All The Feels

The weather on Friday was beautiful.  Close to 70 degrees, sunny, warm and no breeze.  Both Hannah and Jacob were working Friday night, so it was just me for party pizza Friday.  I decided to eat outside on the front deck, and brought the dogs out there with me.  I turned my Spotify on a radio station I’d never listened to before.  I was eating my pizza, alone, with a Frank Sinatra song came on the radio.  Here I was sitting across an empty chair and I suddenly felt all alone.  This is what Tony and I did.  He was a home body by nature, so he never wanted to go out on a Friday night, so as soon as the weather changed, that’s where you would find us, sitting outside.

Now, I have plenty of people to do something with, but when you lose your spouse, you suddenly lose the person you did nothing with.  If that makes any sense.  And by nothing I mean sitting outside until the sun set, or watching mindless t.v. together or watching a White Sox game on t.v.  All those things aren’t the same when you are by yourself.  And then on Saturday morning I woke up and saw this text from him from my Timehop.

I miss the banter we had back and forth, and I suddenly realized I don’t have any texts on my new phone because I got it four months after he died.  I never thought to save some of them off my old phone, and now it’s too late. 

But there was no time to have a pity party – we were celebrating Mother’s Day a day early with my Momma.  I met at my Mom’s house, and then we picked up my sister and headed to Exit Strategy Brewery.   There were so many delicious sounding items on the menu, but this Little Piggy flat bread really caught my eye.

The owners of the bar gave up their day jobs – one was an attorney and one was a teacher, hence the briefcase in the garbage can logo – love it.  I also love that they have 5 ounce pours so you can try something to see if you like it.  They have won dozens of awards with for their beer.  We split a bowl of Beer Cheese soup – holy balls was this delicious – you could definitely taste the beer and the cheese wasn’t overly cheezy, if that makes any sense.  My Mom didn’t care for it because she doesn’t like beer, but she had a grapefruit and rosemary soft drink that was out of this world.  You would think that having rosemary in a soft drink would be weird, but it totally worked.  My flat bread was delicious, but I have to say that it tasted even better when I reheated it on my baking steel later that night for dinner.

After saying goodbye to my Mom, I stopped by my friend Jacky’s sons baseball game.  Ah, I had forgotten how slow a 3rd grade baseball game could be, and I only showed up for half the game!  It’s the first year that they have actually kids pitching, so it makes for a much longer game.  It was nice to catch up on the sidelines with Jacky though, even though I forgot to give her a bag of granola I made – I’ll be posting the recipe for that tomorrow, because it’s more like granola clusters which is always my end goal.

We all slept in yesterday morning, and finally got around to eating breakfast around 11:00 a.m.  Hannah made scrambled eggs and bacon and cut up whatever fruit we had in the fridge.  It was perfect.

Hannah asked what I wanted to do that do, and we both thought about doing something crafty.  She’s way more talented in the craft department than I am, but one of the things I can grow and keep alive are herbs.  We went to Wal-mart and I picked up a terra cotta pot ($5) some paint and sponge brushes ($3) and four basil plants ($12).  Um, for the record, Hannah could literally spend three hours at Wal-mart, so by the time we picked up all the stuff we needed and got back home to get our craft pants on, it was nearly 4:30 and we hadn’t eaten lunch yet because we ate such a late breakfast.  Problem solved!  I can put a picky plate together in no time, so that’s what I did while Hannah got our craft stuff ready.

So we snacked while we got busy painting.  In addition to basil, I got romaine lettuce that said was excellent to grow in a pot, and matures every 21 days.   We’ll see how that goes!  Here is my finished project – not too bad!

Um, get ready for a lot of dishes in the near future that feature basil!   I ended up cooking dinner anyway even though Hannah and I were full from our snack tray.  Jacob enjoyed the grilled chicken, and I’ll use the rest of the chicken for meals for lunch for myself this week.

So later last night, we all had a family meeting.  Hannah had something that had been bothering her for a long time, and Jacob encouraged her to talk to me about it.  Long time readers may remember that Hannah and Tony didn’t get along that well.  Well, let’s correct that.  Tony and I always had a difference of opinion about parenting.  Truth be told, Tony had the easy part of parenting – he got Joe on the weekends and that was fun time!  No homework was mentioned, what classes he was taking, nothing.  And as he got older we saw less and less of him as his social calendar got more busy.  Tony never went to a parent teacher conference.  He went to one volleyball game of Joe’s and declared he didn’t like it and never went to another one.  The only thing Tony fully committed to was football, which was his one true love besides his son and me. 

So when Tony started getting really sick that summer and fall of 2014, Hannah had been struggling when to try to make amends with Tony.  She thought she’d have plenty of time.  She’d lived through all of his illnesses and well, he always bounced back no matter how dim the situation was.  But then by Thanksgiving, it was really obvious that he wasn’t long for this world.  By the time Hannah got to the hospital, it was too late – he was already non-communicative at that point, and she never got to have the closure she wanted to with him.

And then I asked so much of her and Jacob those few days from being home for hospice up until and including his memorial.  She met the hospice medical truck to have the bed set up and all the medical stuff.  She went to the store for me, she put together all the amazing photos and memory tree for the memorial.  And while I thanked her and Jacob for all that they did for me, I didn’t ask – an no one really asked – how Hannah felt about Tony dying.  She always felt like a step-daughter, while she desperately wanted Tony’s love, I explained to her that Tony wasn’t the best parent to his own son, even though if he were sitting here he would tell you he was father of the year every year. 

She’d been holding onto this for a year and a half, and never felt the time was right to talk to me about it, because she knew I was still grieving.  But we all had a good cry, we talked everything out, and we are in a good place.  I feel horrible that she had to hang onto that for so long, and told her no matter what is on her mind, she should always come to me and talk to me, no matter what is going on in my life at the time.  I mean, isn’t that what Mother’s are for?! 

So this weekend was All the Feels.  Sadness, loneliness, happiness, tears and love.  In the end love always wins.