

The other topic I can't really address is the day we realized they were missing, and later learned they were found - dead. I've revisited that day a few times in my mind. I get to the part where I stood on the porch staring at our housemate JB as he mowed the front lawn. He looked up at me, squinting into the bright August sun, saw my face, sat down next to me on the porch, and I lay my head on his shoulder and wept, and we didn't talk. The conversations before that moment, and all of them after it, I still can't revisit.

The final thing I won’t write on here are the spiritual experiences I’ve had that have allowed our love story to continue beyond the grave. I can share those one-on-one with some people, but it’s weird to write on the internet. Just know, I’ve had them, I continue to have them, and they are glorious.

In March, my first father passed away (I have two) after five years paralyzed from a car accident. It topped off a year God beautifully showed me off, like kids who go onto dirt tracks and rally their turbocharged RC cars. Look at this thing I made, and what I can get away with doing to it, I’m bashing it into the ground, into trees, and off ledges…and it’s still running. Look!

I lost a husband, a fiancé, a baby and a father in just over one year’s time. But look at me. I’m still rallying. Look. And most importantly, you can rally, too.

So for those catching up, this blog has become a bulletin about the things I’ve done to live up to his expectations of me, to fill my life up to the point where I have no regrets. For the past nine months, you’ve watched as I’ve tried to piece my life back together. You’ve seen what that looks like, up close. And you’ve helped. A lot.

Today, I don’t get to write about my new house, my 15 week old baby, my wedding, my Jed and my father. My story is now about my new apartment, CCI service dogs, promo-girling for the Salt Lake Bees, trips with my girlfriends, going to India with the YMAD organization, writing conventions in NYC and family get-togethers, embarrassing moments, amazing friends, ridiculous eating habits, moving, working, tripping and falling. And of course, the Reboyfriend named Jed, and how he still laces himself through all of it. And it’s second best to the life I almost got, but I’m making the most of it. I really hope he’s watching.

I hope you get a chance to polish off a pot of coffee (or some spearmint tea) and snack the day away while reading from the divorce era to now, until you’re all caught up. But if you can’t, you’ve gotten the Cliffs note version of it. Kindof. Thanks for reading this.

xo/km

33 - Part II: Balloons

So the day ended better than it started. I left the office early, having been rendered useless by eyes swollen half-shut. I'm actually not kidding. I literally took a picture because I knew even I wouldn't believe me.

I went to a soccer game for Reboyfriend's 9 year old niece. She wears his football number. We went to Cafe Rio, one of his favorites, with Jordan's wife, their three kids, Reboyfriend's sister and her family. We all wrote notes to him, tied them to balloons, and released them to heaven. We sang him happy birthday and downed homemade chocolate cake with mint ice cream.

He would have enjoyed it.

33

One night in St. George, Utah, in the Summer of 2001, my roommates were all out of town. My boyfriend was a BYU student who owned a trucking business that he ran during the summertime, hauling crude oil and asphalt byproducts in tankers through the western United States to pay his tuition. He called from a refinery in rural Wyoming one night to say hi, and that he missed me.

That night, as I slept alone in the condo, my dream about whatever became a dream about him. It was like he had suddenly taken over the dream. I woke up in the middle of the night in the middle of that dream, kissing him.

And instead of dreaming it, I was kissing the real him He had been watching me sleep, he was there.

He'd had several stops and loads before this, so he'd literally driven for 48 hours straight, sustained on "Truckers Luv It" capsules and willpower until he got to my St. George condo, planning to surprise me when I thought I wouldn't see him for weeks. And when he got there, even as tired as he was, he sat and watched me sleep for a while before waking me. And the only way he could think to wake me up, was by kissing me. At the time, it was so funny that I'd begun dreaming him when he'd sat down by my bed that night.

Sometimes, I have dreams like that one I had, where I was oblivious to him watching over me. Dreams where it's like the memory of him suddenly interrupts my dream and makes it about him, and he's there. Maybe my dreaming mind has ADD too, and jumps from one topic to the next in no particular order (ice cream parties to the autobahn to him). Or maybe I jolt into dreaming of him, because he's sitting there. Who knows. He always did love watching me sleep. In a cute way, not a creepy way.

I remember at the end of 2008, when my life was in shambles and I was wondering if I'd ever feel normal again, and I was writing these silly blog posts full of hope, and I was basking in the innocence of having no idea what was actually waiting to hit me...and I posted {this post about what I'd someday feel} about me bewitching him body and soul and never wishing to be parted from me, and stuff. I liked to steal things from Jane Austen's repertoire of romantic calling cards. Those were the days.

And even though today is May 4th and I can't catch my breath, and my heart feels like just plain stopping, and nobody reads this anymore because I can't write it anymore...it's like he's walked in the room and sat down, and wishes I'd just wake up and kiss him. Because today is his birthday, and I wish I could wake up from this like I did that night, and he'd be there waiting for me to come out of this coma, having watched me in it for so long.

Happy happy birthday, Reboyfriend. You have bewitched me, body and soul, and I love, I love, I love you. I never wish to be parted from you from this day on.