2017.16 Say their names

So here it is the 22nd of December. I am on day what? 16.  So a week behind. But I am not not giving up yet.

Today is Jay Kopp’s Bday.  He would be 39 if he had not ended his life last December. I know many of his friends gathered a few weeks back on the anniversary of that day to honor and remember him.  I remember Jay all the time, but I could not bring myself to celebrate that day.

This brings us here.  Around Thanksgiving my friend Jennifer Owen Hill shared this saying on FB about three deaths, and the final death is when a person’s name is spoken for the last time.  I think about that. Often. 

When I decorated for the party last year, I put out ‘reserved’ cards for those that I had lost in the months leading up the party as a way to honor them and remember them and to say that even without their physical presence, I have not forgotten them. 

This year’s decorations included picture frames.  Initially I had planned to put pictures of the many guests and loved ones who once attended our party, (or intended to) and are no longer with us.  As I ran out of time I came up with this alternative.  I actually liked it better than I had planned. 

It hurts that there are so many people who we loved and who are gone.  It hurts that unfortunately the list can only get longer the longer we have the party.  It hurts, but I do not want to be the one who says these names for the last time, so I am saying them and I plan to continue saying them.

Jane Rogers Meeks

 Jay Kopp

Chris Young

Jan Kinkade

Mike Sutton

Stephanie Dunaway Forrest

Amanda Rohn

Ann Hankins

Geraldine Black

2017.3 Geraldine

Today marks a year since my sister-in-law's sister Geraldine Black died, completely unexpectedly.  If you don't know how awful that was or how it impacted me, and my family, feel free to read last years blog entries.  In honor of this sad anniversary, my sister-in-law Rebecca Kinkade-Black wrote today's blog entry.  It is perfect.

If I were to make a “Best of Christmas” reel almost all of those memories would include my sister. My sister loved Christmas. I think she loved it because it is a time of generosity and giving, which embodies the type of person she was every single day of her life. Also, my sister loved her some bling.  

I remember some of my earliest memories of my sister showing me how to decorate the tree. She was always patient, but very detail oriented. I wanted to speed through the process to see the final product, but not my sister. She showed me how to evenly distribute the lights and how to drape the tinsel in small quantities so the tree would sparkle. The tinseling process took a lot of time with her method, but she relished in the process and the final product was always magnificent.

My sister especially loved to play Santa at Christmas dinner. Every year all of my maternal grandparents’ children and their children would come together to eat and open gifts on Christmas day. My sister would don the requisite Santa hat and hand out the gifts from under the tree. Sometimes there would be hundreds, but she was jovial all the way to the last one.

After presents were opened, we would play bingo for prizes, and my sister kept everyone laughing with her jokes and razzing. Seriously, every time she entered a room the noise level jumped and she would make someone laugh within the first 30 seconds of her arrival. She also made everyone angry during the Bingo segment because she would go home with half the prizes because she was so lucky at the game.

Back to the topic of Santa, she wasn’t only Santa handing out gifts she was also my Santa. Unknown to me, until I was about 9, my sister was the one who stuffed my stocking with goodies and gifts to be found Christmas morning. I still remember finding out my sister was Santa. One night, when I was about 9, I heard my parents call my sister, after I had gone to bed, to ask if she was going to bring the items to stuff my stocking. I never revealed to her I knew her secret identity and she continued to fill my stockings every year unabated until I was about 23. In fact, when I met Juliet and she moved in with us, my sister filled her stocking too. All my best presents came from her and my most treasured is a stuffed animal I named Sprinkles. I got him when I was five and we have been inseparable since. I hug him now and think of my sister and the greatness of her love for me.

 As we close in on the one year mark of my sister’s passing I think of what a gift it was to have her as my big sister and I feel gratitude for having her in my life for 34 years more than most people got with her. Though she is physically gone from this earth her spirit of generosity, selflessness, kindness, humor and all around wonderfulness reverberates through all the people she touched from acquaintances, to friends and family. The sentiment I heard most in those first awful days last year was she never met a stranger and she treated everyone like her best friend. She was my best friend, my protector, my constant. The void left by her passing is huge, but that void is continually being filled little by little when people share the ways she touched their lives. As long as memories of her live so will my sister. 

Day Twenty Two 2016

Christmas 2016

RIP George Michael

Day Eighteen 2016

For a minute there I had a plan, 2 blog entries a day till Christmas and I was all caught up, but then we got home late last night and I fell asleep instead of blogging.  Oh well, what are you going to do?  I think I have said it before, I was better at this when I could blog at work.

So what makes  me merry?  What little joy am I holding on to today?  Yesterday was Jay’s birthday.  

Yes I know, two of my three Jay’s have December birthdays. It’s a little odd.  So yesterday people were posting on his facebook about his first birthday in heaven and having a party up there with the angels. 

I can’t, you know?  I mean, I am ok with people having their own beliefs, but the image of Jay tying one on up in heaven seems pretty incongruous.

Then I opened up instagram and there were pictures of Jay’s son and step daughter decorating the house with their mom.  Just trimming the tree in a normal way, together, as a family. That made me smile.  Not that they were ignoring their loss or anything like that, but just that, for a few minutes, or an hour, they had some joy.

*** 2 things.  First I wrote this last night, and thought I had posted it, but it appears I did not. And secondly, I am not cyber stalking Jay’s family, even though it seems like it.  

Day Fifteen 2016

Tonight I am posting the best part of the party, no not the fabulous decorations, or the amazing food, but our guests, our friends who braved the cold to come out and see us.

From the very first year, where I wore sweats and sat on the floor wrapping presents, the party has been about inviting our friends into our home, (or in recent years, into the fireman’s hall) during the busy holiday season to relax and catch up.

I fully realize the irony in that because it has grown slightly out of control and we probably have too many guests to actually catch up with all of them, but when we make the list, it is so hard to take people off. (Even when people have irritated me, I am hard-pressed to take them off the list).

Some people asked about the reserved signs this year.  I have written about the loss of several friends this holiday season.  One of the last conversations I had with Jay was the first week of December and he said he wanted to try and make it to the party this year.  That and Geraldine and Becca’s conversation about just jumping in the car and driving in for the party made me want to honor that in some way, show that while my friends and family may be gone, they are not forgotten and I am honoring their presence in my life

Chris Young & Jay Kopp

Christopher Kinkade

Geraldine Black

Day Eight 2016

I am not alright. I said I was struggling this month and today I am not OK.  Today they buried my friend Jay.  Sometimes I call him Okie Jay, or BJ, to differentiate from Texas Jay, or the Jay that was my roommate at OBU. 

I knew this crazy dude for 20 years, then he went and ended his own life a week ago, and I am not even close to being alright.  Once again I find myself explaining that of course there are people who are probably mourning him more that I am, his parents, his son, his family, his former loves.  By all accounts tonight his best friend was in pretty bad shape.  However, while all that is true, I am not OK with him being gone.

He once called me his mentor and said I taught him everything he knew about sales.  That is flattering because that boy could sell a hairbrush to a bald man and had a personality that could fill a room.  Have you any idea how hard it is to say goodbye to that?

Some people at the Remembrance and at the after party were angry with him, and some people are looking for someone to blame, or trying to find an explanation why.  I think everyone was thinking if he had just called… So many people loved him, and this is unbearable.

So what is my big holiday take away?  How do I make this merry?  I don’t.

There is this quote from The Little Prince that I like

And there is this, that I got from Texas Jay.

I will miss my friend, and I will never forget him.

Denver 2011

Day Two, 2016

I’ve written before that there are years I can’t write about, years that are full of memories more bitter than sweet, or too painful to put into words.  What I am learning is that it may be that those years outnumber the other years.  Here is the thing, you never know, not one moment in advance, when your life is going to change. 

Saturday morning Kathleen was signed up to sell fudge at the Bethany Elementary School  Craft Fair.  The boys had Saturday school, so I helped Kat load in and set up.  Once she was situated I ran out to grab Sonic for breakfast. While at the Sonic I got a text from my sister Juliet letting me know that her sister in law Geraldine had passed away that morning. Just like that.

No matter how many times I experience that shock, that moment when the entire universe shifts, that moment when your life is split into before and after, I am never prepared for it.  Geraldine is not my family in the traditional sense of the word.  She is the sister of my sister-in-law.  We always said this made us outlaws.  I have known her for 12 years; she has joined my Kinkade family for holidays, baby showers, weddings and graduations.  Ger made the best fry bread I have ever eaten, and told the most hilariously inappropriate jokes.  She made fun me trying to say snow and potato in Navajo.  She laughed with my boys, and at my boys.  Those are the things family does, and that makes her family in my book.

I cried in the car, because a kind person, who loved to laugh, who loved her family is gone, and there is no help for that.  I cried because that is not fair.  I cried because I know too well how hard this is.  I remember watching Kat go through this same loss when her sister passed.  I don’t want that for Becca.  I remember how helpless I felt as my wife went through the worst possible experience that she could imagine.  I don’t want that for my sister Juliet.

I know that there are no words that can make this ok for them, or for the rest of Ger’s family and friends.  I wish that there were. 

I know this is a busy time of year.  So many people are rushing from one activity to the next; parties, church, holiday concerts and performances.  I don’t want to dampen other people’s holidays.  I am not trying to make this about me, or take away anyone else’s joy.  All I would ask, is that in the middle of all the busyness this season offers, that you take a moment to love your loved one, to appreciate your friends and family.  Be in that moment, because it is something you won’t get back.

Blue Christmas

Sometimes I miss my mom so much my heart aches.  Mostly I am fine, and I have many good memories and I share them and I am fine. But sometimes, like tonight it sneaks up on me and I am not fine.

Tonight started off well enough, cookie sampler social at church, then a candlelit family service. I enjoyed seeing so many familiar friendly faces.  Then we went to my in-laws for a traditional red & green enchilada dinner. A coworker joined us and that was nice. Then after dinner was over we headed home.

Then I saw my friend Texas Jay posted a lovely tribute to his mom on FB and I teared up, couldn’t help it, although I tried. Then my sister Jenni was texting me, and she is really missing my Mom tonight and that was pretty much it. I have been crying on and off since then.  

Here is the thing. I miss her so much that it hurts me sometimes.  She might not have been the best mom, but she was the best mom for me.  It does not feel fair that she has been gone so long, and that so much has happened that she missed. And why tonight? Why Christmas eve when I should be wrapping presents or drinking eggnog or kissing Kathleen under some mistletoe.  I really don’t have those answers.

So I went looking for a picture of my Mom and Jenni and I to share.  I can’t really find the one I want, and mostly I think that is because all my photo albums are still in Colorado, instead I found this picture.  I like this picture because of what you don’t know.  My Mom had come to Oklahoma to see us and while she was here she decided she needed to get her hair trimmed. So I made her an appointment with the woman who cut my hair, who tried to persuade my mom to cut her hair short.  My mom declined, having had short hair for years.  And so my mom got what she later referred to as big Texas hair.  It was big, and blow dried, and teased and back combed and really really big.  You can’t see it in this picture because of course she went home and brushed all the product out of her hair and did her best to make it look like normal person hair.

That mental image of my mom with great big Texas church lady hair is what I am holding on to tonight, what is bringing me my cheer tonight.

Merry Christmas.  Do me a favor? Love each other. 

Another Year

In 2013 I shared this, which was basically a repost of what I had said in 2012. 

Am I going to have to do this every year?  Today in San Bernardino CA, and other places across the world, there are families mourning the loss of their loved ones.  I hate that.

I keep trying to find words to express how this continued waste of human life makes me feel, how it is not ok that we live in a world where human life is worth so little and I’ve got nothing.

So here we are again. 

Love your family. Thank God that they are still alive.

Goodnight

Day 11. Texas Jay

I am telling you right now that I wasn't sure if I would be able to post this or not.  I have mentioned my friend Texas Jay before.  His name is Jay and he lives in Texas. (In case you are slow to learn and didn’t figure that from his moniker).  What can I say about Jay?  Kat calls him a small tall man. He is meticulous in his choice of stationary. My Matthew grew up thinking Jay owns Texas Roadhouse. He loves me more than his luggage.  I call him for fashion advice when I am shopping.

one does want a spot of color

I have been friends with Jay since 1999, but I haven’t actually met him in person.  He is a very good friend and today is his birthday.  I think he is turning 56 if my math is correct. ~smirk

AARP poster boy

I am blessed beyond words to have Jay as my friend.  In addition to wishing Jay birthday wishes I have been praying for Jay often this holiday season.  His mother passed away in November.  I know how difficult that loss is, and I grieve for my friend to have lost the one person to whom he was the sun and the moon.

Here in the midst of the holiday season, feeling the loss of a loved one, you have to wonder what advice do you give to help him? Do you decorate and go to parties and all that as though the person was still here?  Do you boycott everything festive because it hurts too much?  My first Christmas without my mom was also my Matthew’s first Christmas and I struggled between the extreme of doing too much and not wanting to do anything at all.  My Mother had often told me when I was thirsty to have a drink of water; meaning feel the feelings I was having in the moment, and embrace it.  When I missed her terribly, I could hear her saying “I know” and it sustained me.

So today on Jay’s birthday my message to him is the same his mother’s daily message to him “"be careful, have a safe day, eat something, call me when you can. I love you"

Consuelo Gomez Torres

Day 10. Little bit of backstory

I am working on an entry for the 11^th but there is so much back story that it is going to take 2 entries.  So consider this back story and necessary to the advancement of the plot.  So this is COMPLETELY not the Phantom Menace of my blog. 

When I was in college my Mom was very involved with social justice causes in Tucson AZ, and one of the ones close to her heart was the plight of the homeless.  There were so many homeless people living on the streets in Tucson, some sent there from other states by city officials to clean up their cities homeless problems.  My Mom organized the parents of her school to provided food for the Casa Maria, she volunteered some nights when the church provided emergency shelter for the homeless when the temperatures dropped below freezing, and annually she camped out at the capital on Christmas eve as part of a big demonstration to remind those in power that Jesus was homeless himself when he was born.

In addition to these traditional ways of showing support for the homeless community my Mom also participated in a few civil disobedience protests that had to potential to get her arrested.  One year, December 1989, the Homeless Coalition broke into a vacant house that was in the university/downtown area and claimed it as a homeless shelter.  The home was owned by the city, had been vacant for years and had running utilities.  The point of the demonstration was to let the people of Tucson know that the city owned dozens of homes like this that were not being used for anything, so the argument that there was no funding to provide temporary housing for families in crisis, and nowhere to house them was something of a misrepresentation.  Since the protest was over Christmas break I was there with my Mom. 

Mostly the protest consisted of standing around outside in the cold listening to speeches and then later going in the house where it was warm and having a cup of warm apple cider and then going home.  All in all, it was a relatively minor event in my history.

In December 2000 I was back in Tucson with my Mom for a surgery that was supposed to be for an ovarian cyst but turned out to be cancer.  A few days before the surgery we were driving around town and happened to drive past that house where the protest was held.  I said to my Mom “Hey was that…” and before I could even really formulate the rest of the question she said “Yes it was”.  Then she said words that stick with me, even today.  She said “I know, remember that Jud, I know”.

The summer of 2001 when I was in Tucson after she passed away I’d drive by that house and I’d hear her say that “I Know”.  When I miss her and I want to call her and talk to her I hear her say “I Know”.  At Christmas when I sing the wrong Joy to the World like she did, I hear her say “I Know”.  Most of all when I want to show her how amazing my sons are and how proud of them she would be I hear her say “I Know”

Do me a favor? Love your Mama for me.