Father's Day 2023

Dear Andy and Matt,

The 4 kids were together this weekend, here at the farm.  For the first time since you died.  It was heartbreaking and beautiful.  They are amazing kids.  You'd be so proud.  I know you are so proud. 

Your dad brought them down and I think there was nervousness on everyone's part.  What do they have in common besides dad's that are dead?  Would it be too much?  Would they regret coming, would we feel sad all weekend?  

But that's not how it went.  These 4 hit it off right away.  They bonded and laughed and joked like siblings.  

They stayed up late around the campfire just the 4 of them and I fell asleep listening to their laughter.

And on Sunday morning, on Father's Day, they picked flowers and walked up to the spot where their dad's remains rest.  Another first.  

You are both gone.  But here are these bright and beautiful children, loving each other, holding each other up. You are in them so strongly.  Bringing them the best of who you are, guiding them still and always.
 

Dear Andy,

It's that time of year that brings the vivid, deeply sensed images and memories of your final weeks.  As you know, I love spring in the Driftless so much.  Here on our little farm the vernal creek runs strong and full, the wild leeks and spring beauties push up in the woods and the air is filled with the smell of the warmth to come and the chorus of the winged ones working hard to bring us the next generations.  Shortly our youngest will celebrate her birthday again (13!) and I'll weather mine (50!) and school will end and the lawn will need constant mowing and there will be requests for swimming and camping and time on the river.  It will feel so familiar and still so foreign without you.  

It feels fitting that your body pushed through this season until the very last day of spring.  I know you wanted to experience every moment here.  And now as we come to the end of our fourth year without you I'm reflecting on all that has changed and all that has stayed the same.  Four years.  That's the amount of time we loved each other before we made it formal in that tiny, glorious ceremony on the big lake.  Four years is just about the amount of time you had with Elsa before cancer changed our lives and it's more time than we had with you after you were diagnosed. In four more years Iris will be done with highschool and well on her way to another adventure. Four years is a blink of an eye and an eternity in the aching cells of my heart. 

I often feel you here, think that you see us and know us, and sometimes it's almost enough.  But yet I long for those conversations that lasted days.  The ones over coffee in the morning where we made spring lists about gardens and tree planting and farm repairs and dreams of growth.  The ones in bed at night when we marveled over our children's insights or reassured each other after a tricky day of parenting.  The ones where we talked about the state of the world, and worried together and then grounded each other in hope.  These days when I am alone with my coffee or turning off the light at night I feel deeply the things you are missing.  So here is a little list, because you know I am compelled to make them.  A list to mark the incredible marching of time without you and to pin these things for conversations later, whenever and wherever that might be.

1.  First of all you died and we buried you on our land and then your brother died right after you did.  This is one of the biggest things I need to process with you.  I still can't believe any of this happened.  None of us can.  We put Matt's ashes with you on your spot.  Someday I'd like to talk with you about this whole dying thing.  

2. You'll be excited to know that Trump was ousted after 4 years, though not surprisingly he was a sore loser and continues to throw a fit that threatens our democracy at its core.  We elected Joe Biden which wasn't nearly as exciting as bringing on his running mate, Kamala Harris, the first female vice president and woman of color in that office. Our strong little unit of women here in this house continues to celebrate that win.

3. A world wide pandemic swept in and for a long time we were wiping off all our groceries before bringing them in the house.  And we started wearing facemasks everywhere (well most of us did) and we weren't gathering or hugging each other and most of us worked and schooled from home and it was lonely.  It felt like it took forever to get vaccinations ready but when they came they were super effective and widely available and still there were people who refused to take them because they had microchips in them that tracked us or were made of alien piss or something.  This whole thing is still ongoing by the way, so I'll update you later.

4. Maybe because of the alien piss and microchips we are taking a giant step back in time and it looks like we'll be taking away a woman's right to making decisions about her own body.  It's been really weird because there are these people who say that they have a right to not wear masks and not vaccinate in the middle of a deadly pandemic but they are the same people who say that woman don't have a right to decide what is best for their own bodies.  I could really use your help in explaining all this to our 15 year old.

5.  I got to help start this really cool little school.  It's been a ton of work and a steep learning curve but I'm super proud of the work our all woman team has done to bring free immersive nature education to our youngest learners and bolster the KVR and our little home school district and community in so many ways.  Every day I silently dedicate the work I am doing for this project to you, because you were the ultimate teacher and nature guide for our children and so many others.  Oh yeah, and I was on CBS Nightly News.  Weird.

6. Our daughters are teens.  This is a house full of synced up hormones. The bathroom is full of lotions and sweet smelling shampoos and feminine hygiene products.  There are lots of bras and underwear in the laundry you wouldn't recognize.  You'd want to knock before you entered.  You'd probably feel a little outnumbered.

7.  ALL of our animals are still alive.  Yep, they've outlived you by a long shot. (Ok, HammyfromMiami didn't make it past the usual life span of a hamster but I'm not sure that counts).  We still have the ragged pony and the crooked-neck horse, the Bob-tail and the Fancy cat.  We have the bitty-bitey-buddy we inherited from your parents.  And (hold the eye rolls) we've added two more cats and another dog and, just yesterday, a guinea pig.  As Iris says: "I need to put all my love somewhere!"

8. Our precious little farm is looking a little dilapidated.  The multi-flora rose is getting ahead of me in the pastures and the cherry trees died in the orchard and the root cellar you so lovingly crafted is rotting from within.  The driveway continues to washout and the gutters are falling off the barn.  But the hemlock we planted together that day on the chilly northside of the rock outcropping is flourishing, this house you built us is standing sturdy, and I've gotten to love splitting wood and stacking it with the same precision you did.  Your garlic (well the grandbabies of) popped up strong again this spring after I tucked them in the ground last fall and I'm contemplating buying a small tractor (could you weigh in on the practicality of that?).

9.  Elsa is the coolest kid.  She's gone through a skateboarding phase and an anime phase and she loves graphic novels and she's really becoming an incredible artist.  She was also diagnosed with dyslexia (you suspected) but is making progress with extra help and doesn't let her stop her because she's a hard worker and a pretty positive thinker.  She is taking rockclimbing classes and is super into cats.  She is kind and well-liked in her class.  She has lots of friends.  She really reminds me of you.

10.  Iris is stunning in so many ways.  She's long and lean and taller than me.  She is still as intuitive and insightful as ever.  I love having conversations with her.  She's an incredible and willing helper.  I can see her leadership qualities growing by the day.  She's planning a solo trip to California this summer to visit Adam and Annie, and she wants to keep doing wilderness trips like she did last summer and strengthen her mind and body.  She's now known first love and heartbreak and highschool.  It hasn't always been easy and yet she's persevered.  She's driving!  She really reminds me of me.

I miss you every day.  I see you in the Redtail and the oak buds.  I see you in our girls.  

With so much love,

Jonel

Celebrating 18 and 22 and 48

Last week Andy and I celebrated 18 years of marriage and 22 years together.  It doesn't really matter that he's been dead for the last 3 of those years.  I've come to realize that marriage doesn't end unless you choose to end it, and we didn't.  When he was alive our marriage was one of friendship, teamwork, joy and shared decisions.  While he has been dead our marriage still continues in those ways.  He's still my best friend, his decisions still matter, he still influences this team and shares in my life.  Of course not in the same ways. I can't cry on his shoulder, or tickle him in bed or watch him wrestle his teen girl to the ground.  But I can remember (or imagine) those things.  I can still feel him, hear his laugh, see his smile, know what he would say.  All the thousands of conversations we had over coffee, in the car, on hikes, in the kitchen, they changed who I am, how I present myself to this world, how I parent, how I think and process and move through the days.  Our marriage continues because he is woven into every fiber of my being, he is woven into the decisions I make now for this little family.  Because Jonel is not just Jonel, she is, and always will be, Jonel and Andy.

But wait, you say, how does this work when you grow to love someone else?  How can you be married to one person and in love with another?  Well, let me tell you, there is no monkey business going on here, no infidelity or illicit affair.  The man who loves me now loves me because I am Jonel and Andy.  The person he fell in love with is the person who houses another love.  She is the person with a hole in her heart that isn't looking to fill it, but has the capacity for lots more love.  She is the person who sees the world through a different lens since losing her husband to death but not divorce.  She is the person who can be happy AND sad, who can love every moment she had with her husband and all the moments she now has with a new love.  We are multilayered, complicated beings afterall.

So last week I got out the toothpaste and shined up the silver on the ring I've been wearing for 18 years.  It still lives there on my ring finger where he placed it that day long ago on the shores of Lake Superior.  And his ring, though I had a short moment of wanting to keep it for myself, still lives on his finger where I placed it that day as well.  We shall always be bonded in this way. The ring on my finger continues to say that my life was, and forever will be, changed by Andy.  That my marriage to him did not, nor will ever, end.  And one day, who knows, I may marry again, and then I'll have two husbands, but it won't be weird, it will just be how my life evolved through love and death.

That smile, the one where all my teeth hang out?  That's about as big as it gets.  My heart was full to bursting that day.  It still is.  My life is a billion times better because of this man.  My happiness now is everything he wanted for me.  He set me up to weather loss and keep moving through.  

Today is Andy's 48th birthday.  I'm grateful we earned some wrinkles and grey hair together.  We packed a lifetime into the years we had.  Forever thankful.

Grand Marais Again

Four years ago this week Andy and I took the girls to Grand Marais and spent a week in the Boundary Waters.  He had been battling cancer for two years, we had just been denied access to a clinical trial, and all he could think about was getting us all to the BWCA.  He had a tradition of spending time there, almost every summer, since he was a kid, and he loved this place so dearly.  He and I had done a couple trips together before children (we decided to get married there!) and it was important to him that he take the girls. It was Father's Day weekend.  So off we went.

Despite the cancer taking hold in his body, he was his usual strong, confident and positive self.  We managed buggy-long portages with an 8 and 10 year old, fished together, and swam, made fires and climbed trees.  It rained and rained one day and he made it so fun.  I think in our hearts we may have known we would not get back here together, but at the time it seemed unfathomable.  Our life was vibrant and full of him and his love.

Ironically (and somehow not), exactly one year later, he would take his last breath with us by his side.  Two days after Father's Day, on the Summer Solstice with quiet rain falling outside our bedroom window. I imagined him dissipating into all there is, into us, into the land that we live on, and into all the places he loved so much, like the northland.

June 20, 2021.  It's the anniversary of Andy's death and Father's Day all wrapped up together.  How to mark this day?  A trip north to Grand Marais.  Just the three of us.  Iris bravely embarking on her first-ever sleep away camp- a girls Leadership trip into the Boundary Waters. 

Four years after her last trip to the BWCA, here she is (denying me photo ops like a regular teen) heading off solo on an adventure that would make her dad so proud.  My mama heart ached a little (would she be ok?) and I could hear him clearly say to me "Boo, this is so good for her, she'll be just fine". His confident, encouraging voice still strong in my head, and in her heart.  

Three years without him.  They have changed so much and they haven't.  They still love wilderness, they love watching nature unfold herself in front of their eyes.  They like adventure and pushing themselves and trying new things.  They have their dad planted so solidly within.  As Elsa and I walked away from the excited teens, headed for our own week of adventure in Grand Marias, she said "next year I'll be ready to do this camp too".  Maybe a new tradition has begun.

this new terrain

I'm taking a month-long on-line writing course.  Yesterday's prompt was "Imagine writing a letter to the one you've lost.  What would you show them in this new "home" town?"  This idea of what it would be like if Andy could pop into our new life, our new landscape occurs to me almost daily,  Here's what I wrote.

When you left us they were stick straight little girls at 8 and 11. They wore their hair in pony tails and didn't care if their leggings were striped and their shirts was flowered. They were wild homeschooled girls who knew how to light a fire and carve a stick with a knife. They played in the creek and crafted dams and crawdad houses, they built things in your shop with you and followed your lead on their bikes. They slept in a sweaty tangle together, sometimes in their bed, sometimes in ours.

I often look at them now, almost three years on and wonder how you'd perceive this new terrain of tween and teen. You might feel (as I sometimes do) that you've entered an alien world. A world of curves and breasts, of braces and skateboards, of make-up and face care routines, of phones and tablets and selfies and tiktoks. Of periods and pop music, of social worries and high school anticipation. Of redecorated bedrooms with teenage “vibes”. Would you recognize our girls, no longer wearing dirt on their knees and hay in their hair? In so many ways you would, because their essence is still there. All that you gave them in those full years of being their everyday teacher shines on their faces and in their hearts still. And in many ways you would be bowled over, as am I, by their maturity, their independence and yes, their size. Our oldest is now taller than me and wears a larger shoe.

The landmarks that signed our way through parenting together have shifted and without you I'm often lost in this new landscape. But if I could have you again, if only for a moment, this world of teen and tween, where there is so much growth and sass and pushing boundaries and shining like a beacon in my darkest days....This is absolutely where I'd take you.

change

Four years ago my family and I joined thousands of others in a peaceful march on our state capitol.  I look back on this picture with softness in my heart.  How worried yet hopeful we were.  Here on this cold, cloudy day in Madison we joined our voices together with so many others willing to work for change, even in the face of so much adversity. Looking around us at the sea of colorful, smiling faces it was hard not to feel hope.  Hope that our girls could inherit a world of good, a world of strengh and compassion, of dignity and beauty.  Hope that Andy would defeat the cancer that was ravaging his body.  Hope that we could remain whole. 

Our girls were 7 and 10, and Andy had a year and a half left to live.

But on that day four years ago, while we held worry and hope, we really had no idea what was ahead of us.  

Andy's fight would end and he would leave us on a beautiful rainy morning in June of 2018.  His family would soon sustain the loss of his younger brother and our hearts would break again.  His girls would move on from homeschooling and join a community of loving students and educators. They would become young women with big feet and braces and social media accounts!  I would bumble my way through grief and single parenting and loving again.  Our nation would face another crisis of racial injustice, our world would face a pandemic of proportions not seeen in 100 years, and our people would come together in a tumultuous vote for change.  

Holy cow, that would have blown our minds.

So many times over the last two and half years I have thought about what Andy would think of all that is going on in our world.  He was passionate about history, interested in politics and an early morning news junkie (after he sat in meditation for awhile).  He was a Peace Corp Volunteer, a public school teacher and later, a stay-at-home father and educator of our girls.  He would not take credit for it, but he gave in service so much to his world.  And from his little seat at the table, he was really worried about where Trump might take this nation. He was concerned about how much the Trump administration would walk back the small progress made on climate change and on human rights.  He was worried about the kind of world our girls might be inheriting.  And while he watched our world with eyes of concern, he also worked so hard to hang on to this life he loved so much.  He wanted more than anything to fight along side us all.  

Today my heart hurts because Andy is not here to feel the relief and the hope with us as we watch the last four years come to an end and the first woman of color take the oath of office as Vice President of the United States. He's not here to listen to President Biden call for unity and healing, a man who also knows grief so deeply, and whose strength and resilience in the face of that, may be just what this country needs.  He's not here to see that his girls have grown into young woman who crave being educated about truth and fairness, who care deeply and are ever-so-eager to help bring change to their world.  

Last summer, as we lent our support to Black Lives Matter, we carried Andy's sign from the March on Madison four years ago, his choice of MLK quote as relevant as ever.  And today as Iris left for school (where she will watch the inauguration with her fellow 8th graders) I saw that she was wearing the ragged and well-loved sweater that her dad wore on that day four years ago while he held her hand in the crowds on State Street.  He's with us every day, quietly cheering us on.

Andy was no stranger to change, nor a stranger to hope.  He held them both in his big heart and embraced them with all his quiet strength.  Today he would be proud of where we've come, on shaky legs, as a nation, and as a little family.  And he would acknowledge all the work ahead.  And he'd dig in with that way he had of making everything feel like it would turn out all right.  We are ready to do the same.

landslide

This time of year can wreck me. I am flooded with the memories of a bright autumn weekend along the shores of Lake Superior when we pledged our forever days together.  I am flooded with images of his face lit by birthday candles, his girls gathered round so eager to give him their gifts.

I light the first fire in the wood stove and think of the sound of his hatchet splitting wood outside our door, and the smell of his cooking making our home cozy and warm. I am swamped with memories and a new grief. Here we are without him again as the hickory nuts begin to fall. The wind blows in these long late fall days to stay and he is not here to make this place home. And his girls are no longer the shiny baby-faced children glowing in his light, they are young woman whom he has not met. The endless ache comes in sharper focus.

And here, in this bigger collective grief, the loss of normalcy that we all endure during this pandemic, I see it is possible to miss him more, this person who was our shelter, who would be sharing all the decisions and responsibilities, who would be here to comfort, to help, to ease the isolation.  

With a nod to Stevie Nicks, sometimes this landslide takes me down.

And yet.

There are moments of solace.  Grief loosens and laughter flows in. We bake his favorite cookies and use the spoons he carved to stir the soup and listen to the music he loved.  They sleep in his long t-shirts and I wrap myself in his wool as I walk beside a new love, still tender and cautious and know that he wants us to be happy.

For those of you out there holding your own grief, I wonder what things bring it home for you each day?  I wonder where you find solace and comfort.  I wonder what you need to feel connected.  If a landslide is taking you down, know that I see you.