It feels like it’s only fitting to scribble a few words down now that it is the end of 2017.  After all, I haven’t written anything here for over a year.  This used to be therapy for me.  Now I just can’t find the time to use it and just let things simmer in my heart and head.

Not today. Not tonight.

To my wife,

I can’t say there’s any one thing in particular that caused this moment of introspection but a series of simple waypoints of life reminding me of our story.  Then this was topped off by the right piece of music at the right time.  Remember the other day when I told you about that early morning instance of inspiration that I wished I could capture as a ‘lightning-in-a-bottle’ moment for use later?  This is that moment.

I’ve been thinking a lot about our story.  I don’t talk about it much nor do I need to.  We know how I has played out over time.  There are no Hallmark cards which can capture it all in prose or verse: Two healthy video game playing boys, two needy and anxious 40+ pound indoor dogs, and a male alley cat with six nipples.  Life.  There are too many tears, laughs, and memories to count.  And for all of it, I thank you.

Over the last few weeks I’ve found myself being more introspective.  I know it’s because 2017 has been a year that we’d like to get into the rearview mirror.  Complaining and whining about the tough times of 2017 would do an injustice to the great parts of the year.  But as I was sitting in the office this morning thinking about our responsibilities, I was taken back by a simple song.  A song and it rang so true to us.

I guess you could say that there are a few songs over the years:  “So Far Away,” “Jet Lag,” and “Future Day” are a few of them.  But this one today is different.

It’s brutally honest about mistakes. We had many along the way; from truths to lies to fears and failures.  There will be more and we know it.

It’s deeply soulful and touching.  As kids and young adults, we had our dreams.   This wasn’t what we scripted 15-20 years ago but things worked out better than we expected or even planned.

And it’s profane in the appropriate places.  After all, the kids know just how much we swear.  It’s about shaking things up in the world in our unique way and some people will be offended by it.

The song mimics our approach to life in all of its rawness.  It’s about handling whatever comes our way; maturity, kids, death, depression, suicide, friends and family.

We have always survived.

And to think, this year has its highs and lows for us but also the world around us.  2017 hasn’t been all that great at times and I’m looking forward to making it better in 2018.  But to even think that it was the worst year would be unfair to how far we have come and the direction we keep going.

We have had countless warm and unforgettable moments with each other, our children, our family, and our friends.  We were a part of a ‘voice’ in Olympia this year.  We taught our children invaluable lessons about inclusion, support, belief, and strength.  We were part of an ‘uprising’ of people who demanded to be heard and have justice.  We had friends and family step out of our lives.  They grew apart from us, or we did from them.  But no longer did those ties of friendship bind.  New relationships were made and old ones were re-established around our kitchen island over wine.  Much wine.  We lost inspirational role models this year.  At times it felt like a bit of our adolescence and adulthood were taken away as a result of the losses.  And then, we lost family at the most inopportune times testing the true bonds of love and support.  But so many uplifting instances continue to balance the negatives of 2017.  Looking back on the concerts and the music; Green Day, Linkin Park, and Vanilla Ice all were the fabric of our 2017 soundtrack.  Our oldest child is now a pre-teen 7^th grader.  Not yet grown and still a mama’s boy but becoming self-sufficient.  He can finally spread peanut butter on waffles.  And our youngest, continuing to cut all the corners he can with his chores, wandering the halls of school, and being the force that consistently requires our guidance and focus testing every bit of patience we have.

Yes.  2017 has not been great but it has been enriching.  And without you on this journey, this path wouldn’t be as meaningful.  It’s a gross understatement but there have been countless tears, laughs, and memories this year.  But what is incredibly uplifting is having you join me on the countless tears, laughs, and memories that are still in our future.  Past, present, and the future of us…..I thank you for all of it and love you with every thread of this sometimes frail but deeply devoted heart.

As per the typical formula; Watch movie and/or listen to music, get inspired, pen poignant blog entry (or lack of poignancy depending on your perspective and whether you find this useless drivel or not).

So here we are again.

This all comes from this morning’s drive to work.  Stuck in traffic music was playing on the ol’ car stereo.  And low and behold, I got an itching for something old but new.  Let me clarify.  I got the itch to listen to an artist of my ‘generation’ who just released new music that was inspired by a film and movement he had been a part of.

As a side note, I once had a colleague mock me saying I “couldn’t relate” to this type of music.  First of all, I’ve never professed to relate.  And second, music is a window into what someone is feeling, thinking, or dreaming.  It was my window into something different yet similar.  It wasn’t about relating.  I didn’t know the violence that the music spoke of, but I did know the struggle to find my own voice and path.  That’s universal. And hearing that in a multitude of forms makes a person feel a little less lonely.  But I digress.

This entry isn’t about that.

The song got me thinking about the past and how things in life have come so far.  The friends, the foes, the family; it all changes with time.  Both good and bad.  But what really stuck with me throughout the message of the song was perseverance.  You have to push through those obstacles that block your path toward growth.  And that’s financial, emotional, and physical growth.  It’s all important.  The obstacles are always going to be there.  But then there’s the people that accompany you along this journey of growth that are equally, and sometimes, more important than your own growth.

And there’s different levels to these relationships you have with these people.  Like rings of a tree in how close or far they away they are from your center.  The closer, the more impactful.  The farther away, the more likely they are to be background.  And those rings of relationships change over time and may never return to the original location.  After all, time changes everything as they say.  Whoever they are.

Listening to this song reminded me, I don’t have friends…..I have family.

So this is the end of the eloquence.  This blog ain’t about me or about that.  Today it’s about straight talk cutting to the core.  It’s about three homies that I could never live without.  They are part of this and they know who they are.

The memories are never too far away from me.  Think back on it; we had those all-nighters.  Awake.  Just talking about the girls, the cars, the music.  We never thought too far ahead.  We just focused on the moment.  How about the cruising we would do on the weekends?  You name the place, we were there.  It started on River Road in the beginning.  Burger King and Van’s Arcade.  It wasn’t really cruising then as the cops used to get in everyone’s mix.  It was more about posting up.  Then there was the waterfront in to Tacoma.  Same situation there.  The cops used to watch and count the number of times the same cars would drive through.  So instead we would get there early enough to park in one of the turnouts along the road.  Then we could just cool out next to the freshly washed and waxed ride.  But watch out.  Having that stereo too loud while driving or being parked would get you a ticket.  And the stereos.  We were on a budget.  No silver spoon like some of the d-bags we went to school with.  We scratched and clawed to scrape a little cash together to put some loud tunes in our rides.  We visited Music Machine and Foss Car Audio and hoped and wished that one day we could buy that pullout single DIN CD player.  Eventually we got there and our stereos were it.  We installed those things ourselves.  Only partly due to us not being able to afford it.  But more about just doing it ourselves.

Our paths were littered with bad decisions.  But we needed those to find our way.  You can only fall out of a Honda Prelude sunroof so many times before the cover story of ‘falling down stairs’ won’t cover it any longer.  Covering the linoleum floor with beer for a ‘beer slide’ may have not been the best way to entertain partygoers either but it was only a rental house.  The ‘potion’ was inspired from listening to this very genre of music.  It may have not tasted the best but it was functional and did what it need to do.  Then we tried to advance our craft.  Vodka jello become an identity for the crew.  It wasn’t a party if there weren’t 5-gallon buckets full of vodka jello.  Unfortunately too many times it become a coating on our walls.  Thank God for damage deposits.

The bad decisions weren’t limited to parties and cars.  But even with those horrible decisions about relationships and the times we thought they were the right one or just the one right now, we never abandoned each other.  We supported, pumped up, and even had to console each other over tears and beers.  Through the drama, the heartbreak, the love, and children, we were and are still there for each other.  It just got tougher over the years to stay in touch with life happening.

I remember it all and I remember the P3P.

We’ve grown up and now it’s all about the kids and the jobs and the family BBQs.  It’s about obligations and a lot of times, that takes our focus away from what got us here.  Life happens and it changes things.

Hell, it changes everything and it all matters.  I miss you guys and you are a part of me.  I want you all to know how much I think about you guys.  I remember all the great times and challenges we had back then.  Just trying to grow up and have a voice.  Trying to figure out who we were.  And then I think about the relationships, getting married and our children.  Trying to make the best possible life choices for a family but not even knowing if you can make a decent choice for yourself.  The tiring stress and anxiety that comes with an adolescent-like adult just trying to do right.  And then transition to now; here we are.  We’re dads still trying to find our way somewhere between disciplinarian and loving partner and 16 year old boy who still questions authority and wants to roll down Ruston Way.

Finding balance in all of those realities is, and has always been hard.  But you guys have always been with me.  I love you guys.  Never forget that.  One more time for P-Town....

Months go by and I never make time to chronicle my thoughts and feelings.  By some odd coincidence, three people during the same week asked if I was still writing on my blog.  It’s not that I haven’t wanted to write or appreciate the exhaustive therapy from writing.  It’s just that inspiration comes at awkward times.  Those inspiration moments are insanely difficult to replicate later when you want to retell how you were feeling at that moment in time.  Recently, I’m just busy trying to maintain.  Maintain; that has been tough to do these last few months.  I can’t say I’ve been much of pleasure to be around.  Proof point when my wife gave me a firm talkin’ to one night few weeks back.

I could take this entry into some ethereal long winded diatribe and camouflage my feelings with words but instead I’m just going to get to the point; I have been in a moopy place these last few months.

In what felt like an instant, my pet went from the pillar of health, strength, and normalcy, changed to weakness, deterioration, and suffering.  In an emergency visit to the veterinarian, I learned that her health was so far gone, that there was really no choice but to make a life altering decision for both of us and let her go in peace.

12 years old.  She lived through several three house moves, flown on more airplanes than some people, adjusted to the addition of two boys and one runaway dog, a marriage, and loss of family members, an became to stoic alpha of our family.  Through those 12 years, she was always my emotional backbone.  After my brother died, she was the one thing that helped me stay focused on moving forward.  Every day at lunch I’d come home from work to walk her around the dog park.  It was a break in the monotony.

We rescued her from the animal shelter and she rescued us when I lost my brother and my wife lost her mother.  And so as it came full circle and let her spirit go back.  While it was the right decision given the context and circumstances, the process of arriving at the decision and admitting it was nothing short of gut wrenching.  I feel like I lost a very important piece of me that day.  Possibly one of the last pieces of a life from long ago.  I guess I wasn’t ready to lose that piece yet.

Realizing that I wasn’t doing OK after making this choice got me thinking about larger things in life like my parents and my mortality.  I always believed that my little brother would be here when things got tough.  He was level headed, and me, well I’m nothing close to that.  It’s an unspoken confidence you have in someone in your life.  I always knew he would man up and help take care of things when shit got sideways.  Losing Stacey and not being able to cope with it was a harsh reminder that my brother was gone and not here to help.

There’s been so many reminders these last few months.  Some good and some bad.  Some feel like picking at a wound that never really healed.  If nothing else, it’s definitely reminded me that I’m still feeling lost in all of this.  But I suppose that’s the small satisfaction of still carrying those memories.  We carry those we lost in our hearts.  Forever. 

I’ve been taking so much of this out on those around me; my family.  At the end of all of this, that’s all we really have; family.  It has been very surreal to write this entry.  I’ve gone from feeling alone and depressed to appreciative and accepting.  Time has continued to tick away and that emotional ground zero is a long way back in the rear view mirror.  Many people I know now don’t even know I had a brother.  Life has moved on and I can’t expect them to live in my past when they were never there to begin with.  Nevertheless, it’s hard to have constant reminders of all of your missing parts.  As far as you think you may have come, it’s never really that far sometimes.

And I’ve found much peace in the music and film I’ve experienced recently.  It’s helped me get past some of the negativity.  It’s allowed me to carry those memories in my heart with new vigor.  My brother and I may never create a new memory together; but we do have every bit of richness from the 24 years we did have; Christmas Eves sleeping in the same room, picking him up from junior high school to play basketball, Cougar football games, the Commodore 64 and Nintendo game marathons, all the laughs and the stupid fights.  And that’s just to name a few.  What about the cars?  The cars; the riced out Hondas, the Subarus, the street rods and muscle cars, and all of the drama and fun that came with them.  I think the cars are the one of the best memories.  And those memories are always within my reach.

No matter where you are, whether it's a quarter mile away or halfway across the world.  You'll always be with me.  You'll always be my brother.