The Brick Wall Gambit

I love British black-and-white movies from the early-to-mid 1960s, especially those of the thriller, suspense, scifi or horror genre. One of my favorites growing up was the original “Village of the Damned” from 1960, based on Joh Wyndham’s novel “The Midwich Cuckoos” from 1957.

The film takes place in a British village where after an odd event all the females of child-bearing age inexplicably become pregnant. The children subsequently born all seem to be connected in a sort of hive-like group cohesiveness, as well as resembling each other physically. They are cold and emotionless but mentally advanced. 

Oh, and they can read minds and control the actions of the villagers, making them do things against their will. 

The villagers surmise that these children are the product of a world-wide an extraterrestrial alien invasion plan, and it’s decided that the children must be stopped in order to save humanity. The children of course learn the plans against them and thwart all attempts until finally the father of one of the children, (The Leader, actually) played deliciously by George Sanders, comes up with a plan to stop them. 

He will join the children when they’re all gathered together and bring a briefcase with him that contains a bomb, and sacrifice himself in order to stave off at least this alien sleeper cell. 

In order to do so, however, he will have to close off his mind to the children. He will sit there with them as the bomb timer counts down to zero while trying desperately to not think about the bomb with them in the room. He thinks instead of a brick wall, a metaphor in his mind’s eye that hopefully will serve as a literal wall blocking off his thoughts so the children won’t figure out what’s happening and stop it.

He succeeds for a time, but it’s extremely hard. With each passing moment while he talks aimlessly, we see that brick wall being dismantled brick by brick, the children sensing something is not right but not knowing exactly what. 

Then finally, at the last second, the children break down his mental brick wall and figure out what’s happening. In unison they all immediately stare at the briefcase just as it explodes, presumedly ending their threat.

I loved everything about this movie as a child, but I especially focused in on the “I’m going to try to think about nothing and see how long I can do that” aspect. It’s a next to impossible task, of course:

“Whatever you do don’t think about a purple elephant taking a bath.” 

Etc. 

I’d practice all the time and wonder if I’d be able to stave off the intrusive mindreading probes of an alien race of children.

Now, over fifty years later, this is my life. The only way I can make it through the day without breaking down hourly, or losing it totally, is to force myself not to think about what happened to Adrianna. 

To not let myself think about the phone conversation with Stephen when he said, “Adri passed this morning. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry” on repeat over and over again.

To not let myself think about what the boys were feeling and thinking that day, the days and weeks immediately after, or what they still may be going through.

To not think about what Adri thought and felt as she was dying that morning, if there was any comfort or solace or peace or pain or fear.

To not think about my little girl over the years, all her trials and challenges, all her joys and accomplishments.

To not think about what could have been done or what should have been done or what might have been done.

To not think about the boys without a mother.

I try really hard, but it’s like trying not to think about a purple elephant taking a bath. And eventually the brick wall crumbles.

The Death of a Family Narrative

When I was a kid, I loved looking at old family pictures: the great grandparents that were still alive, those that had passed, various generations of immigrants depicted on old cabinet cards or tintypes from the turn of the last century. I’d ask my older relatives for their personal history, what their childhoods were like, and I’d ask them about my grandparents’ and parents’ childhoods as well.

Slowly a family narrative would be created, memories and reminiscences of days long past that were often filled in, expanded upon and supported by faded sepia-toned photographs including faint hand-written script on their backs with decades-old dates or a long-forgotten addresses.

Some of these photographs would be in frames on the wall, some loose in a shoe box, some pasted into photo albums composed of broken spines and brittle pages, some with mounting corners still attached, but most without.
 

There would be other ephemera as well: old letters, birth announcements, citizenship papers, crucifixes from first communions or other keepsake mementos such as old coins or watches received for various milestones.
 

Each had a story to tell, and I was eager to hear them all.

My daughter Adrianna was of a similar bent, interested and enthralled by family history, the decades-long narrative that shows how we all got to where we were at that present. She’d also ask questions and listen intently, the newest link in that familial saga, the most recent Guardian of Our Story, the Keeper of the Lore who would make sure that it didn’t disappear like dust in the wind, or tears in the rain.

But now I look at all that I’ve saved and wonder what the point was:
 

All the papers, all the letters from my grandfather when he was overseas in WWII. 

The letters from my great grandparents and grandparents to me that I’ve kept in binders.
 

The personal narratives that I recorded of my great-grandparents on a tape recorder in the late Seventies and since transferred to CD and now mp3s and YouTube videos. 

The oral history that I asked my grandfather to commit to writing and printed for him and our family. 

My great-grandmother’s family recipes that I had printed in book form.

The transcription of the house diary of our summer cottage.

And of course all the photos, videos, and keepsakes that I’ve amassed myself from my parents, my grandparents, my great grandparents. And my daughter.

An entire wall in the upstairs hallway has family photos from floor to ceiling that I walk by every night on the way to bed. Everyone that was special to me, most of whom are now gone. 

And I wonder what will happen to them now without Adri to take ownership of them along with the stories that accompany them. 

Even if I eventually I once again regain the relationship I want with my grandsons, they will be much further removed from this family narrative. It will all mean less to them, if it ever means anything at all. 

Adri would have been the conduit in the narrative chain. She’d have told them the stories and created the interest, the sense of kinship, the feeling of shared history, in much the same way my parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents did for me.

So I now am confronted with a lifetime of personal historical preservation efforts and materials that will end with me.

I helped my mom downsize this summer in order to move from a 3-bedroom 1800 square foot house to a 600 square foot apartment at a 55+ complex, and this required culling a bunch of historical family ephemera. There is simply no room for much of what she’d accumulated, but I tried to take what I could and make room for as much as possible.

One of the items she had in the discard pile was my grandfather’s framed diploma received for his doctorate degree from Columbia University in the 1950s. Of course this was an important thing that had been kept for the past 70-odd years, but there is a limit, there is finite space and a seemingly infinite supply of photos and keepsakes.
 

We had to let much of it go, but in the end, even though our house is becoming filled with such things, I rescued it from the discard pile and it sits on my ever-increasingly cluttered desktop, because I just couldn't bear to have his achievement forgotten or discarded.

It is of course just a temporary reprieve, because when I’m gone and someone has to go through all that I’ve accumulated, who would keep this, this memory from several generations before they were born, memorializing the achievement of someone they’ve never met?

Adri would have gladly taken it, but now, or rather in the near future…?

It will become dust in the wind, or tears in the rain.

The Up Series Final Entry

In 1964 a British documentary was released called Seven Up! which followed a group of seven-year-olds from different social strata and backgrounds in Britain at that time. Fourteen children were selected, found by Michael Apted, whose initial role was just that, research assistant.

He was asked to find children in the extremes of the different social classes in the 1960s. There are boys from a pre-preparatory school from wealthy families, three girls from a primary school in the working-class area of East London, a couple of boys from an orphanage, a boy from a rural area of Yorkshire, a couple of boys from a middle-class area near Liverpool, and a few others spanning the gamut of class in England.

The producers intended it to be a one-off, a “glimpse” into the possible Britain in the future Year 2000. They wanted to see how ingrained these social classes really were, if the first seven years of one’s life shape and define that person’s character, values, and habits.

Their stated theme and repeated motif being the perhaps overly fatalistic and deterministic

“Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man”

Seven years later they decided to do a follow-up, with Apted as the director. 7 Plus Seven checked in with the children to see what they were up to now, and its success led to the ambitious goal of revisiting them every seven years: 21 Up followed, then 28 Up, 35 Up, 42 Up, 49 Up, 56 Up, 63 Up, and just recently the final chapter, 70 Up.

Since it was not originally intended to be a series, none of the children were signed to long-term contracts and it was often a challenge to get all of them to keep participating. Some refused to participate after the first few, some were absent for a couple of entries and then returned, and of course some passed away, including Michael Apted himself between 63 and 70.

Of course there are some issues with all of this. Apted isn’t a disassociated biographer, he inserts himself, and some of the participants claim that he molded the story arc he wanted via selective edits and focuses. To his credit, however, Apted acknowledges this both on and off camera. There are segments in the film where some of the participants take him to task about this, and these interactions are included in the films.

Revisiting them all every seven years was always a treat. It was so interesting watching them grow up and take their place in the world, but of course there was often heartache and a sense of melancholy at broken dreams or just witnessing the relentless march of time. Not all ended up where they hoped they would, but surprisingly many did. Some of the rich boys in pre-prep talk about their intended life arc, including which primary, secondary, and universities they would attend along with their proposed areas of study, and all tracked almost exactly.

But we also have to see the development of mental illness, or the breakup of relationships, and of course death. And with each passing entry the jump cuts showing them age in blocks of seven years gets more and more jarring.

This is life captured 24 frames a second once every seven years over lifetimes. Fleeting, exhilarating, yet heartbreaking at the same time.

When I’d watch these films every seven years, I’d imagine what Adrianna’s life would look like presented in this manner, two-hour slices presented once every seven years. As it turns out, her last would have been 35 Up, and really, each of the seven-year points would have been an interesting representation of where she was in her life.

At seven, still my little girl, full of hope and wonder, everything ahead of her with no boundaries or limits.

At fourteen, the beginnings of the metamorphosis into adulthood, with all the rebellion and battles for independence and autonomy that that age usually brings.

At twenty-one, her struggles to decide what to do with the rest of her life, how to proceed.

At twenty-eight, being a new mother with two toddlers as her charge, her raison d’être, her everything.

At thirty-five, her continuing struggle with self-esteem, sense of worth, and mental health.

Such condensation isn’t really fair, of course. So much of life is and was lived between each of those seven years, and of course the same can be said for the participants of the Up series. And, especially in my daughter’s case, the sense of melancholy is amplified and pushed more into focus.

Such hopes, such dreams, and then a life that comes and goes in an instant.

It’s no wonder, then, that watching the intro to 70 Up last night I was overcome, yet again, with the loss of Adrianna.

I saw parts of Adri in many of the participants: Neil’s mental health issues, Bruce’s sense of social justice, Suzy’s sense of alienation, the working-class girls’ sense of adventure, and Nick’s intellectual curiosity, to name just a few.

This will be the final entry in the Up series. Several participants have passed away as has director Michael Apted. They are all seventy now. They have lived their lives, for better or worse, and the whole world watched as they did so, for better or worse.

Still, the series has come to an end, and the symbolism isn’t lost on me. Unfortunately.

I am and continue to be devastated that Adri didn’t get to live her whole expected life, for better or worse, with me by her side, for better or worse.

September 11th

Adrianna was in 8th grade twenty-five years ago, the morning of September 11, 2001. She told me that another teacher opened the classroom door, crying, and went to talk to her teacher, who then also started crying. She and her classmates didn't know what was going on, of course. 

She said the two teachers kept it together as best as they could so as not to freak out the class, but told them that something was happening and explained what had happened so far (the second plane at this point.)

I can't imagine how that affected ones so young and vulnerable, the veneer of safety and security ripped away like a bandage exposing an open wound, awakening and exposing a precarious reality subjected to the whims of a few dangerous individuals. 

Things were never the same for any of us, but for the children just coming of age, I'm sure it was several fold worse.

My generation practiced duck and cover drills in elementary school, but we never really knew exactly why, and we certainly never saw our teachers crying in the hallway after an attack on our country and our innocence 

Just Breathe

This song. 

When Pearl Jam released this song in 2009, I had begun to see breaks in fissures in Adrianna's life. This song seemed to manifest itself as my own personal lament, a glimpse into a future brought on by my overly-fatalistic view of life, chance, and destiny.

And now, of course, it's a song that just destroys me. So do I avoid it? Of course not. It's a beautiful song that reminds me of a beautiful yet ephemeral life, and I will not look away no matter how much it hurts.

Quantum Immortality

I’ll let you all in on a little secret: I’m having a hard time getting over the loss of Adrianna. No! It’s true. I hide it well, so this probably comes as a shock to most of you. 

“Wow, he acts totally at peace and has clearly moved on,” you counter, but hear me out: I struggle. 

(See, there are many forms of denial. 😉)

Anyway, I’m constantly in search of coping mechanisms and strategies to make myself feel better, to ease those vestiges of pain that I obviously conceal so well. Writing, video games, little arts and crafts projects for the boys, getting deep into my lifelong study of prestidigitation, music, obtaining and wearing rings or a bracelet connected to her, posting a pic of her each day, performing reembrace ceremonies, et al. 

Then there are the more specific mental gymnastics that I often employ which work at first but then gradually lose their effectiveness. These include but are not limited to focusing on the good her organ donation did and continues to do, or letting myself at least contemplate that none of this real (either a long nightmare from which I’ll soon awake or that we’re all part of some virtual reality,) or flirting with the idea that there is an afterlife, or embracing the fact that every life is too short and that at least she for the most part lived it to the fullest, or seeing that her essence lives on in her boys, along with a slew of other thought patterns that have at least temporarily provided some much-needed balm to my bruised soul.

But eventually, like any other drug, I become immune to its effects, inured to its calming results, a victim of pseudo-sensory adaptation. 

And then the search begins again for a new soothing mechanism.

Recently, I’ve hit upon something new: Quantum immortality.

Now, I’ve sort of talked about this before at least sideways in something I wrote a year or so ago about imagining that in a different life Adri was on her patio drinking coffee in the morning, living her best life with family, fulfilling job, and dog. I tried to make it clear then that I meant this literally; it wasn’t simply some wistful contemplation, I really believe there is such a happy reality, one of several in the multiverse, but that I (and by extension you as well, dear reader) am trapped in a different one, in a universe that no longer includes Adrianna as a sentient consciousness. 

However, while I knew of the theory of multiverses from a quantum physics, I didn’t think deeply of the implications for human consciousness or that it actually had a defined term, the aforementioned quantum immortality.

Basically, the multiverse exists because each time we make a choice or a seemingly random event occurs, our universe bifurcates into two: one where, for example, we decided to go to an Italian restaurant last night, and one where instead we went to an Indian restaurant.

Both exist, or rather both come into existence once the decision is made, once the event happens. In this one, the cat in the box is alive. In that other one… well, it’s better not to ask.

So quantum immortality says that in the universe we find ourselves in right now, we’ve survived many possible deaths. Every time there was an event that might have ended your life, reality branched off in a different direction. In one reality, the one where you survive, your consciousness continues. In the other, the one where you died, there is of course no more consciousness. 

Your consciousness, the “you,” lives on and keeps going forward in those branches where you survive. The near-fatal car crash, the brush with some illness, the hard tumble you took down the stairs… you, the person here in this universe, survived them all.

But in the other branches your friends and family see a much worse result. To those stuck in those realities/universes it appears that you are gone, your consciousness and life ended and are gone for good.

But your consciousness of course did not end, it just migrated to a different universe, the one where (at least to this point) you are a survivor.

You can’t die; you just shift multiverses and carry on. Your consciousness across the multiverse is immortal.

This makes sense to me on a at least a metaphysical level, and if we ignore the possible arguments against the multiverse which involve problems concerning the conservation of matter and entropy, I can also embrace it “scientifically.”  

For now, I’ll think of Adrianna, or at least her consciousness, still alive and part of the world. And sure, it’s not optimal that this isn’t also my world, but I have to take what little victories over pain that I can get.

Perhaps we really are immortal.

 

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 there 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 needed 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 congenital 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.

Here’s a text from Adri sent in 2019 that illustrates much of this:

12/19/2019 8:31:15 PM

And I always wanted be counselor or psychologist. Always. So I’m doing that. I’ll get a grant and financial aid, and I can only get so much, so I don’t want to waste it.

Also, I’m old.

And I am worn out.

I can’t believe what all I have done to myself. It makes me so sad that I didn’t see that I was gorgeous, but I didn’t think I was pretty.

And I couldn’t see it, and I turned myself into the person I saw, and now I am ugly.

And worn out.

And makes me sad. Like so, so sad.

So I really, really want to try and help people before it’s too late. Suck it up show them before and after picture and tell them the truth so that my mistakes weren’t for nothing.

Maybe they were to save a life

Anyway, here are The Carpenters playing one of my favorite songs from their oeuvre, featuring Karen herself on the drum kit.

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 with finding 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.

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.