Happy New Year!

Wow, here we are at the end of another year. 

2013 was a year full of the duality that makes widowhood such an adventure.  It was full of a growing sense of contentment, and a serious sense of loneliness and longing.  As we pull it all to a close, I can’t say that I’m sad to see it go, but mostly it’s because I’m looking forward with hope to what’s next.

As I look back over the year, some really cool stuff happened.

I got a brand new car.  I’ve never done that before.

I took my first college course (Creative Non-fiction).  I got an A.  It was so much fun, and I think that even though it didn’t help me generate much material for my book, like I was hoping, it helped me to be a better writer, so it was definitely not a waste of time.  I loved it.

I did a major home improvement project and I lived to tell about it.  I love my new bathroom and finally got moved in to the “new” master bedroom!  My brother and dad helped me build a closet and it’s pretty amazing!  I’m getting ready to start a new project, wow, am I a glutton for punishment or what?

You know my furniture-painting obsession?  I refinished eight pieces of furniture this year.   Here’s the really cool, easy to miss, widowhood bravery piece of that story: I live alone.  Furniture is heavy.  I work out every day to make it possible to carry that stuff all by myself, and I have the strength to do it. 

This year, for the first time, I got out my old Christmas stuff.  This felt like a huge accomplishment.  The last time it was put in those boxes, Sawan and I put it in there together, and I just couldn’t bear to unwrap the stuff.  But, I felt ready this year.  I felt ready to greet my old things and face that sadness.  I had a friend come over to help, and I was surprised by how it made me feel.  I was prepared to sort things into a box of “things I’m not ready to get rid of but don’t want to see again for a long time” and instead, I hung those ornaments (like our “Just Married”) on my tree.  Sometimes I shock even myself.

The biggest changes of the year are the subtle ones that are hard to quantify.  At some point, I think that I really started to choose life this year.  At some point, the memories of Sawan became something that I enjoyed again.  It was no longer too painful to remember even the sweetness of him.  Now I can enjoy the sweetness, and the enjoyment, even though it carries the sting of his absence, is worth it.  The sadness that I feel now is the sadness of missing him, the loss of what we had and the loss of all of my dreams for our future, but it also carries with it a sense of longing for what’s to come.

And so, I say, bring it 2014.  I’m ready.

Love to all of you, thank you for reading my words, for being with me for another year.  I wish you all the best in the New Year!

Small Talk

I think that we could use a little levity around here.

Here’s a funny story from when I took Littlest on a date last week.  We were walking up to the doors of the grocery store, where they had fresh, live trees in every size displayed out front, including cute little two foot tall ones. 

Me:   Look, they have Littlest-sized trees!

Littlest:  (walking to point at the big ones) Yeah!  And they have a Grammy size, and a Daddy size, and a Mommy size, and a Ellie size and a….(pauses to look up at me)…What’s your name again?

Littlest, with Arthur on his lap.

Noey's Song. Free Download.

The day has finally arrived!  Listen to and download Brad Corrigan's new album, Someday is Today, with "Noey's Song" on it here.  Enjoy!

Oh, Colorado, you're breaking my heart.

I was having a typical busy Friday in December, you know, the kind when you have your sister and her family visiting from across the globe (they currently live in Sydney, Australia), and so I had hustled to get the stuff done that I needed to get done first thing so that I could enjoy every drop of time visiting with them as I could.

My big plans for the day included “dates” with two of my nephews.

I took the littlest first.  We decided to go out for a treat.  His mom had suggested Starbucks, and I love me a pumpkin spice latte, so we headed there.  On our way, though, we discussed what kind of treat he was hoping for and he told me a gluten free gingerbread lady.  I started to get nervous about the gluten free options at Starbucks.  Plus, the time had crept past the 11:00 pick up time for him, and the Starbucks that’s two blocks from mom’s house is across the street from the high school.  I waited at the light while about a million highschoolers walked casually across the street, in no hurry, not caring if their light was actually green or not.  I pulled into a parking spot, and we walked in, to find wall-to-wall people.  Several sweet highschool girls smiled at Littlest, smiled at Arthur, and complimented me on how cute they both were.  When we got close enough to the treat case to see what was inside and found no gluten free options, looked around the crowded coffee shop and found no tables, I convinced him that we should head on over to Whole Foods, a few blocks away, at Streets of Southglenn, for a better treat.   

We found delicious gluten free chocolate chip cookies, he got to pick out a special juice, I got a latte, and we had a great visit about what his favorite thing is about Sydney (boats).  He has a pretty short attention span.  I had about fifteen minutes to kill before I was meeting Ellie and Middlest for lunch and to swap boys with her.

Littlest and I walked around the Streets of Southglenn for awhile, looked at the ice skaters, stomped around in the snow, then headed to Chick-fil-a to meet up for lunch. 

A quick glance through Chick-fil-a showed that we had beaten them there, and I opted to take the three-year-old back outside to keep him occupied. 

As we walked out into the sunshine, there was a table of three girls, two with Arapahoe Highschool sweatshirts on.  I see them put down a cell phone, hands go to cover mouths.  One girl gets up and starts pacing. 

Littlest and I pass them.  He points at a firetruck that passes by us with the siren going.  Then two more police cars go by us.  I’m registering that something’s not right, but I mostly just do the same internal prayer that I always do when I see a firetruck racing down the street.  I know what it’s like to be the person that’s called for those paramedics.  I know that panic.  I think about the bad day that that person is having.

I turn back to look at the table of girls, and full panic has set in, one of the girls is still pacing but is now hysterical. 

I look down at Littlest and say, “I think those girls might be sad or hurt.  I think we should go talk to them.”  So I walked up to the table and asked, “Are you guys ok?  Can I help?”

They told me that there had just been a shooting at Arapahoe Highschool. 

Their whole lives had changed and I had watched it happen.

I stayed with them.  I kept telling the hysterical girl to take deep breaths, and rubbed her back.  I kept them talking.  They did better when they were talking.  I kept telling them that we didn’t know yet how bad it was, so let’s try not to worry until we know.  This was difficult to keep in the forefront of the mind, though, as we watched ambulance after ambulance after firetruck after firetruck after police car after police car race by.  One girl called her mom, and so I waited with them until their mom got there.   I introduced myself.  I gave them Kleenex.  We talked through where their brother would be. 

“What time is it?”

“It’s 12:30.”  I said. 

“He has first lunch.” She tells me.

“Does that mean that he’s still at lunch or is first lunch over by 12:30?”  I ask her.

“No, it’s fifth hour.” She says.

“Good.  Do you know what class he has fifth hour?”

“Um, no?”  She says, panicked.

Ok, Noel, that’s not helping anymore.  Get her to talk about something else.  So, I asked them, “Guys, this might be weird, but, I’m wondering if it would be ok if I prayed for us?”

“Yes.  Would you please?” Said the girl who didn’t know what her brother had fifth hour.

So we prayed together for a few minutes.  We moved between praying and talking, praying and talking. The reality of what had just happened began to dawn on them slowly; gradually new realizations would hit them, but mostly they kept asking the same question. 

“How did this happen?”

“Oh my gosh you guys, I’m so glad we weren’t in there.”

“How did this happen?”

Littlest, who can be a bit of a rascal, just sweetly held my hand the whole time, dialed in to the fact that these girls needed help.  Ellie and Middlest came by at some point and she took the nephews inside to get food, while I stayed with the girls.

And then their mom came.  What a beautiful hug that was.  I stayed long enough to make sure they didn’t need anything else, then went inside to join my family, and I completely fell apart.

You guys, my heart is broken.  I share the same area code with other tragedies like Columbine and Aurora, but they are not in parts of town that I spend a lot of time in.  This happened two blocks from my mom’s house.  At the highschool that my brother and sister graduated from.  It’s the school where my friends’ babysitters go.  This is my neighborhood.

I keep thinking about the girl that was shot.  Did she have first lunch?  Was she one of the girls that I encountered at Starbucks?  Is she the one that held the door for us?  Or the one that thought that Arthur and Littlest were so cute?  Was she part of the crowd that I was annoyed at that took too long at the light?

Really, I find myself meditating with the sweet girls at Chick-fil-a.  How did this happen?

Arapahoe Highschool Warriors

Noey's Song

I’ve always been the kind of person that has a song for each particular era of my life.  Play Bon Jovi’s “Always” and I’m right back in my sophomore year, slow dancing with my crush, in the sweaty high school gym.  A song is a warm, soft place to land in my memory.  It’s a comfy couch that I can go back and sit on and re-experience that season of life.

As a brand new widow, I needed a song.  I needed something to ground me, something to relate to, to know that someone had felt the way that I did, to know that I wasn’t alone. 

But I was so very alone.  No one understood.  I had no couch to sit on.  There were no widow songs.  And so, I felt the need to stand, my legs getting tired beneath me, feeling like I had to do it all on my own.

When I heard “Homesick,” by Mercy Me, it was about loss.  I could find a bit of rest in it, a bit of relief.  It’s funny, after three and a half years as a widow, I can no longer listen to the song, it sounds like “the beginning” to me.  I hear it and I am transported back to the rawness of soul that I felt.

But, that song was not specifically for widows.  I couldn’t completely relate, and so it didn’t meet all of my needs.

I found other songs along the way that helped.  I could hear the loss in the writer’s voice, could feel the weight of shared experience.  As my heart began to heal, it didn’t matter as much if all of the details of the song applied to me.  There were some people that got it, in some small way.  I was alone in my own pain, but not alone in the process of grief.  Grief is universal to the human experience, in varying degrees.  Even songs about a love lost because of a breakup began to feel helpful in some ways.  Some of those felt comfortable, like, for a moment, I could go back to their couch and find a bit of rest, feel the familiarity of the community of grievers.

One of my good friends is a musician.  Knowing that I was missing a "widow song" in the beginning, he began writing me a song almost four years ago.  Tonight the album it’s on is being released.  We worked on it a little bit together, he would ask me questions, write things down after conversations, once he made a note on the back of a paper plate. 

It was his gift to me, and to widows everywhere.  It is a place for them to go, to know they’re not alone, to know that they can be related to.  One of the verses is even full of my own words, as a fresh widow, from my own journal.  The song couldn’t be written until now, because it lacked the element of hope that was necessary to make it useful to anyone else at all.  It had to wait for me to heal to be born.  And now, it’s a gift to the world.

Come; listen to “Noey’s Song.”  Sit on my couch.  Feel the embrace and comfort of shared loss.  I’ll cover you with a chenille throw of my own pain, so that you know that you’re not alone.

(Check back for a link to the song.  I’ll post one after it’s available!)

*Don't have plans tonight?  Here's a link to buy tickets to the album release (also a benefit for Love, Light and Melody, a really great non-profit)!  7 p.m. at the Gothic! http://lovelightandmelody.givezooks.com/events/1st-annual-day-of-light-benefit

Recipes for Viva New Mexico!

I’ve gotten a little backlash for not posting the recipes from Viva New Mexico!

After getting permission from my mumsie, here they are, with a bit of background.

The recipe for Jose’s Burritos came from a beloved friend named Jose Chavez.  He was a co-worker of my dad’s at the Conoco Refinery in Billings, MT.  There would occasionally be times in the refinery when some of the unioned workers would go on strike, and the Conoco employees would have to pull “strike duty” where they would work extra shifts, and Conoco would set up a make-shift camp for the men to stay in so they wouldn’t have to cross picket lines.  One of those times, Jose made a massive batch of burritos and gave my dad the recipe.  It’s written on a piece of dad’s Conoco letterhead and is in his handwriting, which is funny, because he wasn’t the cook. 

Jose was a really amazing man and good friend to our family.  He taught boxing to underprivileged kids and when he retired became a “lay priest” in his Catholic Church.  And he made really good burritos.

Jose’s Burritos

Meat:

2lbs Hamburger

1 #1 can whole tomato or stewed

4 cans Ortega’s green chili (or substitute with fresh roasted Hatch Green Chili if you can!)

1 ½ cans cream of mushroom soup

Pinch of sugar

Garlic and onion salt to taste

Brown burger, drain grease.  Chop chili, mash tomato, add soup and spices (or you can do this step in the blender or food processor, like I do).  Add to meat a little at a time.  Add a little water to thin it out (about a soup can’s worth).  Simmer 1 ½ to two hours (or stick them in the crock pot, this seems easier).

To serve:

Flour tortillas

Chopped onions,

Grated cheese

Chopped lettuce and

Chopped tomatoes

Fill a flour tortilla with meat (using a slotted spoon) and cheese, roll and place on plate seam side down, top with juice from the meat and more cheese, place in microwave for 45 seconds to melt cheese.  Top with lettuce, tomato and chopped onions.

The chicken enchilada casserole is one of those things that there wasn’t really a recipe for, Mom just sort of always made it, with a “little of this”, and “some of this”, probably the way you make scrambled eggs, but here’s as close as we could get:

Chicken Enchilada Casserole

3 chicken breasts cooked and shredded or chopped (Or you can use rotisserie chicken from the store.  Or you can use your Thanksgiving turkey leftovers.)

2 cups roasted, peeled and chopped New Mexico green chili (or you can use canned, if you have to)

1 26 oz can Cream of Chicken soup

Milk (use cream of chicken can)

2 cups shredded cheese

¼ cup onion, chopped

10-15 corn tortillas, torn into pieces to fit your pan

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 

Make a mixture with cream of chicken soup and milk, so it’s slightly less thick than cake batter.  Spray a casserole dish (13x9 should work) first with cooking spray, then dip tortillas in the soup and milk mixture and lay them out in the bottom of the dish so that there are no gaps.  Top with a layer of chicken, chili, onion and cheese.  Make another layer of tortilla dipped in soup mixture (remember not to leave any gaps!), then chicken, chili, onion and cheese again.  Whatever is left of your soup and milk mixture can be poured over the top.  Bake at 350 degrees until heated all the way through.

When we were cooking last week, Mom told Amy the story of where she learned to cook these.  Her girlfriend that she worked with at the bank in Las Cruces, NM, is the one who taught her to make these, and I had never heard that story before, even though I’ve eaten this casserole all my life.  She worked at the bank when she was pregnant with me.  How fun to know that little bit of history.

With love from my family to yours.  Enjoy!

Restored

Do you remember my wedding ring post?

A few years ago, when I decided to stop wearing my wedding ring, the solution for me was to start wearing Sawan’s. 

Sawan actually had two wedding rings.  He had the one from when we exchanged vows, and then we had bought a cheap silver band at a street fair once, because he was afraid he would lose his good one when he went fishing, but still liked to be wearing a ring.  It ended up that he wore the cheap one more often then he wore the “real” wedding ring.  This cheap silver band is the ring that the paramedics took off his finger when he died. 

The silver one is the one that I chose to wear.  It was thinner than his other one and so it fit better.  It was still way too big for me; it could easily slide off every one of my fingers, including my thumb.  I usually would wear another ring over the top of it, to keep it on.

One day in June, I put it on, and remembered feeling for it with my thumb on my way to work.  At the end of my long day of shampooing, cutting, styling, and chores (cleaning and laundry at the shop), though, I looked down and didn’t have it on.  I realized that I hadn’t put a smaller ring on top of it that morning, so it could have fallen off.  I looked everywhere.  I asked my friend and coworker if she had seen it, but she hadn’t.  I was already late to meet a friend at a baseball game, so I didn’t have as much time to look for it as I wanted, but I was devastated.  I went back to the shop over the weekend, tearing apart my station, ransacking every space that I could think of, but didn’t find it.  I left a note for the cleaning people, and they also looked, and took apart the vacuum cleaner bag, but didn’t find it. 

It was lost.  I was so sad.  I thought about it daily.  It was so hard for me that I couldn’t talk about it.  I told no one.  The only people who knew about it were the cleaning people and my coworker. 

Four months later, about two weeks ago, I was downstairs at the salon, switching out the laundry.  I heard a clinking in the bottom of the washer, and as I pulled out the last of the load to put it in the dryer, my ring came out from beneath the part that swishes the laundry around in the bin.  I found it!

I cried.  It was just a cheap silver band, but it was another piece of him that I thought was lost from me forever, and was now restored.

I’ve worn it everyday since, but am sure to put on a smaller ring on top of it to keep it on.  And, the good news is, after four months in the washer, it’s really clean.

Back on my finger, with a ring on top of it, to hold it in place.