Category Archives: Grief & Loss

Dear Kurt…

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Hey, buddy,

What’s up? Why aren’t you answering your phone?

Man, I really need you to call me back. You wouldn’t believe the crazy rumors going around about you. It’s the wildest story. But I know it can’t be true. Because we’re young, and have our whole lives ahead of us… and… well, yeah. Like I said, it’s just a crazy rumor.

I was looking through old pictures the other day, and I was thinking about all the times we’ve had.

All those late night band bus rides and singalongs.

Nights at the lake.

The day you showed up on my doorstep after we moved out of Bedford, when I was pregnant and feeling lost and like I didn’t have a friend in the world. You were there when no one else was.

When you showed up at the hospital the day my son was born. Such the gentle giant, snuggling my tiny, six pound baby on your chest.

Carrying my son down the aisle when I got married.

Teaching that growing baby to bang on the djembe.

The night your first daughter was born.

And the day your second daughter was born.

The night you called me when you found out I was getting divorced.

The night you called me to tell me you were getting divorced.

All those times you helped me move.

All those times you crashed on my couch when you had early meetings after a night shift at work.

All those bonfires. And late nights. And country cruising. And sipping beers out of sippy cups.

And so. Much. Laughter.

I can always count on you. You always show up. You always call when you know I’m down. I love how you make me laugh in my lowest moments. I love how much you love my son. You are the most amazing father to those girls, and the best uncle to Garrett* and James* and Ray* and all of our kids. We’re all so lucky to have you around.

Can you believe we’ve all been friends for two dozen years?! I can’t even believe we’re that old.

You and Ben are the big brothers I never had. I hope you know that.

Well, it’s getting late, so I’d better say so long for now.

But… call me back, okay?

*******************************************************************

Justin Kurt Todd
06 April 1981 – 10 December 2019

Where were you?

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Where were you that day?

I’ll never forget… I was watching cartoons with my younger cousin Reed at my aunt’s house. Normally my grandparents watched him, but my grandfather was recovering from surgery, so I had taken a few days off work to go help out. Back then, Reed was obsessed with Bob the Builder, and we were still watching on VHS tapes. Around 9:00am, one movie had ended and I took it out of the vcr to change tapes. Through the static on the screen, at first I thought I was seeing some awful movie. Suddenly, the realization came over me that it was not a movie but the news.

And then… the second plane…

How little did we realize in that moment how much the world was about to change forever?

I distinctly recall the difference in existence before and after that day. All innocence that I had vanished. This was different from Kosovo or East Berlin or the Persian Gulf of the 1990’s… this was something bigger. Something scarier. I had never watched the news so much in my life before that day, but spent the next several days glued to CNN, unable to tear my eyes away. Fearful… we don’t live far from a large military munitions base; were we still safe here, despite being far from a big city? Working at the church, I spent hours getting in touch with parishioners and families who were living out of state, including one whose husband was in the Washington Navy Yard that day. All were safe. I didn’t lose anyone that I was personally close to. And yet, the loss lingers… it makes my throat close up any time I spend too long a moment in thought of it.

Seventeen years ago, I didn’t know Antonio. He was here in the States by then, but he was in college and our paths hadn’t crossed yet. Back then, he hadn’t even finished his private pilot license, but he was well on his way. Today, seventeen years later, I can’t help but feel a more profound sense of trepidation over what that day meant for aviation families.

That morning, 8 pilots and 25 flight attendants headed out for an early report. They called their final cross-check and taxied out for the last time. Those flight crews never made it home.

I deliberately try to avoid thinking about everything that can go wrong when Antonio is flying at 35,000 feet. As a pilot’s partner, as the granddaughter of a pilot, as the friend of an FA, I know how (relatively) safe the sky is. I roll my eyes along with other passengers at the ridiculousness of TSA sometimes as we stand in line to remove our shoes or throw out the coffee we haven’t had time to finish yet. The anthropologist in me balks at the racial profiling, just as Antonio – as a Latino – tries to ignore the stares he gets in airports sometimes as a “brown” man in a pilot’s uniform.

But sometimes, if I let myself think about it… in the pit of my stomach, I am grateful.

Because the pilot-wife in me wants bags searched. Wants the extra scans. Wants everyone to have to remove their shoes and open their laptops.

Because the pilot-wife in me wants my pilot to come home.

What happened on 9/11 will probably never happen again. The world learned a tragic and immeasurably catastrophic lesson that day. And yet… never again will we ever say “that could never happen”. Because that day, it did.

Muñeco de Año Nuevo – Good Riddance to 2017

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I don’t know about the rest of you, but around here 2017 was pretty much a dumpster fire.

Oh, don’t get me wrong… there were some good moments. I’m finally in my senior year. My fibro pain is mostly under control. I was able to travel a bit – went to Denver twice and Miami & Key West once. My pilot Antonio and I are better than ever. The Munchkin is doing better than ever. The year in politics has made an activist out of me.

But also… egad. We lost my grandfather in August. My sister’s 14yo Pug (who was basically like my niece with fur) died right before Christmas. I spent the first half of the year in a custody battle with my ex-husband and the second half just trying to not hate him and his nasty emails. And don’t even get me started on what’s happening in this country with regard to politics, equality, and social justice…

So when Antonio suggested that we make a muñeco de Año Nuevo, it seemed like a pretty good idea.

Antonio, for those of you new to our story, is from Peru. And Peru is serious about their New Year’s traditions. REALLY serious. Much more so than here in the States. They have so many customs and traditions for the New Year that are meant to cast out last year’s bad and bring good luck for the new year, it’s mind-boggling to this Indiana girl. Some of them make sense – like going into the new year with money in your pockets, or wearing new clothes. Others, like lucky yellow underwear or hiding potatoes under the furniture, seem completely odd. But the one really big one – and I mean BIG – is the muñeco.

In English, we would call it an effigy. In Peru and other Latin American countries, the muñeco is a life-sized doll built to represent the outgoing year. You stuff old clothes with leaves, newspaper, etc. On scraps of paper, you write down the bad or negative things that happened that you don’t want to take into the new year with you, and stuff them inside the muñeco. Then on New Year’s Eve, the whole neighborhood goes out in the street and lights this life-sized doll on fire.

Out with the old and in with the new, right? Sounded good to me.

Since it was just the two of us this year, and because I live in the Midwest and not in a very culturally diverse subdivision, we decided to make just a small muñeco. We hit up the local Goodwill store for some tiny clothes, then stuffed and stapled and gave it a head. 

Disclaimer: In Latin America, it is very common for these muñecos to carry the face of a national figure, such as a Peruvian politician, so I’ve doctored these images a little. 

Around 11:30 tonight, in the FREEZING cold, we headed out to the back patio and set our little muñeco on fire. It didn’t take very long, but it felt pretty good to watch all the negative from this past year burn. Loss and illness and challenges… we’re not taking any of that into this new year with us.

As I look forward to graduation and Antonio’s career keeps growing, as we continue praying for those in this country that have less than we do, as we stand up for our neighbors who are discriminated against, let this new year bring peace and prosperity and good health.

Friends… Feliz Año Nuevo. Bonne Année. Happy New Year. Blessings and peace to you and yours in 2018 and beyond.

On Behalf of a Grateful Nation…

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Ed. Note: This piece was written both as catharsis on the loss of my grandfather, and as ethnographic research paper for Dr. Marvin Sterling‘s ANTH-E393 World Fiction and Cultural Anthropology class at Indiana University. It is both biographical and fictional. 

The sky is a brilliant blue. There’s a warm breeze drifting up over the hill from the river below. The beauty of this late summer day betrays the solemnity of such an occasion. I’ve always thought so. Some might complain about duty in the cold or rain or snow; to me, it always felt like the weather should match the mood. It’s as if the warmth of the sun is a slap in the face to a family in mourning.  Continue reading →

When grief shakes you into gratitude

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This week has been crazy.

Now, those of you close to me know that making a statement like that is akin to saying “the sky is blue”; my life has been some level of craziness for a couple of years now since I got the brilliant idea to buy a house and go back to school while raising an ASD kid on my own. Throw in fibro, a long-distance romance, work… you get the idea.

Spring semester started on Monday. But I missed my first three classes because Munchkin’s school was cancelled due to weather. I’ve just felt off-kilter ever since. I am my own slave driver sometimes (okay, most of the time), so I have been working all week at trying to tell myself to chill… but really I was walking a thin line between mindful awareness and just busy running, trying not to panic over feeling like I fell behind before the semester even started.

And then I opened Facebook.

Recently I haven’t been using social media nearly as much as usual. For the purposes of this post, the reasons aren’t important. But I just finished up replying to some professors and thought I’d scan the news. And that’s when I saw it.

Yesterday, a friend of mine lost her husband to cancer.

I met “Sadie” in high school. I always thought we sort of connected over our shared curly brown hair, and the fact that the two of us were some of the shortest girls in school. Sadie was actually slightly shorter than me, which is rare for me. Even though she was a year older, we had a couple of classes together. We reconnected on Facebook a couple years ago. I grinned when I saw her wedding pictures… “Jack” was a foot and a half taller than her! They were a totally adorable couple. I’ve watched with joy as they started a business together, built a house, and had a son.

I knew Jack was sick. I knew he was having a rough time with the chemo. I chatted with Sadie the other day to offer my help since they live nearby, and she sounded positive when she said she’d let me know.

And then…. this.

The details aren’t important. What’s important is that tonight, just down the road, someone I know – another mom who has been supportive to me, who is my age, who is raising a little boy – is now mourning the loss of her partner, her love, the father of her child. A little boy has lost his father. His father who is (was) the same age as my own partner, older by only a few days.

And now he’s gone.

My heart is aching for them. Though Sadie and I aren’t especially close, we’ve always had friends in common, and of course share the sisterhood of motherhood and the bond of a hometown. But having lost my own loved ones to cancer, to be a single mom of a little boy… I just can’t find words, can’t imagine such sorrow.

I don’t want to make this about me. The point I want to emphasize is this:

Sometimes, when you’re least expecting it, something happens to force you to reframe your perspective. That reminds us to be grateful. As I mentioned to my pilot the other day, “Sometimes we have to learn to find peace in the chaos.”

Gifts don’t always come to us in the way we expect. I would do anything to ease Sadie’s grief tonight, but – even though I in no way want to diminish the enormity of their loss – I am feeling humbled by the reminder to not get so bogged down in my own mess. That somewhere someone is hurting. That I should focus more on the blessings than my physical limitations. That maybe the best way to stop being wrapped up in self is to think first of others.

Tonight… be grateful. Reach out to someone in need of comfort. Hold your loved ones close.

And please… offer up a thought or prayer for Sadie and her son. Right now, and in the days to come, they are going to need “the village”.

When a teacher passes on

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Sometimes you meet someone who leaves an indelible mark on your life. Who teaches you something you carry with you forever.

I’ve been blessed in my life to have met several such teachers. One of which was my childhood priest, Father Ron.

I’ll never forget the first time I laid eyes on him… this larger-than-life Italian who drove into our small town on a Harley, wearing a leather jacket and smoking a pipe, shaking up everyone’s notion of what an Episcopal priest was “supposed” to look like. I was 7 years old… and his Pittsburgh-Italian accent, salt-and-pepper hair, love of photography, and complexity fascinated me even then. I used to cherish afternoons spent playing with his boys (the eldest the same age as me, the youngest the same age as my little sister) at the rectory, Saturday afternoons working around the parish hall, and spaghetti pitch-in dinners, watching him standing guard over his own made-from-scratch sauce until it was ‘perfecto’.

As I got older, I began to learn that behind that tough exterior was a deep and intelligent mind, a soul who truly understood both the struggles of humanity and the quest to connect to something higher. He taught me to question everything, to never accept the teachings of man without weighing it against what you know, the wisdom of your teachers, and the stirrings of that inner voice. He was a man who had stared hell in the face and carried on anyway… he was tenacious and compassionate. I have carried his lessons with me since childhood. Even now that I’m grown, he never seemed to change. He always seemed invincible. During my last visit, though too long ago, left me smiling at how he never changes… relaxed, sharp-witted, opinionated as ever. I have been trying to find some time to go down and visit again, to introduce Munchkin to the giant who had such an impact on me.

Sadly, Ron passed away from this world this week. As much as I am saddened, I know that his family is heartbroken. He was a loving father, husband, and grandpa. He was a wonderful teacher, listener, and friend… and the world is a little bit darker without him. Those of us who were lucky enough to have crossed paths with him are forever changed.

When someone who has such an impact on our lives passes on… when someone we felt was impervious becomes mortal… it leaves a hole. It doesn’t matter that as my life became busier and I moved away from my hometown that I no longer had the time to sit talking with him for hours. I could walk in the door at any time and it would feel like no time had passed at all. He was just that kind of guy. 

Ironically, I just ran into his youngest son out of the blue the other day. We talked for quite a while, reminiscing about our childhood memories, shadows of a time that was much easier… before tragedy struck their family more than once, before my parents divorced, before any of us grew up and had our children and started our own lives. We smiled, laughing over how Ron (now long-retired from the priesthood) never changed. He was as loud and opinionated and funny and stubborn as ever. A giant. Invincible. I told him to tell his dad I said hi, and that Munchkin and I would be down to visit soon. 

But sometimes ‘soon’ isn’t soon enough. 

Ron wasn’t one to dwell on “woulda, coulda, shoulda”. He would tell me not to be sorry for one second that I didn’t get to see him one more time. The last time we talked he told me how proud he was of me… of my photography (which meant a lot coming from him, a professional photographer before he became a priest), and of the way I was building a life for myself and raising my son. I guess that’s all I need to know, to carry in my heart. 

Still… I know that any time I catch the scent of pipe tobacco and freshly-stewing spaghetti sauce… I will think of him.

Rest easy, rabbi. You are loved.
*Vita mutatur, non tollitur.*

Me & Father Ron, when I graduated from high school. May 1999

Me & Father Ron, when I graduated from high school. May 1999