Month: August 2022

Your birthday is tomorrow. You would have been 59 years old. Most people were surprised when you told them how old you were. You never looked your age, even though you worked outdoors your whole life. You had a baby face and an eternal youth inside you. Maybe that’s one of the things that I loved about you from the moment I met you because I felt the same way myself. I’ve always said I’m 22 in my own mind, no matter what my chronological age is. They say that youth is a state of mind and I really do believe that.

I spent the last 36 birthday’s of your life with you. Tomorrow will the first one I won’t see you lying next to me in the bed and say “Happy birthday, Kenny! I love you!” when you first wake up, and then kiss you all over your face. I’ll still say it, but you won’t be here, at least not in the physical sense. I hope you can hear me up in Heaven in the clouds when I do say it. I hope you’ll catch the hugs and kisses I throw up there to you and send ones back down to me.

I can’t even remember what we did last year on your birthday. I don’t know if we went out to eat somewhere or if we stayed home. I can’t remember if I gave you a gift or a card because we didn’t always do that each holiday or birthday. Over the years gifts and cards became much less important than just being in one another’s presence. Gifts and cards are expendable. The memories of time spent together is where the real treasures lie at.

Some years on your birthday you went surfing at the beach. Paddling out into the ocean on a surfboard was something you loved to do since you were about 8 years old. The water was where you found your calm serenity. No other place on Earth did that for you. In the last ten years or so you hadn’t really done any surfing and I know you really missed it.

I told you many times that walking barefoot on the sand was a way to ground yourself and that’s something you really needed to do. I said so often that we needed to go walk barefoot on the beach together but we just never did. That’s one of my biggest regrets since you died–that we didn’t do that one thing that would have brought you so much peace and joy.

I wonder if your birthday in Heaven this year will be spent paddling out into the clear blue water on a surfboard? Will you sit on your board in quiet anticipation, waiting for the perfect wave to swell up behind you? When that waves comes, will you paddle as fast as you can and then hop up on your feet and ride it all the way to the shore? Will you hold your hand down into the water as your board carries you through the tube? Will you shake the water out of your thick, curly red hair like you always did when you came back up to the surface at the end of that ride? Will you repeat this same thing over and over again until sheer exhaustion takes over and your arms feel numb?

I’d like to think that Heaven is to each one of us what we perceived it to be while we were still alive–that it encompasses every minute aspect of what we truly loved to do in life. Whatever brought us joy and happiness is what our own personal Heaven has to be because one of the definitions of Heaven is “a place, state, or experience of supreme bliss“. Isn’t that what Heaven is? That’s what I’ve always heard it is.

Maybe every day in Heaven is your birthday. Maybe you surf in the vast ocean every single day up there and you live in an eternal state of peace and serenity like you did while you were surfing down here on Earth. Maybe that’s what birthday celebrations up in Heaven look like. I sure hope they do for you.

I’ve written about the stages of grief many times over the last 10 and a half months and how I go back and forth between them. I feel like I finally reached the stage of acceptance that Kenny is dead and he’s never coming back in the physical form a little over a month ago. But, even though I’ve accepted the fact that he’s dead I still bounce around all over the other stages.

One minute I’m so full of grief over his death that I can’t stop crying. The next minute something happens that I never had to do or take care of when he was alive and I’m full of anger and rage at him for dying. The whole process of this back and forth between the stages of grief is maddening. I feel like the steel ball inside a pinball machine ricocheting from one bumper to another. This pinging back and forth feels violent sometimes.

Most days the depression stage of grief is my constant companion. I may not always appear that way to others, but it’s definitely always there just under the surface. I had someone tell me this past week that I seemed like I was doing great in light of the fact that my husband had died. I told her point blank that most of that appearance of “doing great” is fake, and really, it is. I guess this is something that people who are in the grief process do–pretend to be happy and okay, when in reality they are not.

There are a lot of days when the anger stage of grief is front and center. I think that these days are just as bad as the depression stage days, or perhaps even worse. Anger is a strong emotion that can sometimes bring out the worst in a person and it certainly has in me on my anger days. I’ve screamed and yelled at Kenny for dying. I’ve cussed at him too, quite nastily I will add. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve screamed “Why did you fucking die and leave me here all alone??!!!” Of course when I have these moments I immediately feel the guilt stage of grief right afterwards because I don’t hate him, I love him, and I always will.

I had a lot of those angry days this week. My car battery was dead when I went to leave work on Tuesday and I had to call my daughter to come and jump it. As I sat in the car waiting for her I felt so low for having to depend on one of my kids to come and help me. I should be self-sufficient and not have to depend on anyone for anything, but I’m not. Since Kenny died I’ve had to depend on so many people to help me and it makes me feel one million times worse about the situation I’m in. It’s during these times when I’m the angriest at Kenny for dying.

When I went to get a new battery tonight at the auto store the man who put the new one in said to me, “There’s a whole lot of corrosion here” I told him, “Yes, I’m well aware of that, and that’s one thing my husband should have taken care of when he was alive but he’s dead, so…..” The man just looked at me. I think he was uncomfortable at the comment I made but it’s what came out of my mouth right at that moment.

As I stood there for over half an hour waiting for the man to replace my battery I thought about the times since Kenny died that I’ve been so angry at him for dying and leaving me. I couldn’t help it–the memories of all those times just flooded my brain and I couldn’t push them down no matter how hard I tried. I felt that anger boil right up to the surface, again.

I thought about how my inspection sticker had expired several years ago and the tires wouldn’t pass inspection. There was a broken stud on one of the wheels that Kenny just kept putting off getting fixed. The stud needed to be replaced before we got the tires replaced. Those two things needed to be taken care of for a few years but he just never got around to doing them. I was finally able to buy four new tires this year and had someone replace them for me.

I got the car inspected, too, but I did have to put up with the techs there trying to tell me I needed $1500 worth of stuff done on the car right away. They see a woman by herself and think they can take advantage of the fact that there is no man with her. I declined the $1500 worth of work, most of it being things that don’t need to be done now and them being grossly overpriced.

My car needed an oil change and got that done myself, too. The next thing I have to work on getting done is new brakes. I for sure won’t be getting the place that did the inspection to do that. I’ll probably buy the brake pads myself and pay someone the labor to put them on.

My angry days haven’t all been car related. There have been plenty of days when personal stuff has left me feeling full of despair, both at the situation itself and the fact that I have to go through it alone without Kenny here. I don’t have him here anymore for emotional support and it isn’t always easy to travel that particular road alone. Most days that one thing is very hard to do.

I had to walk into a courtroom all by myself in December, almost two months after Kenny died. I had to stand in front of the judge alone while the witness in my case lied under oath about what she heard the defendant say, even though she told me in front of my kids, on two different occasions in the two months after he died, that she did hear the defendant say it. I lost my case because of her lie but I did appeal it. I’ll have to go back to court alone again next year when that appeal is finally heard.

I’ve had to handle other personal things alone that Kenny would have been able to help with, even if that help was nothing more than letting me cry into his shirt as he hugged me and told me it would be okay. I think no longer having that one thing there is one of the hardest things to handle about him being gone. We all need a significant other who will be there for us in this exact way. When that person is ripped away from you there is no more alone feeling than that. It’s brutal.

I can’t stand the anger stage of grief. It drags you down into a dark pit you feel you can’t climb out of. The guilt that comes after the anger leaves you feeling emotionally drained. This whole thing is a vicious circle and I want off of this ride but I can’t, not quite yet. There’s still more emotional pain to process before that happens.

The cycle of life works exactly in this way–the end of one thing is always the birth of something else. Although that ending can be bittersweet, and often very painful, it has to come about so whatever is to come next can happen.

In the summer of 2001, Kenny and I bought a brand new Toyota 4-Runner. Years before we had driven a 1987 4-Runner I bought before we got married. After we sold the ’87 truck, we bought used vehicles. We were so happy to finally be able to buy something new instead of used, and this was the first new vehicle we had ever bought together.

Kenny picked the Dorado Gold colored truck out of the ones on the dealer’s lot. He liked that one better than the silver one. I drove the truck home with the kids and he drove our other SUV. I remember telling the kids that they were absolutely not allowed to put stickers on the window of this truck like they had done to the other vehicles.

We bought this new truck for me to drive as Kenny had his own for work. The booster seats went in for the kids and they filled the pockets on the back of the seats with books and toys. They each claimed their own side of the back seat; Kaitlin on the left, and Gage on the right. They were pretty excited to have a new truck to ride in.

We put a lot of happy miles on that truck. We made weekend trips to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, riding up the beach on the wet sand. I never did the driving on the beach because I was too scared to. Kenny always did as he had been driving on the beach in four wheel drive for years. I remember one time we were driving back late from Carova Beach and the tide was coming in. The water swirled around the tires and we were afraid we’d get swept out into the ocean. It was nerve wracking for me and the kids were scared and crying, but Kenny knew what he was doing and we made it back down the beach safely.

In 2004 we packed the back of that truck to the ceiling and drove it all the way to Disney World and back. We stopped in North Carolina on the way there to visit my sister and her husband and in Georgia on the way back to meet my uncle and his family. We were gone for 10 days and we had the best time. It was the only real family vacation we ever took.

I drove that truck to take the Girl Scout’s camping, with the back of it packed with all our supplies to survive a weekend in a cabin in the woods. There were other trips made to the Carolinas and Georgia for reunions and visits to family. That 4-Runner took us everywhere we needed to go and it did so faithfully.

In 2015 the transmission in Kenny’s Dodge Ram went out and we didn’t have the money to fix it. He sold it to a mechanic and started driving the 4-Runner. The back seats got folded down and he immediately filled up the back cargo area with all his tools. He pulled his work trailer with the Toyota, too. Kenny’s persona was all over that truck in no time and it was never really my truck again.

After Kenny died I was on the fence about selling the truck or keeping it. I finally decided to keep it just to have a second vehicle in case I needed it. Our son Gage eventually asked if he could have it and I told him that he could, because that’s what his dad had wanted. Kenny and Gage used to talk a lot about how they’d like to restore the Toyota back to its former glory. They sent pictures back and forth to each other on Instagram of 4-Runners that had been fixed up. Talking about that truck was a favorite subject of conversation between them and I think it helped the miles between them seem a little less than they really were.

Gage decided to have the truck shipped to him in Colorado on a car carrier. He wanted to have it looked at first to see what needed to be done to it mechanically. Gage had me drop the 4-Runner off at a mechanic who we trusted that had worked on it before. He said it would be an honor to look it over as he’d really liked Kenny a lot and he appreciated us giving him our business when he was first starting out. After I got the truck back I cleaned it out. There were so many random screws and nails tucked down in the side pockets of the doors that I had to be careful sticking my hands in them. I left a few things in the truck that I thought Gage might want. One was the personalized license plate we had on our first 4-Runner in 1993 that said KSAXTON on it. I told Gage he should hang it on his wall.

Gage made all the arrangements for the transport and when the day came for me to meet the car carrier to load the 4-Runner up it was so much harder than I had anticipated it would be. I left work and drove home to switch vehicles. As I got in Kenny’s truck I sat there for a minute and just let all the memories of us driving it over the last nearly 21 years flood into my head. The tears welled up in my eyes and spilled down my face. This was the end of an era for Kenny and me being the owners of this truck.

I started the engine and pulled out of the driveway. As I drove up the road I realized this would be the last time I drove it, at least here in Virginia. It would be the last time I’d breathe in the distinct smell of Kenny in it, a mixture of sweat and wood. When I finally do make it out to Colorado to see Gage that smell will be long gone. It’s a smell I wish I could bottle up and keep forever.

When I got to the parking lot to meet the car carrier my friend was already there waiting for me so she could give me a ride back. I got out of the truck and told the two men who were transporting it to Colorado that I was sorry but I was probably going to be very emotional about this. I was crying as I told them the truck belonged to my husband who had died months earlier, and that I was giving it to our son because that’s what his dad had wanted. They said they understood and that the truck was going to where it was supposed to go. I took pictures of the 4-Runner sitting there in the parking lot next to the car carrier so I’d remember what it looked like on the last day I saw it in Virginia. I got in the car with my friend and cried harder.

That almost 21 year old Toyota 4-Runner had over 198,000 miles on it when I handed it over to the transport people. Most vehicles would have been long dead by that time, but not our 4-Runner. Toyota’s are good, reliable trucks. Kenny knew this firsthand as he had driven the 1982 Toyota long bed 4-wheel drive truck he had when I met him in 1986 for nearly 275,000 miles.

It took two full days for those two men to drive that car carrier roughly 1800 miles across the country and deliver that truck into our son’s hands, the new owner. I worried the whole time that something would happen and it wouldn’t make it in one piece. Thankfully that didn’t happen and Gage took delivery of it on a Monday morning. He sent me pictures of it on the car carrier and later parked in his driveway.

The night before I drove the truck to meet the car carrier, I wrote Gage a letter. I reminded him of some of the great times we had in that truck and I told him of things to look forward to in the future. I tucked the letter in the glovebox for him to find when he got the 4-Runner in Colorado, when the birth of its new life there begins.

Dear Gage,

By the time you read this letter Dad’s truck will have made its way across the country to its new home with you in Colorado.  Dad and I had wanted for a long time to restore the 4-Runner and give it to you.  I think mostly it was Dad because I think there’s just something about a father wanting to pass his truck down to his son.  You having his truck would make Dad happy.  In all the sadness and grief we’ve all experienced in the last six months this is one thing I can do to make someone feel a little less sad. 

I hope every time you drive the truck you’ll remember all the good and happy times we spent in it as a family.  Driving back home the night we bought it and you and Kaitlin sitting in the back seat so excited to have a new truck.  The trips to the Outer Banks, to Sandbridge, to visit family members out of state, and the long drive we made to Disney World.  Driving on the beach in Corolla and almost getting stuck in the wet sand with the waters coming up to the tires. Driving to Gigi & Jesse’s house with River sitting in the seat between you and Kaitlin.  Short drives to Boy Scout and Girl Scout meetings.  Riding to baseball practice and watching you play baseball.  Driving to Busch Gardens.  Driving to Grandma & Papa’s house.  

I hope you’ll remember learning to drive first in the Toyota and then driving Dad’s Dodge Ram that was much bigger.  

I hope you know that every time you get in the driver’s seat to drive the truck that Dad will be riding in the passenger’s seat as your constant companion.  Every time you turn on the radio, he’ll be singing off key and making up his own words to the songs. Every time you open the hood to work on the engine, he’ll be standing next to you with his hand on your shoulder, telling you what he thinks needs to be done.  Every time you check the air in the tires, he’ll be telling you how much air to put in.  Every time you put it in 4-wheel drive he’ll be telling you that you have to be careful with it.  Every restoration you make to bring the Toyota back to its former glory, Dad will be right there helping you, just like a father does with the truck he hands down to his son. 

I wish this wasn’t the way Dad’s truck was being handed down to you.  I wish he was here to put the keys in your hand himself and tell you to take good care of his truck. I wish things were different but they’re not.  I wish at the very least I was able to be there in person to hand you the keys myself but that isn’t possible either.  

I hope you’ll love the Toyota just as much as me and Dad did.  I hope you’ll make your own happy memories in it like we did.  And if you have a son one day, I hope you’ll hand it down to him just as I’m handing it down to you……because that’s what Dad wanted.

I love you, always and forever…….and Dad does too,

Love, Mom

Gage sends me pictures and videos of the 4-Runner sometimes. I get to see the roads Kenny’s truck is now driving on and the breathtaking scenery of the Colorado mountains. In the video below I got to see our son’s hands on the steering wheel of his dad’s truck as he made his way up a dirt road towards the mountains. I cried when I saw that he left the business cards Kenny stuffed in the dash to cover up the light that always stays on. I told Gage this made me cry and he said he was never going to take those cards from where his dad put them so long ago.

Even though Kenny couldn’t drive that truck across the country to put the keys to it in our son’s hands himself, I know he’s up there in Heaven in the clouds looking down with a big smile on his face knowing that it’s right where he wanted it to be. Gage will make lots of new memories of his own in that truck as he drives it on the many adventures that lie in front of him, and Kenny will be with him on every single one of them.

I’ll eventually make it out to Colorado myself to see Gage and ride in the 4-Runner again. When I do, I’ll look over at our son sitting in the driver’s seat where his dad used to sit. It’ll be hard to stop the tears from rolling down my face as I see the next generation behind the wheel. I’ll be comforted though knowing Kenny will be riding in the backseat, singing off key and making up his own words to the song playing on the radio, just like he always did when he was here driving it himself.

Years ago when we were going through a very difficult time in our lives a good friend of ours came and helped when he didn’t have to. He had been a great source of spiritual help to our family before and we appreciated it very much. After this particular time, I told him I had no idea how we could ever repay him for his kindness, for this time and from the times prior. He said one thing to me “It’s reciprocal”.

I thought about those two words a lot over the years, both in terms of this friend and life in general. It’s one of those times when something someone says to you settles deep into your soul and leaves an indelible mark there. I told this friend last year that I had never forgotten what he said so long ago and how I thought about it a lot.

Last Sunday in church the pastor told us it was National Lighthouse Day. I never knew this was a thing, but why shouldn’t it be? We have National Day Of’s for every other thing in the world so why shouldn’t lighthouses have their own day of recognition?

He talked about how we should all serve as a lighthouse for others who need someone to be a shelter for them during their personal storms. As I sat in the back pew and listened to him speak my mind was taken back to those two words my friend had said to me……It’s reciprocal.

I rolled the pastor’s words and my friend’s words around in my head as I sat there. So many times over the years I felt like I was never the lighthouse, but instead the tiny battered ship lost in the turbulent storm in the dark sea, trying desperately to find safety upon the shore that I could not see.

I felt like I was always the one needing help navigating my way through my storms and never provided safe harbor for anyone who needed it themselves. Listening to the sermon made me see things from a little different perspective.

I realized that there were times over the years that I had indeed been a lighthouse for others who needed help finding their safe harbor. That safe harbor may not have been in the same form that people had provided to me but nonetheless, I had still been able to shine a light for others who really needed it.

I thought about the spiritual gifts test I took at church a long time ago and that my strongest spiritual gift was the gift of mercy. Someone who shows mercy is deeply compassionate and is drawn to those who are suffering. That describes me perfectly and people who are suffering seem to always find me. I’ve always said it’s like I have a flashing neon sign on my forehead that says “Come and tell me all your troubles”. Maybe that flashing neon sign isn’t really that at all, but instead the brightly shining beacon of a lighthouse throwing its light out to whoever needs help finding their way to the shore through the dark storm.

As I thought even more about all the things above, I realized that I was exactly who and what the Creator had made me to be…….someone who was both the battered ship and the lighthouse for those that needed someone to lead them out of their storm. I can be that lighthouse for those that need it because I’ve found my way to the shore by the lighthouses that helped me. It’s reciprocal……just like my good friend said to me so many years ago.

A few months ago I finally reached the point in my journey through grief where I was able to stop sleeping in the bed with the last three T-shirts he ever wore. I considered this a milestone in this journey I never wanted to take and thought the darkest days of the grief and trauma were finally behind me. The last few days slapped my face and let me know that wasn’t true.

They showed me that the forward and upward movement you make can be followed by falling backwards and backsliding to where you were before. I guess you spend so much time looking back at how far you’ve come that you don’t pay enough attention to the climb that’s still ahead of you. When you make that backwards fall it’s hard to find the strength inside you to get back up and try again. You really just want to lay there in defeat.

These are the kind of days where you get sucked back down into that dark and ugly pit that doesn’t seem to end. It feels like the part in Alice In Wonderland where she falls down into the rabbit hole and she just keeps falling and falling and falling. It seems endless.

These are the kind of days where the ocean looks so much more vast and you’d welcome it if it swallowed you up. There’s a quiet peace in the water and I understand why so many people find comfort floating in it with their ears below the surface. It’s so they don’t have to hear the roar of the bottomless pit of problems they face.

These are the kind of days where I feel your absence much more deeply. A few scattered successes of trying to make my way through life without you aren’t enough to quell the feelings of failure that creeped back in these last few days. Those feelings come with an ugly taunting and they want me to know they’re my overlord now. It’s hard to tell them they’re not.

I guess my subconscious mind and body knew this backslide was coming before my waking mind did. I didn’t realize until I looked at the calendar tonight that today’s the 9th. It’s been exactly ten months to the day since you were so cruelly and unexpectedly ripped out of our lives forever. I guess that’s the reason why I’m feeling this backslide so viscerally today.

I feel like I’m standing at a precipice here. I have two choices; I can lay there in the dark abyss and let it wholly consume me, or, I can crawl my way out of it with bloodied hands and knees already covered in ten months worth of scars. Both doors come with such raw pain and I’m not sure there’s a lesser evil here. Neither door is one I want to knock on but there’s not a third door to choose from.

The night after Kenny died, our grandson Emory came home from spending the night with relatives. We couldn’t take him with us to the hospital because we didn’t want him to see his Papa lying in a hospital bed with tubes all over him and machines hooked up everywhere. Emory would have been terribly traumatized from seeing that and he wouldn’t be able to understand why his Papa wouldn’t wake up. No child should ever have to see or experience that.

We didn’t tell Emory that night that his Papa had died or what happened to him. He had just turned 4 a few weeks before and there’s no way he’d be able to comprehend what death is and the circumstances that led up to it. Kaitlin and I had talked about how we’d tell Emory that Kenny died and we were at a loss as to what to say. As much as we were all hurting we knew Emory would hurt in a much different way because he was 4 and he loved his Papa so much. The two of them were extremely close and Emory’s world would never again be the same.

When Emory came in the house that night we were all sitting in the den. Emory instinctively knew something was different and not right. He sat on the floor with his mom and dad and didn’t talk as much as he usually does. At one point he said out of the blue, “Papa’s not here”. We were surprised at his comment as we hadn’t said anything about Kenny dying in front of him.

Kaitlin asked Emory, “Where do you think he’s at?” Emory’s answer was, “He disappeared in the dark”. She then asked him what was in the dark and he replied, “The trees”. He said these things so matter-of-factly and it really stunned us. We all just looked at each other and didn’t know what to say. This 4 year old child knew his Papa wasn’t there anymore. He knew this without anyone telling him.

So, we didn’t have to tell Emory that night that Kenny died. Instead, he told us from a 4 year-old’s perspective. Kenny essentially had “disappeared in the dark” and he wasn’t ever going to be coming back.

As the days turned into weeks Emory asked about his Papa quite frequently. He asked where he was and if he was coming back. Kaitlin decided to tell him that Kenny died and went to live up in the clouds in Heaven. Emory didn’t really understand this but he accepted this answer. He talked about Kenny a lot and said so many times that he wished that his Papa could come back down from Heaven in the clouds. When he said that, we would tell him that Papa couldn’t come back down here and that Heaven up in the clouds was his home now. The look on his face when we would tell him that was of a quiet hurt. I can’t even imagine what was going through his little mind when he heard those words.

Because Emory had just turned 4 when Kenny died I knew that realistically he’d only remember him through pictures and videos. Thank goodness I took a lot of them together, even though it annoyed Kenny when I took pictures of him. I would show Emory the pictures and videos often to keep Kenny’s memory fresh in his mind. Kaitlin also had a little pillow custom made with Kenny’s picture on it. Emory calls it his “Papa pillow” and he sleeps with it.

Emory has said on several occasions that he wished he could set a trap for his Papa to come back down here from Heaven in the clouds. He says it with such conviction and I know he believes it’s something that could work. In his 4 year-old mind that’s all it would take to get Kenny back. I wish it was that easy. My heart has shattered into a million tiny pieces each time he’s said this and I have to tell him that his Papa can’t come back down here, no matter how much we all want him to.

I decided to start a habit with Emory where we throw kisses up to Kenny in Heaven in the clouds. We catch the ones he throws down to us and we put them all over our faces. We then give ourselves a big hug and throw that up there, too. We catch the hug Kenny throws back down to us and hug ourselves tightly with it. Emory likes doing this and I hope it helps keep Kenny’s memory alive within him.

Sometimes when we’re driving in the car Emory will ask me, “Is that the cloud that Papa lives at up in Heaven?” We’ll look at the different clouds and try to decide which one could be Heaven. When I asked him last week which cloud in the sky he though Heaven was in he told me it was the biggest one up there and that the smaller clouds were too little to be Heaven. I asked him what he thought was in Heaven and he told me toy trains. I guess to him that playing with toy trains is what people do after they die and go to Heaven. That must be a 4 year olds version of what Heaven is.

When I was a little girl my grandmother told me that the rays of sun coming out from the clouds was how you got up to Heaven. She died when I was 8 and every time I would see the rays of sun coming out from the clouds I’d think to my child self If I could just get to those rays of the sun I could climb up to Heaven to see her. The Stairway to Heaven is right there in front of us all, if only we could get to it.

Yesterday when I was driving to Wegmans to get a pizza for dinner like Kenny and I used to do for dinner dates, I looked up in the sky and saw the most brilliant cloud that had rays of light radiating up from behind it. Those beams of light from the sun shot out of the top of the cloud and reached upwards like the light from a lamp does shining up to the ceiling. The edges of the cloud were so bright it looked like it was electrified.

I was awe struck by this cloud and I just could not look away from it. It’s the kind of cloud you expect to hear angels blowing trumpets from. I took several pictures of it so I’d never forget how beautiful it was. I decided that this must be the cloud that Kenny lives in up in Heaven. This must be the one where Heaven is.

As I stared at this cloud and knew it was the very one where Heaven is at, and that’s where Kenny is, I realized it wasn’t an accident that I was seeing it right at that moment. Kenny was letting me know that he was still here with me and he’d be there for our dinner date, if only in spirit.

Kenny and used to go on dinner date nights at Wegmans. We would order a large pepperoni pizza and sit in the cafe part of the store and eat, and then grocery shop afterwards. We’d sit there eating our pizza for a long time, talking about everything and nothing important, all at the same time.

We would also go on dinner dates to get a hamburger and fries at Five Guys and sit in the car in the parking lot and eat it. We’d take our own drinks so we didn’t have to buy the overpriced ones there and I’d also bring our own cloth dinner napkins. I took the Celtic sea salt we use, too, because it’s better for you than the table salt they put in the bag with your food. They have the best french fries there and everyone knows that good salt makes french fries taste even better.

Sometimes we’d have our dinner date in the parking lot of Panera. Kenny would get his usual chicken salad sandwich and broccoli cheddar soup and always spill it on his shirt. He never listened to me when I told him to tuck a napkin in his collar to avoid that. I’d get a big Asian sesame salad with chicken and we’d pass it back and forth in the car to each other to share. He’d complain about how expensive Panera was for “just sandwiches” and say every single time how much he disliked their “hard ass bread” (his words, not mine). It’s funny though, he ate every bit of that hard ass bread every single time.

On other occasions, we’d get ice cream at Coldstone and sit in the car and eat it. We’d park two rows back from the building and watch everyone that came and went because Kenny and I were both people watchers. There was a Subway sandwich shop, Chinese take-out, and a nail salon and massage parlor in the same strip. We’d try and guess which place the people that pulled in the parking lot were going to. Sometimes we’d call our son who lives out of state and talk to him while we ate our ice cream and people watched. When Gage was here after Kenny died, he suggested we go and get ice cream and sit in the parking lot to people watch, just like his dad and I used to do. We did, and it made me happy and sad all at the same time.

As silly as it sounds going on a dinner date to a grocery store to eat pizza or to sit in your car of the parking lot of a restaurant to eat, it was one of mine and Kenny’s favorite things to do together. We really looked forward to it. Over the years it became less important where we went and more important that we just spent time together. We didn’t need anything fancy or expensive to have a nice night out together. We just needed each other, wherever that may be at.

I came to Wegmans to sit in the cafe and eat pizza tonight for the first time since Kenny died. I ordered a small pizza since he’s no longer here to eat twice as much as I do. To say it makes me terribly sad to sit here by myself is such an understatement. There’s an empty hole where his existence used to be. I miss having him across the table from me to talk to. I miss looking at his face that somehow managed to stay so young looking, even after spending his whole life working outdoors in the sun. I miss hearing his voice and the distinctive chuckle-laugh he had. I miss watching him eat his food so fast like he always did, and me telling him to slow down so he didn’t get heartburn. I miss every single thing about our dinner dates together.

I didn’t people watch tonight at Wegmans. I sat at the table in silence while I ate my little pizza alone. I didn’t really know what to do with myself so I sat at the table and wrote this whole blog post on my phone about how I miss having dinner dates at a grocery store and in parking lots with Kenny. I cried some too while I was writing it and hoped no one saw me wiping the tears from my eyes with the brown paper napkins. I cried because Kenny has been gone for nearly 10 months now and it still hurts like absolute hell not having him here.