Karen Carpenter

 

When Adri turned 33 and had outlived Karen Carpenter, I felt a sense of relief. It's easy to think of eating disorders as a teenage disease, one that you grow out of in time, but I knew differently. This awareness came via my exposure and knowledge learned in my psych degree, yes, but also because of Karen Carpenter.

"She was 32 years old? Really? That seems old to still be battling an ED," etc. etc.

But with the birth of her kids and making it past what I hoped was an upper-limit age marker I had some optimism, and indeed things seemed better in the early part of the decade preceding her passing.

She looked healthier, her pregnancies were non-eventful. She glowed and gained the appropriate amount of weight. When I hugged her, it didn’t feel as if she would break into a million pieces. But the destructive thoughts were always still just under the surface, and food insecurity resulting from her economic situation never helped.

The beginning of the pandemic actually helped her in this regard. The increase in SNAP benefits as well as the stimulus checks received took away much of that food insecurity. Instead of having to make a meager amount of groceries stretch among a family of four and doing without herself, she was able to have a normal amount of food on hand. And what’s more, the extra money meant she could afford to buy healthier stuff such as more fresh produce.

It was at once heartening to me to see this, but also heartbreaking, because the implication seemed to be that perhaps it was all a function of food insecurity and not an ED, which somehow made it worse.

However, the increased funding of SNAP as well as the cash payments to millions during the pandemic came to an end; there was not enough political will to keep it up. The clash of political ideologies and their opposing priorities have real-world effects: tax cuts, wall building, and aircraft carriers became more important than raising millions of kids and their families out of poverty.

Once that Grand Experiment ended, I noticed a change in Adri physically: she was getting thinner, her hair lost its luster, her teeth worse. She suggested by omission and context that not only was their just less food again but that her ED behavior had returned. I started sending a box of food every other week that was fruit and veggie forward, with foods that would help her such as avocados. Her granny sent her nutrition drinks as well, that I would stress need to be a meal supplement and not a meal replacement. She would take prenatal vitamins. But still.

Of course there were other contributing factors, a heart issue unrelated to behavior, alcohol issues, and various challenges (some self-inflicted, some not) that didn’t help.

In the end, Karen Carpenter made it 32 years, but died of heart failure brought upon by her eating disorder, and there should have been no reason for me to hang onto that age number like it was some magic goal line, that once crossed and surpassed I could worry a bit less.

This is not a disease that you simply grow out of.

Bath Time

Post-bath, 1988

She always loved baths. The last years of her life that would be her one time to be alone and decompress, soaking in the tub listening to music as she got a brief respite from meal prep and the boys' homework and cleaning and laundry and paying bills and planning the monthly budget and the general state of the world.

For an all-too brief half an hour or so she’d let go off all that. The boys might occasionally interrupt her temporary sanctuary, asking her to settle some brotherly dispute or for help them find a toy. They’d ask her how much longer she’d be in there and if she could make them a snack when she got out. But she’d let the warm water wash all that away, and she’d have herself to herself if only for a moment. 

When she was done, she’d jump right back in to mother mode, her batteries charged a bit with the aura of contentment and peace surrounding and protecting her for the rest of the evening.

Not too different from mothers all over since the dawn of time, of course, but I’m thankful that she could at times enjoy life and feel alive in a good way. 

Becoming an Old Man

Things are not changing. Every morning I wake hope hoping for a millisecond that this was just a bad dream. Maybe the only way forward is to become complacent and just forget, but I don't want that, either. 

One of the first things I said to Cindy that morning was, "I don't want to become an old man without her," which I still think is an odd thought to arise then, and pretty selfish as well.

Of course I had other thoughts before that and a million since, but I still think about that and why that notion came to the forefront so quickly.

The instant I knew she was gone I instantly saw the rest of my life spread out in front of me, a sort of reverse "life-flashing-before-one's-eyes" moment, that trope you often hear when someone escapes a near-death accident. 

It’s hard to even talk about, because I’m always afraid that it might come across as being dismissive of the people that are still in my life, but that is not the case, of course. 

It’s not that the life that lies ahead of me is now meaningless and empty, but it is less full. I’ll never be lonely and don’t fear loneliness, but I will be lonelier. I’m lucky to have the love of Cindy and family and friends and to love them all as well, but yet, still, a part of my heart has been ablated with the loss of Adrianna.

I hope those important to me understand all of that.

And yet, fourteen and a half months later, I still don’t want to become an old man without her.

Self-Plagiarism

A couple of days ago I picked up the guitar that sits ready in its stand next to me in the office for the first time in a long time. Months. Maybe a couple ofyears, even.

After giving it a tune I started toying around the fretboard, and just like the Old Days a structure formed, a proto-song, something that has not risen from my consciousness in a long time, the result of an atrophied creative center in my brain. Or just exhaustion.

The song gained more form, a chord progression, rhythm, and melody, so I hit record on my phone's audio app and took it down.

I liked how it sounded, melancholy yet not falling into oversentimental schmaltziness.

But when I played it back it sounded familiar somehow, and then I realized that I had plagiarized myself: It was almost exactly the bridge from one of my old songs about Adrianna.

It was irritating and disappointing, and I wondered how often this happened to real songwriters. I mean, there are only so many notes and just your own personal psyche that provides a filter to facilitate their birth.

Cindy said that of course, it happens all the time, and occasionally on the same album, which I found funny, but true.

CompuServe and the Nostalgia Trap

 

I've been watching a few videos on YouTube from Techdistrict, a channel that specializes in little documentaries on the rise and fall of early tech giants. Examples include AOL, Sun Microsystems, Gateway, Netscape, RadioShack, etc. 

They are very interesting if annoyingly "narrated" by AI journeys. It's so amazing that companies that were once so large and towering, both in market cap and social/cultural significance, can somehow wither away into nothing. It's often a study in hubris and not being able to recognize which way the winds were blowing.

However, it also reinforced something that I've noticed as a biproduct of Adrianna's loss: Nostalgic dalliances are much more painful for me now.

Today I watched their video about CompuServe,  and it was cool to see images of the simple startup page that would greet you after waiting for a successful modem handshake and connection a little discordant song that would fill me with anticipation of what was to come, what was to be discovered. Who was to be discovered.

The GUI was rendered in 8-bit 256-color image files that formed little buttons, each tantalizingly beckoning you to check out the new worlds just a click away: news, sports, travel, games, and the internet, curated experiences each represented with simple art and basic colors.

Much of it was a walled-off area that wasn't even truly "the internet" at all. That, after all, was its own separate gateway, its own separate area that might has well have been the Wild West.

There was email, too, though at that point you could only email other CompuServe users, whose usernames were composed of a five-digit number followed by a comma and then four other digits.

"I am not a number, I am a human being!" indeed, but that was what we had. I can't remember mine or find any reference to it, but I do know it started with a 7...

You'd pay by the hour which was metered by the minute, but we were glad to have it. Seeing these images again and remembering that time in my life hit me hard. So much was ahead, and anything was possible. I knew that soon I'd be able to talk to my daughter and others no matter where they were in the world, and I couldn't wait for that opportunity.

The tech was moving so fast, and I was along for the ride loving every minute of it.

Soon the pay model changed to unlimited time for a set amount per month, and that was that. Then AIM and other instant messengers. And newsgroups. And webspace like GeoCities. The always on internet that didn’t require a dial-up via DSL, cable modems, T1 lines and finally fiber optic.

But at the start for me, in the early to mid-90s, there was CompuServe. And there was Adri.

Part of me irrationally wants to go back to that era, to a pseudo-"simpler time," where just the notion of getting real-time news updates and being able to view the artwork at the Louvre from my apartment desk at 3am in the morning was just so wonderful. Where I could make contact with friends from childhood that I hadn't spoken to in decades.

Where Adri was alive and thriving. Where Adri had decades still ahead of her. Where technology promised to bring us all together.

Where little things were taken for granted but eventually slipped away forever.

Where time was static.

I'd give almost anything to be there again, to live it all over again with her.

The Accidental Shoplifter

I’d always take Adrianna grocery shopping with me, and when she was little she'd sit in the cart on that little seat provided for just such situations, facing me, her little legs dangling, her eyes darting everywhere taking everything in while her hands tried to grab everything within reach as I maneuvered through the aisles.

I’d have to pay attention and try to situate the cart so she couldn’t actually reach anything, but she was a determined young girl. If I tarried too long looking at nutritional labels and cost per ounce signage as I tried to decide on which can of condensed soup to purchase, she’d stretch as far as she could to reach a jar of brightly colored this or that, and if that meant she had to stand up in the cart seat to do so, so be it.

I had to be ever-vigilant, and when I’d stop her from grabbing a huge jar of deviled eggs or something she’d pout and scowl and squabble at me in anger and frustration. She didn’t’ go quietly; she didn’t appreciate being thwarted in her endeavors to touch and grab and hold the entirely of the grocery store in her sticky little fingers.

She was skillful, and moreover if she ever was able to successfully nab her quarry, she did not allow it to be released back into the wild without a fight. Her hands would become iron vises with a strength and fortitude greatly out of proportion to her diminutive size.

There was often a huge endcap full of large brightly—colored inflated balls apparently staged and displayed just to frustrate parents with children like mine. I’d try to move quickly past them while distracting Adri, but she of course became adept at grabbing one of these from the dispenser, anyway.

Often when this happened I’d just give up for a bit and make the best of it, knowing that if I let her hold that ball during the remainder of our grocery shopping the rest of the jars and cans and bottles would be safe. The ball would sate her; she’d hold it and talk to it and ignore that jar of deviled eggs sitting so tantalizingly close to her pudgy little hands, and I’d return the ball to its display right before we checked out.

Problem solved.

But sometimes she’d grab the ball and I wouldn’t even notice. I would be too busy checking the expiration date of a jar of artichokes or something and not even notice the spoils of her hunt.

One day, after we’d checked out, paid for the groceries, and made our way to the car to unload, I noticed she was still clutching one the large balls defiantly against her chest with a big bear hug. She was maybe 18 months old, but I swear there was an expression on her face that can only be described as smugness that seemed to proudly proclaim,

“Ha ha, daddy, look what I got!" 

The groceries were already in the trunk; she and the ball were all that remained. I made a half-hearted effort to take the ball away from her and return it to the store but was met with iron vices and a pair of lungs that could scream to alert all of North Austin.

I gave up and gave in, but told myself that I’d pay for a ball the next time we went shopping.

I have no idea if I did or not. But my intentions were good.

Fourth of July at Lake Geneva: A Celebration

The moment immediately after

As Cindy says, Adrianna was well-loved, and her ashes were divided amongst many of those who loved her. Her mom took the majority back to Louisville, and I had several pieces of jewelry made as well: a necklace for Stephen, a couple of beads and a heart necklace for each of the boys, and a ring for me along with wooden heart that contains some as well.

But I wanted to scatter some of her ashes at one of her favorite places, the beach in Fontana, Wisconsin on Lake Geneva where together we spent so many summers of the Fourth of July when she was younger. 

Cindy and I both got the idea independently to do so this year, so we arranged a quick trip up there with lodging at The Abbey with plans to scatter her ashes at the beach at sunrise on the morning of July 4th and then watch the annual fireworks that night over that same beach.

It was rainy and overcast most of the weekend we were up there, but that morning at 5:20am it was clear and calm. I took off my shoes and walked a couple of feet into the lake, my feet on the sandy bottom as gentle waves lapped up onto the beach as they’ve done for millennia. 

Just as the sun officially peaked up from the horizon I scattered Adri’s ashes into the amazingly clear water and gently stirred as she became part of the lake forever. It was an emotional moment, solemn and peacefully satisfying. My gaze shifted from the life-giving water slowly upward to take in the sky at sunrise, the birth of a new day. Life continues.

Before we headed back to the Abbey I filled several little 5 ml bottles, some with the sand from the beach, some with the water from the lake that had just accepted Adrianna into its being, keepsakes for me and hopefully one day for the boys.

Later that evening, at the traditional start time of dark-thirty, the fireworks began. Our vantagepoint from an outside patio at The Abbey was perfect as we watched the fireworks over Fontana beach, a night and place and moment Adri and I shared over many years during her lifetime. 

I got extremely emotional and started to cry and it verged on becoming an ugly cry, but it wasn’t just because of sadness or despair but also an exhilarating release of a sort of weight off my soul knowing that Adrianna was now forever a part of it all. 

The grand finale, with all its brightly colored hues that punctuated the night sky with a myriad of reds and greens and blues and golds that gently fell to the beach, was accompanied by a majestic symphony of sounds: the booms and crackles and whistles of the fireworks themselves along with the excited “oohs” and “aahs” and applause from the gathered crowd with the honking horns from all the boats on the lake mixed in for good measure. 

It was magnificent, and I didn’t want it to end. A perfect allegory and representation of Adrianna’s too-short life.

The Journal

I'm very disappointed and ashamed of the behavior of some people as of late, and I'm having a real hard time not letting it eat away at me. I'm trying every coping skill and mechanism I can muster but am having a hard time letting it go. Probably because I've been forced to let so much go the last year or so already. I'm trying the copying mechanism of last resort now: oversharing here.

When Adri was really little and was first moved out of state, I was told to start keeping a diary of sorts where I'd talk to her and tell her my thoughts and perceptions and to keep it until she was 18 or so, at which point she could read the thoughts and feelings I was having at the time, seeing perhaps another version of what she may have thought reality to be.

I would mail or ship her stuff that would never be given to her, for example, so I should write "today I mailed you a book about horses" or whatever, so she'd eventually know.

Or I would write that "I wish I could talk to you every day on the phone, but I get hung up on unless it's on Wednesday nights only." In other words tell her all that I was trying to do as I was trying to do it, so maybe, when she was older, some sort of deprogramming could take place.

For her fourth birthday, for example, she had a party at her grandparents' house in Louisville. She kept expecting me to show up. Every time she heard a car she'd get excited and look, but it would never be me. No one bothered to tell her that I couldn't come, that I couldn't see her until the following day.

That broke my heart, thinking of a little girl thinking that her dad had forgotten her birthday, so I decided I better start writing.

I did this for a while, but it was hard for me, because it would just make me angry again and it was a long wait until she was 18.

In the end, however, it didn't matter. It wasn't needed. Adri was intuitive and emotionally as well as intellectually advanced, and she always knew what was really going on. I was lucky in that way. She knew her mother, and she knew me, and she knew the truth that was probably somewhere in between and closer to me, and we became close. Definitely a daddy's girl who learned to cope and work around the issues she faced while not with me.

Without having to sludge through that journal of her dad's POV over the years at 18 years of age, she moved on her own so she and her newborn son could be near me, which was the most positive affirmation I've received in my life.

Maybe it was therapeutic to write in this journal none the less; who knows. But it's main purpose, thankfully, was never needed. Cindy even wrote several entries in the early years which was nice.

Maybe I need to do that again. This time, however, it will probably be needed. Whereas Adri always let me know she knew what I was going through and was aware of the intentional and unnecessary roadblocks erected to make our relationship difficult, my present situation sees no such awareness from the people involved. Quite the opposite.

And I fear that those who would benefit from reading any such journal or what have you will probably not care in five or six years, anyway. They'd simply refuse to engage. Hell, I'll be lucky to have addresses and phone numbers at some point.

Adri's own texts that I've compiled and printed out in book form would themselves probably go a long way in possibly enlightening some thoughts and ideas. She did a good job of capturing the thoughts and emotions, beliefs, moral clarity and priorities of the moment. How the boys thought, how she thought, her many, many proud moments along with few disappointments.

However, at this point, at least, they could care less. Texts showing the book and explaining what is contained within the covers go ignored. Maybe one day?

If they don't care to read what Adri wrote, they surely won't care to read what I've written, but I'll have a couple copies ready just in case.

Hopefully one day the writings will find their proper home with the proper people. And hopefully it won't be too late, before bad habits and bad relationships take root and become the norm. 

A Few Random Birthday Thoughts

 

My random birthday thoughts:

The first time I woke up this morning I looked at the clock and it was exactly 6:45am, the moment Adri was born 38 years ago.

From 1993 until 2006 I never got to see her on her birthday, always the day after on the 19th, since that's when her summer began with me.

She moved to be near me after Bryce was born in 2013, and after that I had 10 straight years where I got to see her on her actual birthday, the last being her final birthday in 2024.

In 2025 her birthday was the day of her memorial, by design of course. However, I'm not sure I made that clear to those who attended who might not have known that.

I had hoped that we could have her birthday going forward be a nice family event with her boys and everyone, but unfortunately as many predicted (including Adri herself) this may not be possible, at least until the boys are adults.
Her wind chime is active today, ringing out with laughter in response to the gentle breeze.

I always think about Paul McCartney and Heather Lea Hall Kunz on this day since they share this birthday with Adri.

I got a dozen roses to put in a vase today on the little table that has my remembrances of her. The flowers are beautiful, of course, but one of their thorns pricked my finger in the process of placement. Appropriate.

Time moves even faster than I ever imagined, even though I always dreaded and was aware of how fast time moved. Still, it ends up being even worse than that.

I hope she was able to grab and hold on to moments in her life that made it all grand. I know she did. I just hope they occurred more often than not.

Happy Birthday

Happy birthday to my Adrianna.

Her 38th.I made this for her 30th birthday, when she was a bit down and a bit disappointed with where she was versus where she wanted to be.

I had planned on making a new one for her 40th, but instead I'll post this each year on her birthday, I guess, remembering a moment frozen in time forever.

I try really hard to accept and rejoice in the life she did have, the time she did have, the time her boys had, the time I had. To embrace that and celebrate that with no regrets or sadness.

But it's hard. But we all try.

Happy birthday to my Adrianna. I love you.