Eight months ago today we lost my oldest son, Joe. How can he have been gone for that long? When I say I have cried an ocean of tears…I am not sure it is much of an exaggeration. I am still not at the point where I take things day by day. Most of the time I take things hour by hour. The craziest things will set me off….going to a class at the YMCA and hearing a song with lyrics that hit me differently now…..looking up at my echo show and seeing a picture of Joe and his wonderful smile. I wake up every morning and look at my memories on Facebook for that day…hoping there will be a memory of Joe. There usually is. I miss Michelle, his dogs, his friends. Joe came with a big package of life….his wife, his dogs, his friends. I miss all of them. I try to keep in contact with them in some way, but they all have their lives to live, their own grief to deal with in their own ways. Sometimes I just feel like a painful reminder that he is gone to them. So, I don’t only mourn the loss of my Joe, but of all that came along with him, which makes the loss so much bigger. Who better to talk to about Joe than the people closest to him? So, I have had quite a lonely patch lately.

I am spending this afternoon attending a class on how to survive the holidays with grief. Sigh. I mentioned in my online mother’s grief class that thinking about the holidays just makes me want to throw up. Honestly, if we didn’t have Lily still at home, I think I would just not do anything. However, it is unfair to her to skip the holidays for our grief. I also think Joe would never want me to not celebrate my favorite time of year to cry over him. I know he wouldn’t want that. So, I soldier on…trying to keep that in the back of my mind. Rich managed to get Tim to agree to fly home for Thanksgiving this year. That was very unexpected and a wonderful surprise. I am guessing they will talk about this all this afternoon in this grief seminar, but I am going to give myself grace to have a low-key holiday season. I have Christmas cards in a basket next to my desk. Cards I bought last January on sale. I have been writing a family Christmas letter from the time we were married in 1991. I lay awake at night thinking about what I am going to say. No one wants to read a Christmas letter laced with incredible pain. There are several people who are our friends whom we really only communicate with at Christmas…so they don’t know what is going on with us. I want to honor Joe’s memory, especially this year. But before I can wrap my brain and heart around that project, I have to get through his first heavenly birthday, which is a week from today.

For Joe’s birthday this year, we are going to attend a Mass being said for him that morning at our church here in Omaha. They we are then going to head to Olathe, KS and take cupcakes to all the OFD stations to celebrate his memory. I am sure it will be a difficult day but seeing his brothers at the fire department will help, I hope. I also hope to be able to see his wife and best friend. We shall see!

Until then, I leave you with a photo of my Joe. This was taken the last couple of days I saw him, in Feb of this year. I told him he had llama hair. He was always pushing the limits of that floofy mop of ginger hair. He is so loved and so missed.

I mentioned in a previous post that we went to Montana for a short 5-6 day trip to go on a college visit with Lily in Bozeman and then up to the Flathead River Valley for a trip to Glacier National Park and our land. I wanted to share some photos of our time in Montana. Big Sky country definitely gives some spectacular sunsets. Even though it was mid-October, we still caught some of the colored leaves before the snow started to fly. The pictures of the white berries are called snow berries. They are edible. Lily and Rich tried them. They are supposed to taste like a wet wintergreen tic tac. Evidently that was a bit of a stretch as neither really liked them. We had just never seen them before.

I had a beautiful afternoon a couple of weeks ago with warm weather. In the hopes that some of the colorful leaves were still hanging on (literally), I took a jaunt over to Indian Cave State Park in Shubert, Nebraska, near the Missouri border. The drought has really dampened the colors of the trees this year, but still got a few photos I liked.

Thanks to an email service I get about “all things Nebraska”, I stumbled upon this little gem of an event in nearby Ashland, Nebraska at Mahoney State Park. From September 30th through October 30th, they had four nights a week you could come and meander through a huge maze of pumpkin carvings and displays. These photos don’t do it justice. There were thousands of carved pumpkins and it took me nearly 90 minutes to walk through the whole thing. There were a lot of people there, so I am guessing SOME people knew about it. There are 3 cities in the U.S. that do this: Lake Zurich, IL, Ashland, NE, and Grand Rapids, MI. I am so glad I was able to discover this on my last October in Nebraska. I highly recommend it! They had food trucks and apple cider and some drinks with a little more warmth to them for the adults. No one else was interested in going with me, so I went alone, but had a really good time! They had displays that were built with dozens of pumpkins and there was appropriate music playing at each section depending on what the theme of the carved pumpkins were. The Chinese dragon was amazing….it was made up of dozens of pumpkins. They had pumpkins glowing pink for the Breast Cancer themed display. The American flag was designed with pumpkins carved of jobs that are done in the United States. It was really cool. The most intricately carved pumpkins were of people. They were amazing. Rosie the Riveter was my favorite. I highly recommend you attend next year! Go online…you have to make reservations!

All of the locals in the Omaha area know we have the best zoo in the country. It is our best kept secret. Part of the Henry Doorly Omaha Zoo is the Wildlife Safari, which is in rural Ashland, Nebraska…about 30 minutes from the zoo proper. There are herd animals here….buffalo, elk, deer, sandhill cranes, wolves, and bears. There are owls and bald eagles who are not able to be released into the wild due to eye issues or wings that didn’t heal properly. There are sandhill cranes and pelicans. The weather has been so unseasonably warm here, they have decided to keep the Wildlife Safari open a few weeks later than normal. I spent a couple of hours there a week ago enjoying the wildlife. You drive your car through miles of trails where you can go no faster than 7 mph and you are meandering through the pastures the animals are congregating in. The turkeys and the bluejays were just an added bonus. I saw a cardinal for the first time in MONTHS yesterday. However, I have been seeing bluejays EVERYWHERE. They had just fed the sandhill cranes and a bluejay couple decided they should share.

The colors here in Nebraska have been beautiful but somewhat muted due to a dry conditions. As the leaves began to fall, I wanted to try and capture some of my last fall here in Nebraska. I took Tallinn with me to Chalco to go for a walk one evening. He is constantly by my side, so I thought he not only deserved a bit of a change of scenery for a walk but also his own mini photo shoot. Sometimes angels on earth are in disguise with fur and four feet. Tallinn has been such a wonderful companion to me over the last 3 years. Here are just a few photos from that evening.

So I have to admit that I have my favorites at the zoo. There are the baby elephants…Eugenia and Sonny, both born in January of this year. They are just adorable. They are best friends and I love to watch them play. I have had the pleasure to see them learn to roll in the mud holes (and get stuck and have to have their moms pull them out) and to spray dust on their backs. I have some photos of that in this post as well as Eugenia piling hay on Sonny’s back….just to annoy him. There will be two more elephant calves born in 2023; one in the spring and one in the fall. One of the times I was there, the zoo train went by the elephant enclosure and something must have set the adult elephants off. They trumpeted and immediately surrounded the two babies and faced outward to protect them. Lily was with me when this happened. It was quite impressive. Watching the love between the mother elephants and their calves is amazing. It just gives me all the special feels. They are my favorites. Others that I enjoy looking at are the big cats: the leopards, lions, and tiger. The red panda is so stinkin’ cute, but likes to hide. If he is out and about, I will spend a lot of time waiting for him to look up and get out of his tree house. A lot of the birds are fun to look at as well. Pelicans just are so very different…they have been off their exhibit due to avian flu for much of the year. It is great to have them back. I have a few other random shots in there of animals that caught my eye. Enjoy!

In early October, I signed up on a whim for a portrait class at the zoo. I thought it would help me figure out how to pose Lily for some of her senior photos. I really didn’t know what to expect. I knew they would have models there for us to work with. We were taken to the Asian Grasslands area of the zoo, where we met the zoo photographer, whom I had worked with before. He and his wife had decided to have more of a high fashion model shoot instead. I was not happy in the beginning because this was not what I signed up for. However, we got into the shoot and I had a good time. Thanks to Katie, Amy, and Rebecca for posing for us during class. Some of the poses were a little over-the-top for me and my purposes, but I stole Rebecca for a few moments and just practiced with the natural lighting and her face. Afterwards I wondered around and took photos of the animals…which I will post separately. Here are the portrait model photos from class:

Today we celebrated the friends and family who have died…especially those who died this past year. We were very honored to have our son, Joe Messina, recognized at our parish tonight at the All Soul’s Day Mass. Each family was called up to light their loved one’s candle. It was a beautiful, if not difficult Mass to attend. I was in Mass when Joe was killed, so being there is sometimes hard… and sometimes comforting. It depends on the day. We also were able to honor a dear friend of mine, who was so wonderful to comfort me when Joe died. She was diagnosed with brain cancer when we were in Alaska this summer and Becky went to be with the Lord on Oct 1st. It is still so strange to go to church and not see her there. I promised her I would check in on her husband, Joe, here on earth, if she would hug my son, Joe, when she saw him in heaven. The lights kept flickering during the service and Fr. Mark said it was our loved ones letting us know they were here with us. It went on all during the service…and all the lights went out for a second or two at one point. Rich whispered in my ear, “That is totally something Joe would do.” Talking with Becky’s husband, Joe, after the service, I told him what Rich said. I told him that Becky was nudging Joe off to the side and turning the lights back on…totally being a mom and ultimate control freak that she was. We got a good laugh out of that. My dear friend, Emily, was one of the many women who made desserts for a reception after the service. She told us she had planned on making Rice Krispy treats but something nudged her to make scotcheroos. We had to laugh at that because that nudge was from Joe. Scotcheroos are his favorite. Emily said she had no idea. We ate our dessert first then headed to Village Inn for dinner. We were greeted by our waitress who told us it was free pie Wednesday. That immediately brought our thoughts back to Joe and Zac and their high school friends who would make sure they went to Village Inn on free pie night. I still am shaking my head and smiling at the fact those two knew when all the free food was given out at the different places. The memories make us smile, but my goodness, Joe is so very missed.

This was the end of our day. The middle of it wasn’t so great. The weather was windy but warm for this time of year. By warm, I mean 75 degrees! Of course, they are predicting snow for the weekend….welcome to fall in the Midwest. We decided to go to Standing Bear Lake for a walk with the dog. The loop around the lake is a little over 3 miles. About 25 minutes into our walk, Rich started to get texts and calls from our bank, saying that our cards had been compromised. Of course we were on foot, and halfway around the lake. By the time we got back, we were welcomed to a smashed in passenger window and my purse, which was tucked under my seat, gone. This was not how I wanted to spend my afternoon….chasing after some loser who stole my purse because the police wouldn’t. Honestly, we were just hoping that he dumped my purse somewhere he had been. I had things in my purse that were irreplaceable to me. Let’s just say that some people really are awful and I just don’t know how much more I can take at this point. So now we are down a car, I have no identification or access to my money. I am now counting the days until we can leave here. Bring me the wide open country, please.

I am glad we had Mass tonight where I could quiet my soul and concentrate on something other than this unfortunate incident.

I wanted to give you all a bit of a catch up on what has been going on with our family over the last couple of weeks. First of all, thank you to the 3 or 4 friends who reached out to ask about how my scans went. I am part of the CHI medical system here in Omaha. They (meaning the hospitals in that health system in Omaha and many nationwide) were hacked recently. They realized they had been compromised and immediately shut down their systems to protect their patients’ privacy. Well, I thought it would be a couple of days tops. It turned out to be a few weeks. I was a nurse back in the day where we had to sit down and chart on paper…in ink. Well, this seems to be a lost art these days and this hack just crippled this health care system. I was told I would be receiving the results of my CT scans on Friday, Oct 14th at 11:45 a.m. with a call from my local oncologist. I happened to be out of town that day….and I planned my day around that call…which came 4 hours late after I called the cancer center a number of times and finally Rich called when I was given the royal runaround. My doctor, who never once apologized for making me wait 4 hours for the results, said that I am still stable and may even have some shrinkage in one of my major tumors. I cannot verify his call with the radiologist’s report yet because they have still not uploaded all the treatments and scans from the time the system was down. (It just came back up). In fact, I will have to call and have them make an appointment for my injection next week, as that has also fallen through the cracks. I have often…and I mean OFTEN found myself wondering that if I didn’t have a nursing degree and had some competence on a computer, if I wouldn’t have been killed, maimed or forgotten by this doctor by now. I find myself lifting up those less knowledgeable than me who are also fighting cancer in prayer…that someone is hopefully following them carefully. So, I am doing okay…. still stage IV and on palliative care…. but hanging in there, fighting the good fight. Next scans are in February.

We were out of town because we decided last minute to make a trip to Montana. Lily had a few days off of school, so she came with us. That Friday we were waiting for the call from the oncologist, we were touring Montana State University. It was an all-day affair. Lily was able to talk to students from there, try the food, tour a dorm hall, and walk through the art department. Rich and I were very impressed. Lily was non-plussed, as she is about anything that is seemingly important in her life. I thought she would really like it. She has already been accepted there. However, last night she told me she wanted to apply to UCM in Warrensburg, MO, where her brother, Joe, and sister-in-law, Michelle, went to undergrad. So there you have it. She doesn’t know what she wants to study yet. Rich is convinced it will all shake out in the end and she will have a place to go to when she graduates from high school….not to push her. However, the mom in me sees all these dates and deadlines coming and going. I so want her to find a place she can call her own…and figure out something she really enjoys doing that allows her to also make a living. Typical mom stuff.

We left Bozeman (where MSU is) and drove 5 hours north to where our property is. They were supposed to start building on our house this week in Columbia Falls. Unfortunately, our builder fell through at the last minute. To get another builder in place would be about a 3 year wait. I am not willing to do that. We thought we had the perfect option….the 10 acres with a newer house on it that was connected to our 10 acres was on the market. We contacted them and spent 2 hours with them at their house, and even put in an offer. However, they pulled their house off the market 48 hours after we made our offer. So here we are…back to square one. We own 10 acres we can’t build on in the near future. We were there to sign a construction loan and a contract with our builder. Now we will be waiting until March to look for a house and some acreage for sale in the Flathead River Valley. We won’t have kids in school, so we aren’t locked into certain areas for schools. I probably need to be within 30 minutes of a major hospital, but that is doable. Tim is hoping to relocate to another part of the country in May….so we hope to also move soon after Lily graduates from high school on May 21st. Now there will be no wait for construction. We can up and move and get up there. I am devastated that neither our plan A or plan B worked out. Now we have to just wait and wing it. That is not my style. I am a planner. However, it seems like not much seems to be going my way right now, so I will have to just let go and let God.

All this extra time allowed us to spend some time in Glacier National Park. We have been there several times and every time we are there the Going to the Sun Road is closed. This is the major road that goes from the west entrance to the east entrance. It is about 45 miles long and goes up into the mountain passes with stunning views. It also gets on average 80 FEET of snow each winter. It didn’t open until mid-July this year, because that is when they finally got it cleared for travel. This time there wasn’t snow. We were there the last day it was open for traffic, but the west side was closed due to construction they had planned this fall. Again, I am kind of like a bad luck penny….we still couldn’t go through. However, we did go to the east entrance and was able to make it as far as Logan Pass. That was all new to us, and the weather was beautiful, and the leaves were colorful. We stayed a few days in the Whitefish area and then headed back to Bozeman to catch our flight home. We were able to meet up with some friends whom we had been stationed with at Whiteman AFB, MO over 30 years ago. As we are not friends on Facebook and obviously, they don’t read by blog, they had no idea that Joe had died. Tell them about it in a restaurant was awful. It was already a harder day because it was also Joe and Michelle’s 2nd wedding anniversary. I felt so bad for them, as they were just mortified when we told them.

It seems so utterly unfair that Joe is no longer here when these special days pop up. Unfortunately there are a lot of them coming up in the next couple of months. Joe and Michelle were supposed to be married on September 12th, 2020. They both came down with COVID the week before the wedding and had to postpone it. They were able to have their wedding on October 17th, 2020. Because of Joe’s first responder job and the fact I was on chemo at the time, I had not seen Joe in the 8 months prior to his wedding. When I was first diagnosed with cancer, I had a meeting with all my doctors at the time and I told them that was my goal. I wanted to be able to make it to my son’s wedding and hopefully be well enough to dance with him. Well, that all came to fruition. Their wedding day was a top five day in my life. I had such a good time just watching Michelle and her girls get ready…and Joe and his posse get suited up. The love that Michelle and Joe have for one another is one for the ages….they supported each other, respected each other, and loved without abandon. I was so blessed to be able to witness their marriage….to see the absolute joy on their faces. To see Tim and Lily standing up with their brother and new sister on their wedding day….it is just such a fabulous memory that I will cherish forever. It seems mighty unfair that although they spent years together as a couple, they had less than 2 years together as man and wife. Joe died being so very loved by the woman of his dreams. What can you say to your daughter-in-law on her wedding anniversary when Joe is no longer here on earth to celebrate with her? Let’s just say it was a hard day for me, as well as for Michelle. God bless her, I can’t begin to imagine how hard that day was for her.

Other things to catch you up on….oh! I have two photos in the Omaha Zoo calendar for 2023. Yep, I am Miss June (actually Eugenia and Sonny, the baby elephants are) along with a smaller photo of a cheetah. It was a really big honor to be selected. I took two photography classes in person in October. One was at the zoo. It was actually supposed to be a portrait class but they changed it (unbeknownst to me) to a fashion photography class. I was looking to find some ideas and guidance on posing Lily for her senior photos, so this was not exactly what I was looking for. However, I did get a few good shots of the models and then I spent another two hours taking photos of the animals. I will post those photos in another post.

I want to wish a Happy Halloween to those of you who celebrate it. Joe loved Halloween. I have fond memories of him as a kid trick or treating with Tim and coming home and dumping all their candy on the family room floor and trading each other for their favorites. I also remember the time in when we lived in Okinawa, that Rich, Tim, and Joe went out trick-or-treating, leaving me home to hand out candy. Rich came back less than an hour later with a Weimaraner puppy and no sons. It is by far our best Halloween story…how we ended up with our Aiko on Halloween night. Later, Joe and Tim would take Lily out trick or treating when we moved back to the States. Norway was not a big Halloween celebrating country. Joe got into more elaborate costumes as an adult. He and his wife and friends would often dress up as a group, which I always enjoyed seeing pictures of. He told me last year that he was handing out candy at his house and there was a kiddo dressed up as a fireman. When Joe told the little boy that he was a real fireman, the kiddo thought it was really cool. Joe called me and told me all about it. This is one of those days that I miss him just a little bit more.