My Favorite Song

My friend Grahm is a cowboy that’s been stuck in a city for most of his life.  In May he left Colorado for Montana, to work on a cattle ranch.

He passed through town this weekend, and I got to spend a couple of hours with him, cutting his hair, then eating some Chipotle (he had had Chipotle the night before, but was so excited that I had suggested it, Montana seems to be lacking in Chipotles).

I got to listen to him talk about all that he learned in Montana this summer about cattle and how to care for them.  He talked about the way that being in the wide open spaces feeds his soul.  It was a great chat.

My favorite part, though, was him talking about the fishing up there.  He was in great fly-fishing country, and he is a passionate fly-fisherman.  I used to know one of those.

I asked him to tell me about the biggest fish that he caught.  He told me that the fish he was catching weren’t that big…. So I told him to tell me about the biggest fight.  He used words like “tail water,” and “riffle.”  He had used a “streamer” rather than “nymphing or dry flies.”  Just the words were so familiar to me, but it seems like it had been so long since I had heard them spoken with such passion.  It was like listening to my favorite song.  I had to swallow hard against the lump in my throat.

Sawan used to talk about fly-fishing so much that I remember a specific time, after him giving me a forty-five minute college-style lecture about “flows” (it’s something to do with people controlling how much water goes from the reservoirs to the rivers) that I knew my eyes had glazed over and I thought, “Oh my god.  I’m going to have to listen to this for the rest of my life.”  If only.

Now I long to hear fishing stories because they remind me of my love.  Thanks, Grahm, for "playing my song" for me.  It was a delightful evening.

My First Tattoo (or the Third Anniversary)

Remember this?  How I scheduled an appointment to get a tattoo earlier in the spring?

Well, the day arrived.  As with all of my “Hard Days,”  I had a strategy in place, but left lots of room for cancelling everything if what I needed to do was stay in bed.

I began my day with breakfast and a tattoo (that's not a very normal sentence, right?).  The perfect girl to go with me on such a day is my sweet friend, Dani.  She has many qualifications for being the perfect girl to go with me.  Most importantly, she is one of my besties.  She and I worked together several years ago, and then she bought a condo in the same building where Sawan and I lived.  The night that Sawan died she came upstairs to be with me.  She was there when the Paramedics were there, when they told me he died.  She stayed with me until my dad got there that night.  But, she was also perfect to go with me because she is also my most tattooed friend.  So, when I scheduled this appointment I asked her to come with me.  She took the day off work and we planned a day of hanging out.

She took me to an awesome breakfast place, then to the tattoo appointment.  She set me up with all of the things that I would need to care for it (the right kind of soap, the right kind of moisturizer, etc.).  Then we went shopping for a little retail therapy.

Before.

He drew it in first with a marker.

It didn't hurt nearly as much as I thought it would.

After.

A close up.  Sawan had a tattoo of a large brown trout reaching up for a fly just like this one on his left shoulder. 

By mid-afternoon I was exhausted, as Hard Days can make me be, so I headed home to take a nap, which didn’t work, as is also typical for Hard Days.

I headed over to my parents house to hang out with my mom and dad and sister for the 5:30-midnight segment.  This has been the hardest part in the last couple of years, as 5:30 is the last time that I talked to Sawan on the phone.  Once I get to that point in the day, I can’t help but walk through my day as it was in 2009.  This year proved to be the same.

For me, August 24 will always be the day that took Sawan away from me.  Some who have lost loved ones choose to celebrate on the anniversary, but for me personally that has not felt right.  I do, however want to honor him (and myself) on that day.  So, I feel like getting a tattoo and taking lots of breaks to rest were exactly what I should have done this year, and I’m so thankful for all of the people who cared for me, with sweet messages, cards, flowers and spending time with me.  In spite of such deep loss, I feel so incredibly overwhelmed by blessing at the same time.  I’m so thankful.

Identifying Marks

I love tattoos.  Especially on men, I should say.  Not especially on women, unless the tattoos are really pretty. (Dani, you’re beautiful, and I especially love your ink.  I’m not talking about you.)  I guess I find tattoos to be masculine, and that’s part of why I like them on a man.

Sawan had two tattoos. 

His first one came about during the age when it was popular to have cartoon tattoos.  It seems like everyone in that era had a Tasmanian Devil on their ankle or some such nonsense.  He had lost a bet, and had to get a tattoo.  So, he chose Tigger (the one with the cape and the mask).  He had chosen it out of his then four-year-old sister’s coloring book.  It was on his right hip.  I didn’t find that one particularly masculine.  I never told him, but I sort of hated that tattoo.  I think he maybe did, too.  When asked on a questionnaire once if he had any major scars or identifying marks he replied, “Yes, a tattoo.”  They needed to know where (at that point he only had the one).  “My right hip.”  What is it?  “A tiger.”

His second one was awesome, though.  It was a huge trout, reaching up for a fly on a fly line.  The guy who did it had experience doing lots of koi fish (something Sawan loved having grown up in Hawaii) so he did the river water in that style.  It was in super bright colors.  It took up the major part of his left shoulder.  It was beautiful.  I loved it.

He told me that when he was looking for someone to do it, he talked to lots of different artists, but most of them didn’t know much about what he was talking about when he would talk about trout.  The one he chose, though, had asked him, “So, you want like a rainbow trout or a brown trout?”  Then he asked him, “What kind of fly are you looking for, like a copper john?”  Sawan was like, “This is the guy.”

A year before he died, we were out running errands and we stopped by Phantom Tattoos, the shop where he had had it done.  Sawan showed me the photo of his own tattoo in the guy’s photo book, and we looked in to when he could get an appointment to get the color retouched a bit and maybe add on to it, but he never actually made the appointment.

Masculine or not, pretty or not, I want the fly line and fly tattooed on the inside of my left wrist.  I don't want to put his name on my body, but I want to have a mark.  Maybe this is my scar that I've felt I've needed.  He profoundly impacted my life, and I want it marked on there forever.   For some reason, it’s important to me to have the same artist, that the guy ask me what kind of fly I want.  I've felt that just anyone wouldn't do:  if he wasn't good enough for Sawan then it didn't feel good enough for me.

So, last year around the end of July, I started thinking about what I was going to do on Sawan’s birthday, and I called the place.  It turned out that I couldn’t get an appointment until the end of September, so I quit thinking about it.

This year, I didn’t want to miss the opportunity.  I called last week, and they said I had to make an appointment in person.  I went down to talk to them and they knew what tattoo I was talking about (it was that cool), and they were pretty sure that a guy named Nick did it, but he wasn’t with them anymore, I had to go to a different shop.  They gave me the information and told me that if I needed any more help they’d be glad to.  They were so sweet and awesome.

So I called the other place.  They confirmed that Nick worked there, I told them my story, that I’m a widow, I want part of my husband’s tattoo on my wrist, and there are certain dates that I wanted to do it.  I was able to get an appointment for August 24 (his birthday wasn’t available, the guy is booked).  The girl on the phone said, “I just want to say that I think that this is a great way to honor your husband’s memory, I love this idea.  And I want to tell you that I’m so sorry for your loss.”  Wow.

I had to go down the next day to put down a deposit, and while I was there I met Nick.  He came out to talk to me and I told him the story, too.  He immediately remembered the tattoo.  I had only mentioned that it was a trout.  He said, “It was a brown trout, wasn’t it?”  I knew I had found the right guy.  He asked me if I could remind him of my husband’s name, he knew it was something unusual.  I told him and he was like, “Oh, yeah, how could I forget a name like that.  I’m so sorry that this happened to you.”  Then, he asked me if I remembered what kind of fly it was.  I told him that it was a copper john, and that’s how Sawan had picked him in the first place.  He liked that a lot.  Phew.  I think I’m in good hands.

Beer in Heaven

April 14 is an important day to me.

Sawan was a recovering alcoholic.  On April 14, 2004, he decided he wasn’t going to drink anymore. 

I wouldn’t meet him for another year and a half, but that decision was so powerful.  It made him the man that he was.  It showed me so many things about him.  It took courage, it took tenacity, it took commitment.  It was such a big part of shaping him into the man of my dreams.

I often wonder what he was like before.  I wonder if I would have fallen in love with him had I met him before he stopped drinking.  It’s one of those silly things that we would talk about sometimes, knowing that we had been in some of the same places at the same times, but didn’t meet.  Knowing that we had actually lived within a few blocks of each other, and probably ran into each other at the grocery store, but never knew it. 

He went to meetings, less and less frequently as time went on, but he told me he always counted fishing as attending a meeting.  It was a spiritual thing to him, fishing, and apparently was part of him “working the steps.”

In AA, they call the day that you stop drinking your “birthday.”  We celebrated it as such.  Our first year together, when we were only dating, I made us a picnic that we took to City Park.  Not just any old picnic, but with fried chicken and potato salad that I had actually cooked.  It was a little breezy, but he wished he had brought a fly rod to teach me to fish on the little lake there.  We dreamed about getting a dog.  We walked around the park and talked for hours.  It’s one of my favorite days with him.

He had five years and change under his belt when he died.  It would have been eight today.  I’m just so proud of him.

There are some days that I can talk about him and our life together matter-of-factly, and then there are some days that when I talk about him, it just makes my face leak.  Today is one of those days.

Most of the time, he acted like it wasn’t hard anymore, like it didn’t really bother him to not be drinking, but on a hot day, like on the beach in Mexico, or after doing manual labor stuff for me at the shop, he would tell me that he craved beer.  Man, I hope there’s beer in heaven.

Lonely Tonight

People ask how I’m doing, and when you grade on the curve of the last year and a half of my life, I’m doing pretty amazing.

But tonight, I’m sad.

I’ve felt it’s safe enough to listen to a little of my old music.  The other day my bestie was over helping me pack my kitchen, and holding my ancient ipod, she said, “What of this can you listen to?  Is any of it going to be hard?”  I said, “Well, probably most of it.”  So we picked Indigo Girls.  It was always our favorite, hers and mine.  And it was fun.  Fun to hear familiar words again.  I know just about every word on just about every album.

Tonight the words of one of the songs keeps running through my head, though, and I’m lamenting my choice to listen to anything other than the stupid, safe Mercy Me CD that everyone makes fun of me for playing in one continuous year and a half loop in my car. 

I’m lonely tonight

I’m missing you now

I’m wanting your love

And you’re giving it out

I’m lonely tonight

I’m lonely tonight

It’s impossible to explain how the simple little things in day-to-day life make me just long for him.  I miss calling him when I got off work to tell him what my daily total was.  No one cares about that now but me.  I had a heck of a time getting my necklace off tonight.  I wanted to ask him to get it for me.  There’s a new show on TV (a reality show about restaurants) that he would have been so into, would have been trying to figure out a way to be a contestant.  I wish I could at least tell him about it.

And, last night, I left my house to pick up dinner and on my way there a mosquito landed on my windshield.  My first thought was “Weird.  A mosquito in March.”  It was almost immediately followed by “There must be a hatch on the South Platte.”  I was only less than a mile from the river (it runs through Denver) and that particular bug is one that the trout really love.  I’d seen Sawan catch them and really look them over, trying to figure out how to tie some exact replica to attract the fish.  He would have said that exact sentence as a fly-fisherman, but, not having done much fishing myself, this was something that I learned because I loved him so much.  My eyes welled up.  He would have been so in love with me, so proud.

In His Own Words: Casting for Recovery

I seem to be in the anger phase of my grief these days, and so everything that I think about Sawan has a negative slant, and I hate that.  I hate how negative I seem to be about him on this blog lately.  So as I was thinking about what I would post today, I wanted to make sure I was reflecting on something positive, on something that I really loved about him.  A couple of months ago I found this article that he wrote for a friend’s fishing web site and I’ve been saving it to share on here.  He was so amazing as a guide, as an angler, as a communicator, and also, I think it’s so interesting how he talks about grief, and how the ways that he grieved his mother (right and wrong) prepared me in so many ways for how to handle losing him.  I didn’t do any editing, this is his article in his words, and this is the photo that he had chosen to go with it.  Enjoy.

Casting for Recovery

I hadn’t been thinking about my mom that morning, but as anyone who has lost a love one can tell you, sometimes thoughts of them can just creep up on you. A song or a smell or a random encounter can send you into the grieving process even years after they’re gone. I had lost my mother to breast cancer five years prior. It was a difficult time for me, and the grief demons still haunted me sometimes, and actually, they still do on occasion. 

      So there I was going about my usual duties in the fly shop when in walks Dana Rikimura. Dana is one of the coordinators for Casting for Recovery here in Colorado. I had heard of the program where guides volunteer to teach women recovering from breast cancer how to fly fish, but never researched it or knew how to get involved. Dana was asking for gear donations for an up-coming retreat, and I immediately started asking how I could get involved. I told her briefly that I had lost my mother to the disease and was interested in volunteering. She got my email address and told me someone would be in touch. True to her word, it wasn’t long before a woman named Kris Tita contacted me and asked if I would like to be a “river helper” at a future retreat. A “river helper” is basically a guide for the day. I emailed back and told her my whole story, she was moved by it and invited me to the very next retreat they were having. It was to be located at the famous North Fork Ranch just outside of Bailey Colorado.

     I was excited and nervous at the same time. I had done some guiding before, not a lot, but some. I knew the program was full of volunteer “professional” guides. I wanted whomever I guided to have a memorable experience and in my naïve state I was convinced that meant catching fish. Would I be able to get someone on fish? Or, would I fumble through everything while everyone else did? The morning of the retreat I awoke nervous that I wouldn’t “stack-up” against the other guides, but as I drove into the mountains I had an epiphany. This day was not about me. It was about the women who had decided to try something different in an attempt to experience life in its entire God-given splendor. I was just a medium through which that could be accomplished. So, I decided to just allow God to work through me and hopefully together we could give someone a splendid day.  

     I arrived at The North Fork Ranch early on the day of the guide. It is located on the north fork of the South Platte River. They own about a mile or so of river where they have stocked some big fish, mostly Rainbows, and done some river improvements to maximize trout habitat. Kris and Dana were there to instruct us on the procedures for the day and assign us our ladies. The hosts at the ranch provided coffee and breakfast for us. The ladies had been there all weekend and the guides only come in for the last day of the retreat to help out. Group pictures are taken and then everyone spreads out on the river to start fishing.

    That first day I was assigned Maggie. Or maybe, she was assigned me. Either way, we were to be partners for the day. She was an elderly woman who had never fly-fished before. I remember asking her that morning what her value was for the day. Was she dead set on catching a fish or was the over-all experience what mattered? She responded like the gentle woman she was and said she wanted to have fun, maybe learn a little, and if catching a trout was somehow managed in the process, so much the better.

     I had walked the river when I arrived that morning in order to scope out where the fish would be and look for easy places to stand, cast, and hopefully net a fish. We walked to a spot on the river where I had seen a couple of fish in the morning. We talked and introduced ourselves and shared our stories a little. I rigged her rod for her and explained what I was doing and why I had chosen the flies I had. We were going to be nymphing (using flies that drift in the current under the waters surface) that day and I put on a big fuzzy indicator so that we could detect strikes. We began with an easy short-line cast into a promising looking area. She struggled at first, but after a quick demonstration she was placing those flies exactly where I asked her to. I’m not sure how many drifts through that pool she made, but it wasn’t long before WHAM her indicator disappears into the icy depths of the river. In my excitement I practically screeched “lift, lift, lift!” The next thing I know, a beautiful rainbow trout comes leaping out of the water in front of us. Now, I have seen many a trout clear the water in my days but I can’t ever remember being more excited about it. I have a still photo in my memory of that fish glistening in the sun tethered to a little old lady who could have been my grandmother. She fought the fish well and followed my instructions perfectly, and before we knew it, I had sixteen inches of beautiful, spotted, pure muscle in the net. I looked up at her and saw an expression of pure joy on her face. I’m sure that it mirrored mine.

    When someone catches a fish on one of these retreats it lights up the river with congratulations and excitement. The other women up and down the river hoop and holler and scream things like “way to go”. Someone invariably comes running over with a camera to get a snapshot of the moment and there is an overall feeling of genuine joy. We took a quick photo and returned the fish to the cold, clear water from whence it came. We caught a few more fish that day, but nothing sticks in my mind like that first one.

    I had a quiet moment in my own head where I thanked God for providing us with a fish to catch, and then another one where I thought of my Mom. A few days before she passed away she asked me to make her a promise. I was expecting something dramatic. But, what she said was “promise me you’ll never stop fishing, it brings you so much joy”. I told her not to worry, I was sure it was a promise I could keep. Part of that experience for me now is the joy I receive in teaching others.

    I have since done six Casting for Recovery retreats. Every time it brings something a little different. Each woman has her own story and her own personality; her own challenges and her own demons to conquer. But each and every time we catch fish together it brings a sense of accomplishment and an appreciation for the beauty in life. The spring retreat is around the corner and I can’t wait to offer my time, skills and heart to the day.

Sawan Nail     

My Dad

I have recently reconnected with a childhood friend.  She said something that has me thinking.  She said how lucky I am to have my amazing family around me.  I couldn’t agree more.  I’ve decided to tell a few things about each one, why I’m thankful for them, especially in regards to this last few months.  I’m going to do this in order of age, not importance.

Dad

My dad and Sawan had a very special relationship.  He called my mom and dad “Mom and Dad.”

When Sawan and I had our first conversation on the phone, it turned, as it inevitably would, to fishing.  He was SO into fly-fishing.  I could somewhat talk about it because my dad likes to fly-fish.  So he and I chatted about that a little bit.  I told him that my dad loved to go, but hardly ever caught fish.  Sawan told me that he’d have to fix that.  And he did.  I think Sawan would have loved it if I would have liked fishing with him, but he settled for the fact that I at least knew something about it.  One time, he was preparing for a trip to the San Juan river, and was telling me about a special fly he needed to tie for it, and I said, “Oh yeah, the Yong Special.”  His jaw dropped about a foot and then he was just like, “Wow, I love you.”  I knew what it was because my dad had talked about it so much, and the funny name had stuck in my head.

The first Christmas that Sawan and I were together, he bought my dad a little fly box and put in a few flies that he had tied.  My dad showed it to me the other day, and told me that it was one of his most prized possessions.  That same day, they went out to cast my dad’s fly rod in the back yard.  I watched them from the window.  I have always loved to watch men cast fly rods.  My dad is a big man.  He was a line backer in college (yeah, I didn’t date much in high school.  Boys were afraid of him.).  There are few things that he does that can be described as graceful, but watching him cast is a thing of beauty.  It looks like a dance.  I have no idea what they talked about out there, but I remember watching them, thinking that it was just so beautiful, watching two of the men that I loved the most in the whole world, together, talking and casting a fly-rod.

So that was the beginning.  They went on lots of fishing trips together.  My dad caught lots of fish.  Sawan ruined him for fishing, I think.  Sawan told me after what ended up being their last fishing trip together that he was always sneaking a look at my dad’s fly boxes and filling them up for him.  Sawan tied his own flies so he always had more than he could ever use.

My dad took care of me so well that first night of my widowhood.  He handled so much.  He came in early the next morning (after my first night alone) to check on me, and for us to try to figure out our plan for the day.  I remember my first words being, “I made it.”  And he said “Atta Girl.”  And that being so important to me.  Just so encouraging.

He has been my hero so many times in this last year that I can’t even count, from stuff with the car, to offering to come over and plunge the toilet, to talking me off a ledge when the dogs had killed a squirrel in the back yard, and it was just so gross (“It’s ok, just put a bucket over it and I’ll take care of it when I get there.”).  When there’s things that I feel I just can’t do, I can count on him to either give me a pep talk so that I can manage it, or he’ll handle it for me.  I’m sure I’m going to think of a million more things that I’m thankful for about my dad after I post this, so I’ll just say that these are some.

Thanks, Dad, for taking such good care of me.  Thank you for loving my husband like a son, and being like a father to him.  I love you so much.

Fishing together, March, 2009

The Truck

Sawan had a 1999 Chevy S10 pickup.  It was white.  He bought it new.  Somewhere I have a Polaroid of him shaking hands with the salesman.  He loved that little truck. 

This was the only photo I could find of the truck.  Sawan, with my cousin, Becky, and her husband, Tushar, fishing on the SanJuan in 2007.

It was a fishing truck.  The back window was full of TFO and other fly-fishing company stickers.  It took him to the mountains to go fishing so many times that no one could count.  If those seats could talk, I’d love to hear about all of the conversations that took place in that cab. 

The bed had held so much stuff.  It moved all of his stuff into my condo when we got married, it carried Christmas trees back from the mountains when we’d go up there to cut them down.  The day before he died it carried all of my files and important stuff from the shop getting it ready for the sale.

He kissed me for the first time in that truck.  I remember thinking that night, that that was my “last first kiss.”

In spite of all that, I never really liked the truck.  It was old.  It stunk.  It had that stale coffee and cigarette smell constantly, even after we quit smoking.  The weather sealing on the driver’s side door had quit working so it was always really loud, like you were driving on the highway with the window rolled down.  The heater actually worked really great, but there were four settings, and number two didn’t work.  Also, the gas gauge was broken.  He ran it out of gas several times.  He learned to be disciplined (about the only thing in his life he was very disciplined about) about filling it up all the way, and setting the trip counter, and knowing that he had 320 miles before he had to fill it up. 

Plus, who has a truck in Colorado that’s rear wheel drive?  It didn’t do great in the snow.  I made fun of this all the time, saying it was kind of a “pussy truck.”  That didn’t earn me big points.  Clearly I was wrong about this, though, because trucks are trucks.  When we were dating and my nephew got to ride in it for the first time, his eyes lit up, full of little boy wonder, and said “You and Sawan have a TRUCK?!”

I drove it exactly once.  I told Sawan that I should drive it just in case I ever HAD to.  He agreed.  It had a bench seat, so bringing it to where I could *almost* reach the pedals put his knees by his ears.  (I’m 5’2”).  Also, he was pretty much the only one that had ever driven it, so it had a permanent indention of his butt.  This gave it a sort of “sunken in” shape that made it very difficult for me to see over the steering wheel.  I drove it from the Safeway at Hampden and Logan to the nursery at SantaFe and Belleview.  A distance of 3.43 miles. 

This is why it was impossible for me to decide what to do with it.  I didn’t want to drive it anywhere.  I didn’t want to even get in it again.  I had opened it to get something out in the week or so after he died, but that was it.  Thinking about what to do with it was just paralyzing.  I knew I would have to clean it, and getting out the Fresca cans and coffee cups was just more than I knew how to deal with.  Plus, I had no idea what I would find behind the seat, and that was daunting, too (once I had been totally out of hangers for laundry and he moved the back seat for something, and there were probably about 40 plastic hangers back there.  He would carry his work shirt down to the truck on a hanger, and not wanting to wrinkle it, put it on in the parking lot at work, then stash the hanger behind the seat.).

So it sat in the parking lot across from the condo. 

On Friday, my friend who still lives in the condo building called and asked what I had finally decided to do with the truck.  Ummmm….Nothing, yet.  It was at this point that we both said bad words because we realized that it had been stolen. 

In some ways this feels like a good thing.  Now I don’t have to clean it.  I don’t have to decide what to do with it, someone else decided for me.  I’m also really sad, though.  It had a little bag hanging from the rearview mirror with a little rock fox in it.  And his emergency fly-rod and fishing kit were in there.  I would have liked to have had those.

So, goodbye, little truck.  You safely carried my man to the mountains for me so many times.  You carried our lives around in your bed.  We fell in love in your cab.  Thank you for being so good to us.