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 fingers 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.

Songs

This past year there have been songs with seemingly no apparent connection to Adrianna, or at least no obvious association to her life or my life with her that I’m aware of consciously, that have none the less caused me to cry when I heard them.

I’m not talking about obvious songs that I have always directly associated with her, examples of which include my own songs, the entire Rent oeuvre, selections from Carousel, “Father & Son” by Cat Stevens, or “Isn’t She Lovely” by Stevie Wonder, to name just an extremely small sample of a much larger set.

No, I didn’t know these songs would do anything to me, but when I heard them suddenly I’m filled with sorrow and despair. I’m not sure if it’s the lyrics (though I think not; I’m not much of a lyric listener) or perhaps the progression of melody or chords, but it’s something.

The first one that had this effect was when Cindy was playing a trailer on YouTube for Interstellar, and for some reason the main theme just broke me into pieces and I had to ask her to turn it off. I still don’t know why. I thought long and hard about it, and of course the movie is basically the story of a father and daughter, of life and death. Maybe somehow that got locked into my brain and the music created the association that after my daughter’s death causes issues. Maybe, but this connection seems specious (at best.)

The newest song, however, doesn’t make any sense at all. I first noticed it about three months ago when I was watching some old rerun of some 80s sitcom on a station like MeTV or Antenna TV late one night and “The Hogan Family” started next. The theme song caused me to break down and cry, and since then whenever I even think of the theme song and hear it in my head, I have to fight back tears.

Why? I did watch this show in first runs when it started as “Valerie” before being renamed “Valerie’s Family” after Valerie Harper left because of a contract dispute, before finally settling on “The Hogan Family.” Interestingly, it is the only TV show to be a Neilson ratings hit under three different titles, but such interesting trivia is not why we’re hear today.

Now, some (most?) of you may not know and certainly not care that “The Hogan Family” as I’ll call it from here on out is, for some reason, set in Oak Park, IL, my home town. I have no idea why this is so. Maybe one of the writers is from there, maybe they threw a dart at a map. I have no idea. And it’s not like it’s actually shot in Oak Park. Even the opening montages over the years during the credits show images that are clearly not Oak Park… though in fairness, some of the shots could have been filmed in my village. So the setting can’t be it. Plus, Adri, furthermore, is not from there in any event.

Of course, it could remind me of my childhood, and the more optimistic time that represented for me, but many TV shows would do that, and I don’t cry, for example, when I hear the theme to “The Bob Newhart Show.”

It must be a combination of the melody and the lyrics. The song is called “Together Through The Years,” and of course I have always had a complicated relationship with Time and the passage thereof. And it does speak of togetherness through this passage of time:

Life is such a sweet insanity
The more you learn, the less you know
In the heart of every family
There's a love that starts by letting go

Step by step and day by day
Reaching out along the way
Hand in hand, we face our fears
Together through the years

We get closer, through happiness and tears
And in our hearts we share
The laughter and the sadness
A special kind of madness
Together through the years

Life is such a sweet insanity
It's nice to know your friends are near
In the heart of every family
There's a love that's waiting there for you
Through the years

The melody, furthermore, especially during the “we get closer” verse, seems to hit all my melancholy musical signposts and appears to have what I call “moles:” musical notes or resolution that breaks what is expected, often (but not always) in the form of an accidental in the melody line, but it can also occur in the rhythm or the chord progression.

One of the reasons that, to me, “I Want To Hold Your Hand” by Lennon and McCartney is so catchy to me and so “yummy” for lack of a better word is that 7^th chord they play unexpectedly at the end of each verse. (That, along with Paul’s little five-note bass motif at the end of every other line, obviously.)

“Together Through the Years” doesn’t have anything so obvious (or yummy,) but still, I think the melody progression in that verse along with the theme of the lyrics and perhaps also smattered with a bit of Oak Park nostalgia is the culprit here. But this also seems specious.

Who knows what other nondescript song will trigger me. I’ll keep everyone updated.

Missing

Sometimes now I can think about Adri without crying. Not always, but sometimes. Progress of a sort, I guess.

I really haven't had time to actually miss her, which I know many will find hard to believe. I have been so engulfed by regret and anger and despondency and sorrow that I haven't as yet been subjected to the vanilla-ordinary missing of someone that one experiences when there is a longer than average timeframe between seeing and interacting.

I've had bigger fish to fry, so to speak.

Of course, some of the sorrow has come from missing her this last year, but really and truly so much of my pain was from the tragedy of her life arc that I just haven't had the time or luxury (or curse) to allow myself to simply miss her presence, her face, her voice, her texts and her calls.

I've been trapped in a bubble of "why" and "how" which has provided at least a bit of insulation (which some might uncharitably categorize as "denial"), but if the extreme sorrow and soul-crushing is beginning to soften a bit day to day, it is now being replaced with the simple reality of missing her, full stop.

This is what we call progress, I guess.

Fourth of July

Fontana beach at Lake Geneva, 1996

 

One of her favorite places, we'd spend a week or two up there over the Fourth of July every summer and most of the daylight hours would be at the beach.

Cindy and I are going up there this year over the 4th to scatter some of her ashes so she will always be there on the 4th, under the fireworks, at her happy place.

One Year

Today it’s been one year.

It’s been both the longest and shortest year of my life. I’ve tried to make it through her loss in part by writing these things that I post, and this is the 80th iteration if you can believe that. Eighty little missives that I’ve written to both try to keep her alive and to keep me alive, all metaphorically of course.

One year ago Bryce began calling me at 6am but I didn’t see it then because my phone is silenced until 8am each morning. But when I finally looked at my phone that morning there were over a dozen missed calls from him and a single voice message that said, “Grandpa, please call, it’s happened again.”

By that time it was too late. Despite the best efforts of the EMTs and the emergency room attendants, Adrianna died at 7am, and with her a large part of my world.

I decided I wanted to be awake this time, to sit and contemplate where we all are now and what transpired, so I set a silent alarm on my watch for 6am this morning and quietly got up so as to not disturb Cindy. I went and sat on the stairs that are the center point of our open floor plan first floor and quieted my mind, tried to let peace flow over me.

The sun didn’t officially rise until about 20 minutes later, but of course in the dawn the house was still filled with that scattered indirect light that illuminated with a soft and gentle warmth that didn’t intrude on my thoughts. I tried to keep those thoughts to a minimum in any event.

We have a dusk-to-dawn automatic light outside our back door that lights up the patio, and it struggles with the transition from light to dark at both dawn and dusk. It flickers, turning on and off in succession as it tries to guess its proper state.

From my vantagepoint on the stairs I could see the light illuminated when I first sat down at 6, but around 6:40 it started to flicker on and off. Quickly at first like eight-notes, off and on, like a ship at sea trying to signal the shore. Then the flickering slowed to quarter notes, then pulses became less consistent, the rhythm of the flickers becoming more erratic.

It was then that I saw the flickering light for what it really was: a heartbeat. The light had started strong, then began to flicker, becoming more erratic and slower until finally, around 7, it extinguished completely.

The light had gone out.

Cindy gave me a gift this morning: a personalized wind chime that I’ve just hung from our patio pergola. It’s beautiful and makes beautiful music and is a perfect salve for today. I look forward to its song in the coming years and will imagine it’s my daughter speaking to me. I think I’m allowed that.

There’s so much I could say today, so much that still needs to be released from my brain, so many more feelings and thoughts and memories and anecdotes to share. So much more regret and sorrow, but also so much more joy, but for now, as my last official discourse and commentary for Year One, I’ll leave it at that.

Except for this:

Thank you to everyone who has helped me through this year, I think it would have been so much worse without you. Thanks to all that reached out directly, but I know that’s hard to do and if you didn’t, I understand (I’d have had a hard time doing so, too, if the shoe was on the other foot, which I hope it never is.) Just knowing these are being read, and that people who didn’t know Adrianna at all or well perhaps know her a bit better helps me so, so much.  I want to name everyone I can, but fear I will accidently leave out a name, so I’ll take the lead of smart award show winners who don’t even try.

Thank you.

The Last Time I Saw Her

Today marks a year since I last saw Adri. She needed to get her car inspected and she still wasn’t comfortable driving, so she asked if I wanted to come over and spend time with the boys while she and Stephen got the car inspected. Of course I jumped at the opportunity.

The boys and I went to the rec center and shot hoops and lifted weights for a couple of hours. When I checked in with Adri for a status update, she said that they were almost done, that it passed (not always a given,) and that they were on their way home.

When she originally called that morning she also sheepishly asked if she could have another little “advance” of $130 of her school money, since they needed a new battery for her car and were tapped out for the rest of the month.

She had asked for a little money in February as well, and when she did then it disappointed and frustrated me, and I let her know it. Harangued her a bit. Told her that they both were adults and needed to get their act together. Basically, just tossed the money on the counter when I left without even saying good bye.

This time I didn’t say anything about the money request, because I felt bad about being so hard on her the last time. Life is too short I literally thought to myself, just let it go.

When they got back from the car errand and the boys and I returned from the rec center Adri and I sat and talked a bit. We talked politics, lamenting a certain leader and policy decisions being made. “I can’t wait for this to be over,” she said, and I agreed.

I got up to leave and handed her the money with no judgement this time. She whispered “thank you” without looking at it. We said our goodbyes and hugged. I can’t remember if I said “I love you.”

When I got home, I saw that she’d texted me a longer thank you to which I replied “I love you.” This ended up being the last thing she ever heard from me, our last communication.

She died less than 40 hours later.

I’m so thankful for that last hug, and so thankful that I wasn’t a jerk about the money that last time, and grateful that the last thing I said to her was “I love you.” 

Life is too short, but I didn’t realize just how short it really was.

 

Boys' Birthday

Thirteen years ago on the morning of Monday, May 12, 2013 I got in my car in Dallas and started to drive to Louisville. Adri had finally been admitted to the hospital after being in labor in some form for a day or so. The original due date had been May 20, so it was a bit of a surprise and a little early, so I was a bit impatient with the 800-plus mile journey ahead of me. I desperately wanted to get there before she gave birth and because of that the miles seemed to creep along.

It gave me time to think and reflect about her life and about the new direction her life was about to take. I was excited for her, if not a bit scared and worried for her just in the normal way a parent worries about their children. She was a caring and empathetic person who always put others before herself and I knew she’d thrive as a mother, but I also knew the heartbreak and challenge and effort that this huge responsibility could bring.

As I drove by weathered “Jesus Saves” billboards and lonely desolate Murphy gas stations out in the middle of nowhere, Arkansas I’d daydream about the future that lay in front of her: children, family, a life well-lived and self-actualized, and for the first time since she was born I began to feel a wave of contentment pass over me. It was an interesting feeling.

Right outside of Little Rock the phone rang and I saw it was Stephen so I pulled over to the shoulder and answered. Bryce had just been born, and baby and mother were both doing fine. Suddenly my daughter was a mother, and everything seemed to change and I started to cry.

It seems hard to believe now, with the year of tears I’ve had, the non-stop continual crying caused by unrelenting grief these past 12 months, but I hadn’t cried at all in the preceding 40 or so years save for when my grandfather died four years previously, and it took me off guard.

I don’t think I’d ever cried out of happiness before, either.

I pulled myself together and sat for a moment before continuing on, searing the moment in my brain, the moment my daughter became a parent and I a grandfather. It was easily without question or much competition one of the happiest moments of my life, and it happened outside of Little Rock, Arkansas of all places.

The remaining 500 miles to Louisville and my daughter and grandson both flew by and took forever, but I was on autopilot regardless, and finally I arrived and went to her hospital room to meet Bryce and hug the new mother.

She was bouncing around the room, refusing pleas from everyone to relax and rest. She was happy and content as was I. I sensed a sea change, and for a while, that’s just what it was. She was focused and healthy, happy and determined.

Later that year Adrianna, Stephen and Bryce moved to Dallas and I was ecstatic. Two years later to the day Wesley was born. He had a bit of a rougher time at the beginning and had to be in NICU for a week or so. I got to spend a lot of one-on-one time with two-year-old Bryce while his mom and dad tended to his brand-new brother during that week, but that first day, the day which was his birthday as well, I showed him a photo on my phone of Wesley, and he seemed enthralled. He carried that phone around with Wesley visible for hours.

On the way home from the hospital a few days later they both just kept staring at each other in their car seats. It was heartwarming. Much to her chagrin, Adri was an only child, and I knew she didn’t want Bryce to be an only child. Her two children are clearly each other’s best friend; they’re lucky to have each other and share a birthday, even though Adri was originally hoping they’d each get their own day. She knew that Wesley would come on the 12^th, though, and she was right.

The two boys have different personalities, different strengths, different weakness, and different needs, which is not surprising, of course. They also are both very similar, however: fierce defenders of their mom and dad and of each other. I love them dearly as did Adrianna.

They were her whole world. Believe me, I can relate. It saddens me that she won’t get to see them become adults and start their own lives, that she won’t get to see them find love and start their own families, that she won’t get to be a doting grandmother, that they’re forever locked in time at 10 and 12.

But I know she’s proud of them, and her memory and her life and her impact upon them will be there forever. 

Mother's Day

The balloon that came with the Tiff's Treats I sent to her on her last Mother's Day. It was still on the mantel the morning of May 22, so she had it the last few days of her life.

It was still there the last time I was over.

I wish I'd have celebrated her more that day. I wish I'd celebrated her more the last two or three years when such things became harder and I became more and more resigned and a bit beaten down as well.

But good people (or at least better people than myself) do it, anyway. I wish I could have been there for her as fully as I'd been there for her the previous 30-odd years, but yes, yes... it takes effort from all sides.

Still, for her, being a mother was clearly and unabashedly the highlight of her life, her raison d'être. Even though she dreamed for more and hoped for more, her children gave her fulfillment and a sense of purpose in an otherwise often chaotic and unrelenting world.

She realized that some didn't even have that, and she was grateful.

Happy Mother's Day to Adrianna and all the mothers out there trying to do their best hour to hour and day to day.

We all love you.

World-Weary Stare

Every morning during this first year I’ve posted a picture of her to Facebook and Instagram, but I've hesitated posting this one until now. She looks so world-weary here, which she of course she occasionally was. But she usually took that all on and pushed it back. She was a big smiler, with a genuine smile, because somehow she could always find something good to hold on to, at least for a moment.

I’d steal glances at her all the time. Usually during moments like the one I’ve captured here she'd eventually become aware that I was looking at her. Her eyes would suddenly refocus to the present world and then dart at me and we’d make eye contact, at which point she'd let a small secret smile form. A combination of "you caught me" and "thank you for catching me."

Then she’d look away, the moment broken.