Death anniversaries past, in pictures

Despite the Benedryl, I'm still awake three hours after I first woke up. (And despite the time stamp on this post, I intentionally altered it so it'll appear in the blog posts below my "real" post for today, about the fourth anniversary of Charley's death. As I'm writing right now, it's really just after 5:00 am.)

And who knows--perhaps I subconsciously/intentionally chose to fall asleep with Anna, knowing the very real likelihood that I'd wake up...and want to stay awake, to take advantage of my time alone, without a child clamoring around me, to sift through and write down my thoughts in advance of this stupid death anniversary. Maybe I was hoping I'd be so exhausted from staying up all night that I could just sleep through much of the "real" death anniversary day, whether through naps or passing out with Anna at her bedtime.

As I pulled out my laptop to start writing my previous post, I was curious what I'd written about the first anniversary of Charley's death. And with half a mind to post an excerpt or an entry or two from it here on my blog, I pulled out my journal from that time three years ago. Reading my words wasn't totally necessary to instantly bring that week back to my mind in crystalline detail--I could have remembered much of it on my own, between my memories and the pictures on the hard drive of my computer--but it was...something...to quickly scan my self-examinations. I may still post them, either later today or another time (or another death anniversary in years to come), but the sheer length and frequency with which I wrote that week of the one-year anniversary is enough to make me wait til sometime later.

But as I wrote the last blog post, I also looked at the pictures from that week...and other death anniversaries since. And the pictures belie so much of what I actually felt at the time....

Despite that we're standing a mere three feet from the pole that ended Charley's and my blissful, happy life together, that killed Dana and Judy's oldest child, you'd never know it from our faces:

We weren't happy as we were there, certainly. Not by a long shot. We were there out of helplessness, more than anything; we simply didn't really know what else to do to observe and mark the time and spot where he died, 52 weeks earlier. And in truth, I didn't really want to go to the track where he died. His mom really wanted to, though, and for any number of reasons--curiosity, morbidity, helplessness, support, a compelling need--I went along too.

I haven't been back since.

Not on a death anniversary anyway. I know Judy has on all the anniversaries she's been able, to put flowers in the fence either for the Tuesday race or during the week when she's been in Portland, but I haven't. I'll go to the cemetery if I go anywhere, but not back to the smoking gun.

Though I do wonder from time to time if the scratches on the pole are still there. The words our closest family and friends wrote on the pole one week after he died, before the dedication "ceremony"/salute thing that the bicycle association held at the beginning of the weekly race the next race after he died, had long since faded even at only a year out.



I guess permanent marker doesn't count for much compared to a metal pole exposed to the elements all year.

The gray, cool gloom on the one-year anniversary was oddly comforting, in direct contrast to the bright blue skies and searing heat that started the day of his funeral and that lasted for days after.

It was, ironically, another gorgeous day on the two-year anniversary of Charley's death, though. While it made a poignant, beautiful contrast in this picture I spontaneously took of Anna on that day, is it any wonder why, deep down, I hate summer?

There's no photographic evidence of the third anniversary of Charley's death. We'd just gotten back the night before from camping and the debacle with the dog. If I hadn't written in my journal that day (and if I hadn't reread it recently) I'd have no idea how we actually spent it: talking to my mother-in-law on the phone for a little while in the morning, spending the afternoon at my sister's house while the kids played in their cheapo pool; I have no idea what we did in the evening. I know we didn't go to the cemetery, opting to stay in Sandy instead.

But that first anniversary....I had a barbecue with family--both mine and Charley's--on the night before the "real" anniversary, on the Tuesday-night anniversary of his death. I remember it being a rather surreal, out-of-body experience. I was there--I mean, I'm in the pictures or else I took them, and I know I was physically present--but I remember less of it than I do the funeral or the open house after it, one year prior. I couldn't quite comprehend the pain of it being a year, nor did I really know how to cope with it...so I, in effect, checked out, I think. I couldn't tell you (without going back and reading my journal entries word for word) if the evening was infinitely painful or not. Maybe I was impervious to "more" pain at that point; it all hurt.




But at the end of the BBQ, despite the smile in this picture, all I remember was being tired.

Bone-deep, worn out, I-didn't-want-to-face-anything-more tired. Exhausted. Yet since it was technically "only" the night before the anniversary, I still had to survive the actual date of the anniversary the next day, plus the festivities I'd planned later in the week--a kids' ride at the Kiddie Kilo Thursday night, a BBQ with just my friends on the weekend--to further commemorate (and supposedly help me make it through the week)...and knowing I was listing our house for sale on the following Monday. (In hindsight, I was absolutely, without-a-doubt, certifiably insane. But hey--I didn't know any better.)

There are no pictures from the actual first anniversary date, nor from the BBQ with my friends a few days later.

But there are from the Kiddie Kilo we did the day after the actual first anniversary. Charley participated in the weekly track races at the Alpenrose Velodrome every Thursday night (or close enough to it) for three summers. Although I'd never made it to the track early enough to see it while Charley was alive (because of my work schedule; but I always arrived in time to watch him race), I knew that they had the "Kiddie Kilo" at the start of each weekly race, where any kids there could ride their bikes around on the apron of the track (the flat sidewalk-like area at the bottom of the track's inclined walls). In my insane phase leading up to the first anniversary where I brainstormed and planned to the nth degree all the ways we could commemorate the day/week/horrible event, I thought that the kids--primarily my nieces and nephews, who were all really young (6 years old or younger, except for one older niece) when Charley died, or possibly friends' kids--might like something they could participate in during the "festivities" that week.

Mostly, though, I just wanted to be able to say--to Charley, to myself, to God--that I'd done it, that I'd taken Anna to the track that her dad loved so much, and that I pushed her around it on her tricycle to honor a father she couldn't even remember.



I've never really seen some of these pictures before, but this particular one really struck me right now: just how little Anna still was.





The other kids got numbers of their own to place on their bikes for the "race," but I had Anna wear something different: her dad's racing number, pinned to her back. I didn't even remember I'd done this, until seeing this picture anew right now.


I can't believe it was three years ago already that we marked for the first time the life that was lost. A lifetime and a heartbeat, all at the same time....And we haven't had the same sort of "celebration" since...which is a bit of a relief--they're damned exhausting, and in the end, for me, the artificiality of trying to do something "big" and meaningful seems to dilute its usefulness...just makes me more tired, more stymied at how to make it through, when nothing can replace Charley himself...not all the pomp or pageantry (which he would have hated anyway) in the world.

Instead, I've turned toward private moments, toward small things that are meaningful. But in comparison, sometimes the private--while easier to bear and, for me, often more authentic--just doesn't quite measure up to the public displays from all the people who cared. Perhaps next year, at the five-year mark, might be a good time to do something more public, larger, again....

Somebody remind me of that next year in late June, okay? Although how could it even be five years in one more short year? An instant, and a lifetime....