This is how Rock Falls

How is your weekend going?

Well, I hope.  Let me tell you about mine...

I got off shift Friday morning, grabbed Leslie and headed out to the greater Rock Falls area.

The Tour has been out in town for the last two years.  But, logistics being what they are, won't be in the Midwest this year.  I'd be willing to bet (figuratively, not literally) a paycheck (cause that's out of my control) we'll be back out in this part of the country next year.  But this year?  Not so much.

Now, we've gotten a GREAT response every time we've been out here.  So when I got an email last winter from  Dave that said the good people in Rock Falls wanted another Tour stop and asking if I'd handle it, well, it was kind of a no-brainer.  Of course.  Gladly.  That got me in contact with Janell Loos, the Director of Tourism for Rock Falls.  I lost track of how many emails were exchanged between us.  Let me just say there were a lot.  No.  That doesn't quite convey it right.  Dozens is probably correct but it doesn't have the "zing" that you, my faithful readers, deserve.  Both of you.

Brief confession here (it IS Sunday morning, after all) I checked Thesaurus.com (what? You thought all this just floats around in my brain looking for an outlet? Sometimes I check resources too) and I'll give you; oodles, gobs or scads.  You choose.  Interactive blogging!  I may be onto something here...

Back to the matter at hand...

Janell hit one out of the park.

Actually, she hit everything she saw this weekend out of the park.

In brief, something I rarely am btw, between Friday and Saturday we visited nineteen women in four towns and two counties.

Now THAT'S a great weekend.

And speaking of great, no mention of this weekend can take place without mentioning The Great Vincenzo.  Vin came out to give me a hand on Friday and was his usual suave, charming, wonderful self.  Chicks do, in fact, dig him.  And he's quite good at Pink Healsing.  We had multiple laughs and put many smiles on faces.  Ours included.

See here's kind of the thing.  We can't fix anything.  We hold no answers.  We carry no cure.  The best we (and by "we" I mean "me") can hope (actually I probably mean "I") to do is put a smile on someone's face, at least for a little while.

So that's exactly what we set out to do.  And in the greater Rock Falls area, it's pretty easy.  Like i said before, Janell was great.  For example, here's the view from my hotel room...

A balcony overlooking the Rock River.  Before you go casting aspersions on the empty factory across the river, it's actually a pretty cool looking building.  And this is, in my many travels with the PHT, my first river-front balcony.

Quick side story here...

The Oldest One came out Saturday evening to help me with T-shirt sales at the wrap-up event.  She met me at the hotel where dinner was being provided.  As I sat there, eating my dinner, chatting with the Mayor and his wife, my lovely, thoughtful, tactful daughter walked up and said, and I quote

"Geez Dad, you've got to do something about the hotels you're staying in.  This one doesn't even have a hot tub by the pool."

To which I replied

"Mr. Mayor, meet my daughter."

Yes, smart alecky runs in the family.

I explained to her that the facility was only about 3 months old and that my room was very graciously comped and we all had a good laugh about it.

One of the nice things about returning to an area for multiple years is that you'll often run in to people you've met in previous years.  Audrey and her Mom, for instance.

We met Audrey last year, just before she started chemo.  At the time Mike was with us and he had just been declared free from disease.  We declared him many other unprintable things but that's a story for another time.  Audrey's Mom set up a home visit for her this year and they also came by last night to visit us.

She's doing great, as you can see.

As I steer this thing to it's conclusion, let me once again sing some praises.

I've done probably well over a thousand home visits in my time doing this.  And many times a gift basket of sorts is presented to those we visit.  Janell beat them all.  With this -

For every. woman. we. visited.

Now to be honest, I didn't go digging into one of the baskets to see what specifically was in there, but they were packed and everyone was thrilled with them.  You may also note a bag of sweet corn in the picture.  My first reaction was "really?  sweet corn?"  But if you think about it, what could be more perfect especially this time of year, in northern Illinois, than a half dozen ears of fresh, locally grown sweet corn?

Lastly (I think) I want to take a minute or two and thank the aforementioned Mayor.  Without throwing stones at any other municipality, this is just one example of how well he "gets" what we do for, and with, a community...

That's him, helping us wash Leslie at the local firehouse.  I can't think of too many other Mayors that would do that.  If any of you Rock Fallers (Rock Fallians?) read this, you people (yes, I said you people) could really use a pink fire truck to call your own.  This area has shown me time and again that you support what we're all about. 

Peace 

One step at a time

Here's a thing about me.

I. Never. Read. Work. Email. From. Home.

Ever.

It's not that I don't care, mind you, although my care quotient is on the low (to put it mildly) side when I'm not at work.  Rather, at work I am, shall we say, a peon.  And I don't say that to denigrate myself, only that the vast majority of things that happen at work when I'm not there have no real effect on me.  I have little to no impact on their outcome for good or bad and in fact most are fait accompli by the time an email comes out.  Any union business comes to my personal email too, so...

Additionally, a lot of the email at work, since it's Village-wide and not FD specific, deals with things like ohhh if the color copier at Village Hall is functioning properly.

And I'm not even joking.  Granted that might be of value to those in VH, but to me, it ranks right around how many flies are circling a patty produced by a specific heifer on a particular farm on any given day in the life of a random farmer (rancher?) in Wyoming.

We good here?

Now, having said that, One of the first things I do after I've been off for a while is to check my work email.  Partly because I run a pool in my head of how many emails are waiting for me (I've never won btw) and partly because I want to see what, if anything happened while I was off.

Which brings me to yesterday.  As I was reading through the list (only 43 from July 9-21) I saw a notice about the passing of the Mother of a woman I know at VH.  I would say that even though we've known each other for 20+ years there has been very little interaction between us.  Acquaintance moreso than friend.  However, given my experience in such matters, I thought I would share something with her that was sent to me after Diane died.  I don't remember who I got it from, but I'm pretty sure it was from an online grief group I used to be a part of.  It's kind of a secular piece in that it doesn't mention a particular diety, yet refers to those waiting on the other side.  I like it a lot, I was able to relate to it and the image it conjured up was comforting to me.  So, when I get the chance to share it with someone I think may benefit from it, I do.  And, a couple hours later I got a very gracious reply from her, so I felt like I was somewhat helpful.  I remember from the group, Paul, from Georgia, told me "when I help you heal, I heal" and I believe that to be true.

Which brings me back to where I intended this thing to go right from the start.

Our home is for sale.

Had I been smart, I would've put it on the market in 2006, right after Diane died.  But at the time there was no way I was emotionally equipped to do that.  The wounds were so fresh, so raw, that I would've been a wreck leaving the house behind.  And not just mine, I think the kids would've felt a lot of angst over "losing" the house too.   And by the time I was emotionally equipped to try and sell it, the market had tanked and I was underwater on the house.  So I ended up with renters for the last (almost) 5 years.  

And that's a story for another day.

Now, a couple things...

A.) I don't want to turn this into a sales pitch for my house (see link to listing here) and...

B.) Now that I'm prepared to sell the house without inflicting serious harm to my psyche, I've spent considerable time reflecting on the events that were important to my life that took place there.  Or, at least, while I (we) lived there.

In no particular order-

Caitlin was killed six weeks after we moved in.

Diane died three years after we moved in.  

The Quiet Child was married there.

The Boy Child came home safely from Iraq there.

This happened there

The balloon story took place there. 

I've never told you the balloon story?

Ok, then...

The Heir to the Throne turned three years old about three months after Caitlin was killed.  Diane didn't want to not celebrate, even though none of us really felt like partying at the time.  But he wouldn't have understood so we forged on with his third birthday party.  Diane bought a dozen or so helium balloons and decorated the house.  I don't remember who all was there but we had a decent amount of family there.  And as I recall we all had a nice time marking his special day.  

At the end of the day, when the Oldest One told him it was time to go, she also told him they couldn't take all of the balloons with, there wasn't enough room in the car.  She said he should pick out two or three balloons and they would leave the rest at Nana and Papa's house.  

He looked at her, and with all the wisdom of a three year old, told her -

"Mommy, I want to send my balloons to Aunt Caitlin."

As you might imagine, there wasn't a dry eye in the house.  And it lasted throughout the whole procedure as we let them go, one at a time, up to Aunt Caitlin.  And it kept going for at least a little while after the balloons had all started on their way to her.  

I had a really hard time telling that story for a long time after without losing my shit and becoming a blubbering mass.  And, it was a long time after that my voice would still break as I told it.  But here, today, sitting in my local coffeehouse writing this, I'm good.

I've said it many times, here and IRL, grief takes it's own time.  

Don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise.

Peace

Megan Jean

Let's see if I can't knock this one out quickly, I'm on my way out the door to go walk in a parade for candidate for elected office.

Regular readers may recall the kick off to this series of posts about some of the girls that Caitlin was close to.  Last night, I had the distinct honor and extreme pleasure to attend the wedding of Megan and Brian.  

What a wonderful evening!

It started with a hug in the parking lot from Sara (note the absence of an "H") another of Caitlin's good friends.  We ended up parking next to each other and walked in to the venue together.  Once inside (side note, I was NOT late, yay me) I took a seat on the bride's side and watched as the wedding party proceeded in.  Sarah (with an "H"), Dalmy and Melissa were all members of the wedding party and as I watched them file past, it felt so amazing to watch them all.

And then, Megan came in, on the arm of her Dad.  Now, if you know me IRL, you know I'm kind of a sap for emotional moments.  It's a part (ok, it's a large part) of who I am.  Anyway, I kind of prepared myself for the emotion of watching Meg walk in.  It's sometimes difficult at special events like this to not wonder "what if" you know?  But I was ready for it and managed to keep my stuff together throughout the ceremony.  It was very sweet.  Brief too fwiw, lol.  So as we all filed past the happy couple, after getting a chance to say hi and get hugs from Dalmy and her husband John (also with an "H"), Mel and her husband Yaseen and Sarah her sweetie Chris (he's got an "H" too) (what the hell, I'm on a roll) I saw another friend of Caitlin's, Shannon and her husband.  Shannon btw is running for a judgeship err I mean to attain judgeosity uhhh she's running in an election to be a judge.

Ahem.

So as I got up to congratulate Megan and Brian, still keeping my stuff together, Meg got a little teary eyed.  That didn't help any, lol.  However as I walked away, I was fully composed and feeling rather pleased with myself.

Till I started talking to Sarah again.  Sarah asked if I'd seen the bridesmaids bouquets?

No, why?

Megan had made a special addition to them.

When we moved into the house in Wondertucky (not it's real name) back in March 2003 Diane and Caitlin started talking about decorating the house.  Caitlin was very fond of animal prints and wanted to use that as the theme for her room.  Of course, she never got the chance to do that.  Even though Diane did decorate it that way eventually, Caitlin never saw it.  As a result of Caitlin's fondness for leopard, cheetah and another other pertinent animal prints, her friends all wore leopard print ribbons during graduation to honor her.  We also included that into the first few W5kfC t-shirts.  So, when Sarah told me about seeing the bouquets for the first time, I lost it.  Only a little, I don't think anyone other than Sarah saw or heard me, but it was just such a sweet thing for Meg to do and so very touching that I couldn't help it.

I'm going to move this right along since I'm at the coffeehouse and I can still feel the emotion.  Plus I'm getting close to "Holy crap, I've got to go" time.

Megan, like I told you last night, I wish a lifetime of peace and happiness to you both.  I'm so grateful you thought enough of me to include me.  And I really do think that ribbon is one of the sweetest things I've seen in a long time.

Last pic before I go; Dalmy, Sarah, Mel and I mugging for the camera-

I love you guys!

Peace