First Pitch

I got a call yesterday that I could never have imagined... Coach Hadra invited me to throw out the first pitch at tonight's VMI baseball game. The Southern Conference is supporting Pete Frates' Strike Out ALS in all their games this weekend; I even got a mention in the press release.

May is ALS Awareness month, and I have been trying to figure out what to say. It deserves more than one post, so tonight it'll be the dichotomy that ALS brought into my life.

I know this is a theme through so many of my posts and Tony's. ALS gave me some of the worst moments in my life, and also some of the best. I continue to drone on about it because it has been the most unexpected part. And it's also where the greatest lesson lies.

The best moments in life often come out of nowhere. (Of course, so do the worst moments.) As I said, I never imagined in a million years I'd ever get to throw the first pitch at a baseball game. I jumped at the opportunity. It was beautiful evening at the stadium, and Coach Hadra and the team gave the girls and me a wonderful welcome. We hadn't met before, but he spent one year at VMI with Tony and we had a good chat during warm-ups. He even coached me through a few practice pitches.

Take us out to the ballgame

A little while later, I was headed out to the mound (technically the area right in front of the mound) and the girls were in the dugout cheering me on. I said a little thank you to Tony on the way, because I certainly wouldn't have been there without him. And then...

I'm pretty chuffed with myself. 

We stayed through the first three innings, saw three VMI home runs, and left with the Keydets comfortably in the lead. We drove home telling stories and cranking tunes with the wind in our hair. It was a golden evening. 

There is a much more famous widow telling people these days to "lean in to the suck." She's right. The "suck" sucks... but it can also lead you to moments bathed in pure joy. Embrace them both because it's all you've got. 

A huge thanks to Coach Hadra, Corey Bachman, the VMI Baseball players (I relished those high fives), and my small cheering section. It's a night I'll never forget!

Legacy

A wise man wrote that legacy is "planting seeds in a garden you never get to see."

Last night I spoke briefly at the VMI Men's Soccer senior banquet. In preparation for that, I thought back on what I had said at the last banquet, in October 2015. (Someone reminded me that this was actually the third banquet in a row I have spoken... how did that happen?) In 2015, I thanked the families for all their support and told them I would be working on some form of legacy for Tony at VMI. So, I was quite chuffed when I realized that task was complete. Not only is there a scholarship in Tony's name, but the new VMI coach (who never met Tony) named his coach's award after Tony. He promised that award would be there as long as he is, and hopefully beyond.

When I say that task is complete, I don't mean I am finished. But I took a moment to feel proud of myself and think about what I have accomplished. My annoying-ness is starting to pay off, and since it's one of my most prominent traits, I'll have to see what else I can accomplish with it!

Widow-lescence: Phase two

It was Sept 2015 when I first wrote about "widow-lescence," the process of coming back into the world after losing Tony. That was six months after he died.

A year and a half later, it's time for an update.

The first phase was piecing together the remaining parts of my life. I lost my best friend, and my biggest and most time consuming (by which I mean 24 hr) job, caring for him. That adjustment took awhile. Now, I feel much more settled in myself. I am taking better care of myself , I have a part-time job, and I even have fun new boots. Of course, that comes and goes, but I have a feeling that will last for the rest of my life, so I might as well get used to it.

So I'm ready for phase two, and I still see parallels with adolescence. I've figured out who I am (more or less), now I'm more ready for my life to begin (again). I remember this from before... where am I going to go to college? What will I major in? What kind of job will I have? Where will I live? When will I meet "the one"?

Thankfully, I don't have to go through all of that again! But it doesn't seem like teaching is in my immediate future... so what new job can I spin my (considerable, but ill defined) skills into? Should I break out of the small town I've lived in my whole life to find a fresh start? (How easy is it to move to Scotland?) As for "the (second) one"... this is driven by extreme loneliness, for sure. I'm ready for him to show up at my door, but not to try to find him through the morass of dating. Plus I have a ton of baggage, and he'd have super big shoes to fill. But I think it's only natural... I had incredible love in my life, why wouldn't I hope I could find and feel that again?

At this point, it's all just the daydreams of a 38 year old widow-lescent who uses parentheses too much.

Extended Family

They say you don't get to pick your family. I suppose that's literally true, but it has not been my experience.

We are lucky enough to have a big extended family... the kind of family we have picked, or more accurately... who have picked us. They are some incredible people and I am so grateful for them.

We took a little trip in the week between Christmas and New Year's to visit a few families we know through VMI soccer. We had a great time, and everyone was incredibly welcoming. These aren't people we see or talk to that often, but that didn't seem to matter at all. At every stop of the trip, we couldn't wait to get there, and then were reluctant to leave.

More than once recently, I have had a period of feeling alone and lonely. Just as I have been sliding into that feeling, my extended family has magically appeared... so randomly that it hardly seems possible. I was at a gas station two hours away and feeling dreadful, and then three of my favorite people showed up. It was odd, but the timing was incredibly fortunate. The universe reached out to prop me up.

Before ALS entered our lives, Tony and I were mainly home bodies. We didn't go out much because we were happiest in the little world we had made together. But as Maria von Trapp said, "when God closes a door, somewhere he opens a window." Our little world got a lot smaller when Tony left, but our extended family had grown so much.

My point is here somewhere...

When we got home from our trip last week, I was feeling very down. One of those unexplained mood swings that I just couldn't figure out. Two days later, I got an email from one of the families we had just visited. They wrote, "You make Coach Tony so proud of how you are raising such beautiful, loving and well adjusted young ladies!" Again, the timing was impeccable and the words meant the world. 

To our extended family: thank you so much for picking us, thanks for always being so welcoming, and thanks for propping me up when I need it most. 

To our flesh and blood family: I hope you know that the only way I could explain how important you are is with a large amount of alcohol, and an equally large amount of tissues. 

I love you all. Thank you.

Making Room

Life is a series of transitions. The latest in mine is that my mom sold the house we grew up in, and moved in with us while her new house is being built. 

We started cleaning out her house in April, but there was a big push in the last few weeks to get it done. During that process, I was also cleaning out my house to get ready for her. I still have loads of Tony's stuff. Apparently, I am getting rid of it in shifts. It started a few weeks after he died, but I've gotten rid of more two or three times since then. Right now, I'm down to my favorite dress shirts of his, the khakis that looked awesome on his ass, some of his tshirts, etc. I was really befuddled over the baseball hats. I know I must have gotten rid of some before... why did I still have the hat from the local butcher shop? It didn't survive this round. 

There were other ones I kept: the Notre Dame hat he loved because it could pass as a Celtic hat, the black hat he personalized with an Army Ranger patch given to him by a family member. No one will ever wear them again, keeping them is totally illogical. I'm just not ready to part with them. 

I gave my mom the master suite, and moved back into our spare bedroom. It was our bedroom when the girls were little, because I didn't want to walk across the house in the middle of the night all the time. We were super excited when we first moved into our remodeled master suite... the first time we had one. It was wheelchair accessible because we knew we would need that. Maybe a strange thing to be excited about. 

Redecorating the spare bedroom (now my room) has been fun. I'm not done hanging pictures, but it's getting there. It feels like my room. I wondered (as I do often) if I was being disloyal by wanting my own room (not a room that Tony and I decorated together). It's hard to change things without him, and I question it all the time. But living in that room that we shared together wears on me too. This feels like a fresh start, and it is. And when my mom moves out, I can return to our master suite and make it my own. It's a circuitous route to change, but a much easier one. I'll even make a place for those baseball hats.