I recently had a conversation with a friend who I see maybe once a year and he asked, "so how has your year been?" Wow, my mind says. Do I tell him just what kind of year it's been or just tell him it sucked and we move on.
If you know me, or have read this blog, you know its been quite a year. The remainder of this blog entry provides the details, but needless to say 2013 has been less than desirable. So, how do you describe a year that has had enough highs and lows to reach mountain tops and fill valleys. Stay with me as I try to paint a picture with words that capture moments I will cherish as well as moments that will always be with me like it or not.
The year started in very unspecatcular fashion with the usual crappy weather that defines Ohio winters and lots of college basketball. As most know I travel Producing and Directing college basketball for ESPN, mostly in the Horizon and Missouri Valley Conference. These are the conferences many refer to as mid-majors or the bracket buster teams when it comes tournament time. My games are not the premiere game or rarely are my games on "the" ESPN network. But it is still basketball at its best….usually. You never know on a given night when one player goes for 40 points, or it comes down to a buzzer beater shot or you just get to see a really good basketball game. I get to work with some very talented and really great people who despite the miles apart we live or the so little time we spend together, have become a second family to me. Sadly, we lost one of those family members, Tom Domer, who will be a standard bearer for those who follow, a professional to a fault and a friend to everyone he touched,
It is a glamorous job but a job that takes a toll, both physically and mentally with travel and highs and lows and long lonely road trips. But I would not trade it for the world.
Julie and I made the transition to spring by making what was becoming our traditional trip to Marco Island. We fell in love with this place and the beach along with our day trip to Key West. I even made a new friend this trip named McCarthy from Green Bay...not Mike the coach but his three year old daughter, Isabella who shared her beach toys with me....not to worry, being a life long Packer fan, I made sure to make a fool of myself introducing myself to Coach as well.
After living in the same house for 16 years, our backyard has become a place to entertain, our own oasis with a deck, bar and temporary gazebo we christened "the hut." But this year, we were forced to replace our hut made of bamboo. It survived 6 years including a rare hurricane which required it to be anchored to the house to avoid leaning. The lean seemed to cause a kind of vertigo when you sat in it, despite the gallons of alcohol consumed there. So we chose a new one, bought it on line, assembled one beautiful May Saturday and listened to it collapse three days later due to a not so rare May monsoon. That should have been a sign but with the demise of our oasis, our interest in the backyard faded and the deck, bar and patio turned earily silent and flowers and plants that added color never met earth.
We spent the early part of summer counting the days until our 2nd Grandchild would be born to our daughter Courtney and her husband Justin. There were baby showers, 4th of July celebration or as Julie called it, High Holy days in Upper Arlington, OH. This was not as hectic as it had been in past years since we moved the celebration to Courtney's house in nearby Worthington. Not hosting had become a relief but a sad end of an era since our house and backyard had been the place to culminate a long day of friends, food and drink. Again it may have been a hint or sign of things to come but just seemed like a natural progression as our kids were starting their own lives and families.
It was at this time that First Community Church became a very important part of my life. This is the church Julie grew up in, the church we and both daughters were married in and where our kids and Grandson Jackson were baptized. After talking to a very good friend and mentor about helping to improve the Church's media ministry and meeting people that would later become very important to me, I found a new opportunity to use my TV and video knowledge and fill in some blank dates during the summer. I immediately fell in love with the challenge of improving the look of the churches television show with the help of my new found friends. The timing was perfect or as they put it, this was destiny.
Then came the moment I re-live day after day, an event you don't plan for, a moment in time that cannot be erased. When you lose your best friend of 35 years unexpectedly you immediately wonder how will I go on, how will I live each day without tears, mental pain and suffering. Then within minutes people, no, friends step up and do things you never dreamed would happen. One refuses to leave my side until I am settled down and thinking clearly, your best friend drops everything and flies across the country to be with you, your brother and sister-in-law come from South Carolina in a minutes notice, friends and co-workers, even bosses you have not seen in years appear and offer their support. Others unselfishly give their time and resources to put together meals, "backyard parties" and whatever else we needed to make those few miserable days tolerable. What I thought would be the darkest time in my life became a celebration for the life of the person who made a large part of my time here the very happiest. Friends and family made it okay to cry, laugh, hug and most important carry on with my life while never forgetting my wonderful wife and best friend Julie and to each and everyone one of you I am forever grateful.
And like that, things started to turn for the better. Call it the circle of life, destiny, God's healing touch or just Julie stirring the pot, 8 days later we welcomed Rylie Jo Simmons to our family, the daughter of Courtney and Justin and then before we could all get over how adorable she was, we grew as a family a little bit more with the arrival of Cooper Gareff DeWeese, 2nd son to Marin and Kevin. I hate that Julie is not here to be their Yah-Yah, but for me there will always be a little bit of Julie in both Rylie and Cooper and that I will make sure of. My kids and Grandchildren have been my rock through this all. I will always cherish sitting in Courtney's kitchen each morning for the week after Julie's death and watching as my family welcomed the morning each in their own way or listening to their stories of growing up together despite the fact that Julie and I never thought that any of them would survive growing up together! I can grow old now knowing they loved their Mom, they still love their Dad and they love each other. They're adults, they're parents and aunts and uncles but they will always be the one thing that took a very shitty year, shined it and did their very best to make sure it has a happy ending.
Fall meant the return to my road family and football and the transition back to basketball. My travels took me to Dallas twice which meant side trips to Austin to visit grandsons, Jackson and Cooper and stay in touch with Marin and Kevin. Sunday dinners are quickly becoming a tradition at Courtney and Justin's and time spent with Rylie. Kyle and I muddle through more like roommates than father-son.
But one Sunday in late September will always help to define the life that was Julie. As a part of our church there is a camp in the Hocking Hills of southern Ohio which are the foothills to the Appalachian mountains. This was a place very special to Julie, in fact donations of over $2,000.00 were made in her name to benefit the Camp Akita Scholarship fund to assure kids who want to attend Akita will be able to do so. So it seemed fitting that this be the place to spread her ashes, along with a beach in Florida. So I asked her closest friends and our family to gather there and quickly realized, had it not been for Julie, these people who are my dearest friends would not have ever been a part of my life and this was probably the greatest gift Julie could have ever given me and I will hold that late afternoon, in the gloaming, forever in my heart and mind.
Then it came holiday time and since that god awful day in July, the time I dreaded the most. Triggers were everywhere waiting to move me to tears and make my life miserable those final 6 weeks of the year. But despite some setbacks and full meltdown on a plane on our anniversary, these to we will survive with friends and family. And I firmly believe Julie is the reason why. She was so wrapped in tradition and fought change like a champion fighter so much so that if we held on to a little bit of Julie whether it be her silly stocking gifts, her love of games at family holiday get-togethers, Feliz Navidad or her no sports rule once the tree was up, together we would make it through and we have!
So what if anything can I gleam from 2013? Each of us deals with the loss of loved ones in different ways. So many were concerned for my well being and the most common phrase I heard was, "I can't imagine what you must be going through." I have friends who have gone through worse than I but were there for me with phone calls and notes. So how do I continue to put left foot in front of right foot and repeat? Luck….thats all I got. I am lucky to have the friends and family I have who all made it possible for me to continue on in as normal a fashion as I could. But the greatest healing moment came over drinks with a very dear friend and her husband who I was meeting for the first time. This was the first real social event without Julie and as the subject slowly moved to how was I dealing with everything, he became emotional and stated that he could not imagine life without his wife. It was then that I realized I was surviving this awful time and I was able to do so because as hard as it is to imagine being without your wife it would have been even harder had Julie and I not spent 35 years together preparing for this time. We built a family fortress to protect each other, a cache full of pictures, memories and events to re-live and a legion of friends who would care for either of us when the worst would happen. It was our being together that has made it possible for me to go on without her but never alone.
Each day, we honor those we love who are now gone, whether we know it or not, by being the people they helped make us to be. And I can attest that my friends and family all come from an amazing legacy based on the actions of all this past 6 months.
So now what. My strength to get me through the first few weeks following Julie's passing was saying, this is the beginning of a new journey. I still don't know where that journey will take me or what will be at the end of that road, in fact I really don't even know if it has begun. Thanks to friends, I now have a personal trainer to get me back on the track for a better me, a golf date in October 2015 at Pebble Beach to celebrate my 60th birthday, and new challenges professionally as we make the transition to HD television at church. I also have the three most amazing grandchildren God has created, no really mine are cuter than yours!
This trip alone is beginning to soon for me and so much of our time together was un-finished, but as each day passes, I get a little more excited for this new journey and I can start this new adventure knowing that Julie and I together built the trip-tik for which ever one of us remained. So stay tuned to this very spontaneous blog to see where life takes me as I gladly and sadly say good-bye to 2013 and hello to a New Year, may it be a lot better than the past.
Happy New Year!!
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